2000
● 1-2-2000:
Two Haikus and a Tanka:
Seven plus seven
Plus four, minus four; times two
Equals twenty-eight.
Twenty-eight minus
Fourteen; divided by two,
Returns to seven.
One plus two plus three
Plus four plus five plus seven
Equals twenty-two.
. . . Which is as interesting
As eight plus nine—not very!
● 1-14-2000: I see many parallels between music and (verbal) writing. One such similarity is with opera, specifically with the continuo played on the harpsichord during recitative sections. The continuo often seems to act as a dot-dot-dot (“. . .”) at the end of a sentence, to indicate a trailing off of thought. Harpsichord notes even look like dots . . .
● 1-18-2000: I have a good mind to write an article titled Just Simply Redundant! . . .
● Sometimes it feels as if, in terms of my general functioning, I’m walking uphill; but when I drink tea or coffee, I begin walking downhill. It seems difficult to function, but then it suddenly seems easier, even easy. Perhaps there’s no mystery about that—this is the effect that stimulants have.
● I’m eclectic: I make all kinds of mistakes . . ..
● No personal relationship is infinitely resilient; and when one person hurts the other person emotionally enough times, or enough, it takes an inevitable toll on the relationship; and even if the other person recovers from the injury, the relationship may not.
● 2-13-2000: We all perhaps fantasize about coming back as certain animals; I sometimes imagine coming back as a bird, because I’m fascinated by flying, and would love to soar like a bird. On second thought, it’s occurred to me that being another animal would be, so to speak, “a nice place to visit, but not a place you’d want to live.” I’d prefer human form, with our brain, hands, and language ability. Plus, if a bird or other animal has pain, an injury, or some other medical problem, it can’t go to the doctor, or even administer medical treatment to itself, like a catheter; it must simply live with it or die, and I don’t even know if they have that option, suicide, in extreme cases, as we do.
● 2-15-2000: If people are prohibited, or discouraged, from having sex until marriage, people will be compelled to marry earlier than they might do otherwise, earlier than is in their best interest, just to have sex; in a phrase, they’ll marry for sex. A prohibition of premarital sex would also be unfair to people who choose, for whatever reasons, not to marry at all; it would completely deprive them of a sex life.
● I’ve noted, in “A Personal, Secular Version of the Twelve Steps,” that people can’t help God carry out His will, since God’s ability to effect His intentions is infinite, but man’s ability is only finite. But what if, according to my Footnote to “Thoughts on the Big Bang Theory,” there are infinitely many intelligent beings (scattered throughout an infinite space)? Would that fact not contradict my thesis, in that the potential force of temporal intelligent beings, like humans, would be equal to that of God: namely, both would be infinite? The answer is No, because only a finite number of such temporal intelligent beings could ever cooperate together . . . And our ability to effect things is very limited, quite unlike the usual conception of God. For example, even if there are infinitely many intelligent beings, we still cannot, as God supposedly could, say, transfer the Earth to another galaxy in one stroke; and ensure that all people remain extremely happy indefinitely.
● 2-20-2000: I’ve recently been trying to avoid getting upset as a motorist, and to be calm and unemotional while I drive. So, just yesterday, when another driver cut me off, I very calmly and unemotionally gave him an obscene gesture.
● 2-21-2000: Procedure for doing something you know you should do, when unpleasant feelings are keeping you from doing it: Make a reasonable effort to eliminate or reduce the unpleasant feelings. If you successfully eliminate or reduce those feelings, perform the action in question. If you’re unable to eliminate or reduce them, do the action anyway.
● 2-24-2000: I recently heard a radio interview with the author of a new book titled Signals, a main thesis of which book is that there’s a greater purpose for our everyday experience. The author said that we should take comfort, when we’re having a bad time, in knowing that our suffering is for a higher purpose. And as support for this proposition, he told a story that a friend of his who’d recently died had appeared to him, after the friend’s death, in a vision, an experience that started with a strange luminescence on the ceiling of the author’s bedroom; and in the vision the friend told him that truth about a grander purpose.
I had several reactions. One is simply to relate a very similar experience of my own, in which a friend of mine (one with a philosophical bent) who had recently died, appeared to me in a vision that also began with a strange luminescence in my room, a sort of soft purplish glow; and my dead friend talked about the same subject but told me that he’d learned since his death that there is no greater purpose. . . . Beyond relating this experience of my own, I would ask the author several questions. To begin with, What is this grander purpose? Is it a good purpose, or a bad purpose? And, finally, in the great scheme of things, how does our everyday experience figure? While presumably the grand purpose is the most important aspect, what does our everyday experience, our suffering and jubilation, count for? For example, the grand purpose counts for 80 percent of overall importance, and our everyday experience counts for the other 20 percent?
● 2-27-2000: If God is all-good and all-powerful, why does He not simply get rid of the Devil?
● 2-29-2000: Fred Penrose responded to my 2-25-2000 letter to him by leaving the following message on my answering machine:
“Richard, this is Fred Penrose. I hope everything is well with you. I got your letter, and tried to call you, to see if I could help you bring closure to the questions that you raise in your letter. I’m sorry that you are still going through some stress over finding that material. I know that I’ve searched every possible avenue that I would have, and I can’t find anything that you may have left with me when I was in the clinic years ago. In any event, I hope everything will go well with you. If I don’t . . . can’t reach you like this, then I’ll hope that this telephone call will suffice. In the event that I don’t hear from you, I will assume that all is well. Bye-bye.”
● 3-2-2000: Why is it so desirable to “save lives” when we’re overpopulated?
[Later note (2021): Here’s why. Preliminarily, the way to reduce population size is to decrease the birth rate, not to increase the death rate. We try to save lives because of the Golden Rule, or something like it: If our life was in danger, we’d want others to try to save us. It’s also a matter of utility: if we thought others would not come to our aid if we were in great danger, we’d all be a little anxious . . . or a little more anxious.]
● 3-5-2000: I hate public-radio people saying that some program or other is supported or brought to you by “listeners just like you.” I’m unique—no one else is just like me!
[Later note (3-25-2024): Besides, the program can’t have been supported by people just like me . . . because I never send them money!]
[Later note (3-26-2024): I guess I made a joke at my own expense. To mitigate the effect, let me add that I give considerable money to another—a leftist—radio station, KPFK. They need (and I think deserve) the money more than other public radio stations . . . and they don’t ask for donations from listeners “just like you.”]
● Music is a vehicle for feelings. It may not make me feel better unless I’m already in a good mood. My mood must be conducive. But if it is, if I’m receptive to joy, if I’m already walking in a certain direction, the right music can be like a faster car going in the same direction, on which my feelings get aboard and hitch a ride. . . . The music facilitates and enhances the feeling.
● 3-12-2000: In a sense, you can’t change one thing without changing everything.
● If we all go to Heaven after we die, what’s the purpose of earthly life? Why not just have Heaven, and skip this earthly existence, and avoid all the intervening suffering? Or perhaps the purpose is to test us, to determine who should go to Heaven, and who to Hell.
. . . When I was a child, I played a game with frogs, in which I would take a box containing a few frogs and beckon them to come toward me. Those frogs which moved away from me, and those which seemed to act aggressively toward other frogs, I took out and tortured to death. Those frogs which moved in my direction and which struck me as being nice (having a pleasant disposition), I allowed to live in a favorable environment, with some rocks, shrubbery, and abundant water . . . [Later note (2020): I didn’t literally do that. It’s an allegory.]
● 3-13-2000: It seems to me that my creative and analytical faculties are thoroughly integrated. I sense no greater separation between my right and left brain, so to speak, in doing writing—any sort of writing—than I would between my right and left hands in wielding a shovel to dig a ditch. Nay, the comparison is inadequate because I’m right-handed, but I sense no difference in strength between my analytic and my creative power.
● Writing a haiku
Makes an ever-shining star,
And is time well spent.
● God has become a bad cliche, used in far too many circumstances. If a person can’t formulate an original expression to precisely describe the concept in his mind, he talks about God. If he doesn’t understand or can’t explain something, he talks about God. And, frankly, I’m getting tired of it!
● 3-17-2000: What’s the meaning (or significance) of life? The short answer is that life has no meaning. Of course, the question is really asking what’s the meaning of human life. But human life has no more meaning than non-human life.
● 3-19-2000: I’ve often heard it said that the way, or the best or most effective way, to change the world is to change ourselves. But it strikes me that this isn’t saying much, because those who express the notion seem to consider the world essentially to mean mankind. And, since we are the world, when we change ourselves, obviously we therefore, thereby, change the world. But perhaps I’m misunderstanding the statement. Then perhaps it means that we can change the human community by changing ourselves individually. And I did just recently say that perhaps a change in one thing changes everything. More to the point, though, it’s doubtful that the average person can “change the world,” in the commonly understood sense of the phrase: that is, do some grand action that has a widespread positive effect. Probably the biggest positive effect the average person can have is to make himself happier. But, since he’s part of the world, enhancing his own well-being enhances the world’s well-being—by that much.
● 3-26-2000: Woe is me. I can’t sleep at night; and I can’t fully wake up during the day.
● 4-19-2000: A certain circularity in religious thought: Why is God great, or magnificent . . .? Because of this magnificent world He created, whose crowning glory is man. Why is man great? Because he was created in God’s image . . ..
● 4-29-2000: Death is life run out of time.
● 5-2-2000: Question to a white racist: Is a stupid white person superior to an intelligent black person? Presumably, he’d answer, “Yes” (as he must, to be consistent). Then I’d ask him, “Why?” Presumably (again, to be consistent), his answer would be, “Because he’s white.” Then I’d say this: “The relative superiority of different levels of intelligence is objectively true; superiority of one skin color to another is subjective—nay, unreal. Hence racism is nonsensical.”
● 5-7-2000: Before the drug addict began abusing drugs, the preoccupations of his life may have been developing personal relationships, building a career, or actualizing his talents, which interests became crowded out of his life by drugs. If, after he stops using drugs, his life’s preoccupation is sobriety, rather than the development of his talents, etc.; then, in a sense, he has still lost his battle with addiction; addiction has won. Only when the drug addict replaces his preoccupation with drug use, or with mere abstinence, with whatever interests he had before the advent of drugs in his life, has he truly conquered his addiction.
● 5-18-2000: Much is made of man’s obligations to God, and of rules and commandments that man must follow in obedience to God. But what about God’s rules? What obligation does, or should, God owe man? Perhaps God should adhere to this rule: If You create a world with sentient beings, make it in such a way that there’s at least as much happiness as suffering. It would seem that, if God exists, and He’s all powerful and all good, He’d follow this precept. But it seems to me that, with Earth, He’s violated it. But perhaps not; perhaps He’s made happy other planets elsewhere in the universe, whose joy outweighs Earth’s misery. If so, however, then I think we need a supplemental commandment for God: Do not cause unnecessary, avoidable pain, a law that also seems to have been broken with Earth.
● 5-21-2000: Happy Birthday, Richard!
● What I like about President Clinton is that, with him, it’s not just the same old bullshit. . . . It’s new bullshit . . ..
● 6-4-2000: Alcoholics Anonymous Step Eleven of the Twelve-Steps is: “We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.”
A question: What if you go for decades praying for knowledge of what God wants for you, but never gain any idea what He wants. At some point, are you not justified in pursuing what you want for yourself? . . . So perhaps the Step should, at very least, be amended to delete “only.” For even if you pray for knowledge of God’s will, should you not be able to pray also for happiness for yourself and your family, etc.? (Is it possible that God is against that? . . .)
. . . And, what does God want?!
● I had an interesting experience in an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting today. Someone was describing terrible disasters that had befallen various members of his family; and he interpreted these events as something like lessons given to him by God—events that God had made happen to show him something he needed to learn. It occurred to me that this was a highly self-centered, selfish interpretation, because it completely left out the importance of the event to the person directly affected. For example, if his sister became a paraplegic in a car crash, the greatest significance of the event would seem to me to be to his sister. I thought that I would not want to be a friend of this man’s, for God might subject me to some (further) terrible tragedy just to give this man a little lesson of some sort.
● 6-13-2000: “. . . a Godfearing man . . .” Can a person truly love that which he fears? I’m not sure he can. Fear seems more conducive to hate than to love. I think that if I believed in God, I’d hate God . . . for the world’s misery that He must have deliberately caused if He’s omnipotent. The world’s trouble and pain is inconsistent with the notion of its having been made by an all-powerful, benevolent, and just God, which inconsistency is implicitly admitted by religious people when they say, “God works in mysterious ways.” And it’s a mystery that will never be solved, because the idea makes no sense.
● 6-29-2000: There’s a well-known infinite regress issue regarding the contention that God created the universe, which is that, if we suppose that God created the universe, we still must ask who or what created God. And if one suggests another entity as God’s creator, we must again ask who or what created it . . . and so forth ad infinitum. But there’s a similar infinite regress issue about purpose. Which is this: if we say that events in our lives happen because God caused them for His purpose, do we not then still need to ask, What was God’s purpose? If it’s insufficient to explain a man’s action by saying that he did it just because he felt like it, why should it be sufficient to explain God’s action merely by saying that God wanted it?
● 7-1-2000: First things first; middle things in the middle; and last things last.
● Richard Eisner’s version of the Serenity Prayer: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the strength to change the things I cannot accept; and the talent to do both with style.”
● I’ve decided to start dating, or to pursue dating. Just this week I responded to my very first Internet personals ad. I suddenly have an urge to grab some of life . . . while I still can.
● Don’t waste your time and energy regretting the configuration of the boat’s wake. Focus instead on working the boat’s oars, or its engine, and steering it.
● 7-11-2000: Reconciliation of determinism and free will. In a certain very narrow sense, free will and determinism can be reconciled, as follows. We may have some limited, immediate free will, in that we can consciously bring about that which we intend. For example, I may think to myself, “I’m going to raise my left arm from the table” . . . and then I do indeed raise my left arm off the table. In this sense, I had free will, because my will caused something to be done coinciding with my intention. But in an overall, ultimate sense, I really did not have free will in the matter, because something beyond me in turn caused me to have the intention to raise my arm in the first place. To deny that something else, beyond you, causes your intentions would be to contend that you yourself cause your own intentions, which is impossible. For if we suppose a second previous conscious intention on your part as the cause of your intention to act, you must similarly account for that second intention by positing a third prior intention on your own part as its cause, and explain that third one with yet a fourth one preceding it, and so on ad infinitum. In that infinite mental journey, you run into a fatal problem soon enough: after you’re born, considering your first intention . . .. Or perhaps we don’t have to go back even that far; perhaps the same point holds for your first intention when you wake up in the morning. We might paraphrase Nietzsche’s famous maxim here: An intention comes when it will, not when I will.
● 7-18-2000: I just had a rather profound dream. In it, I was put through some sort of initiation rite, or experiment, in which I was knocked on the head and bound, and/or blindfolded, and/or locked up, for a time, anywhere from an hour to several days. At the end of the period, I was released and asked what I had learned, as if the lesson was supposed to be obvious, or universal. And during the time I was bound, I did indeed have a profound insight, which was that I’m not a victim. I’m free and should have no resentments, including toward my father. After this rite or test, I was released and my father picked me up (he collected me to drive me home), and I felt friendly toward him, with a sense of gratitude, even love.
[Later note (2021): And what I’ve learned from this is that dream profundity and waking profundity are sometimes very different. In this respect, a dream is like a song: if you simply say the lyrics, without music, they sound a bit ridiculous. Dreams and songs are their own creatures.]
● 7-30-2000: When most people speak of God, they are, I think, using “God” more or less as a metaphor for the universe. The universe is vast, indifferent, and inherently meaningless. People create the notion of God as a way to view the universe as its antithesis: an intimate place that knows us and cares deeply about us, and that imbues everything, especially including us and our lives, with meaning and worth.
● 8-4-2000: The positing of God is an attempt to establish certain conditions of the universe by definition, by verbal fiat. If we want to prove that there’s a grand purpose for man, for instance, we say that God exists, and He has a magnificent plan for mankind. Whatever quality or fact we wish to reach, we simply invoke the vague, amorphous concept of God and describe that concept so as to include the argued-for quality or fact. It’s a convenient all-purpose device of last resort, used when one cannot come up with a better argument.
● 8-5-2000: Simplicity is relative . . . relative to intelligence or mental sophistication. The more intelligent one is, the simpler any given entity seems . . . in general. (I add that qualification “in general” because the possibility occurs to me of infinite complexity, which would never appear simple to anyone, as everyone’s intelligence is finite.)
● A tale of God and miracles is a pretty story for children. But we’re adults.
● 8-15-2000: Are God and Jesus Christ different entities? Do people who believe in Jesus Christ believe in the existence of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe (or anywhere)? If so, do they believe that such other intelligent beings have a Jesus Christ for their planet, too?
[Later note (2021): I later heard that someone in the Middle Ages proposed that idea (that civilizations elsewhere in the universe had Jesus Christs of their own). For which proposal he was put to death by the Church.]
● 8-26-2000: If it’s destiny that I right certain wrongs that have been done in the world, was it not also destiny that those wrongs were done in the first place? If it’s according to God’s plan that I fight injustice, was it not also part of God’s plan to make the injustice? . . . Would someone please explain this to me.
● 9-3-2000: If Christ or Elvis (Presley) “came back,” how old would he be at that time? Would he come back at the age he was when he died, or at the age he was when he was in his prime, or what?
● Why should we condemn the Romans, or whoever it was who killed Christ? For, in doing so, did they not play an essential role in Christ’s ascent to Heaven, in his obtaining there everlasting life, and in the very salvation of all mankind? Someone had to kill him in order for all these benefits to appear. Shouldn’t such people be praised?
[Later note (2021): Or perhaps, more accurately, we should condemn their intent, but add a footnote saying that, while the intent was bad, the result was good.]
● 9-13-2000: I see a dichotomy that runs through or operates within several philosophical subjects: the strictly speaking versus the loosely speaking, the theoretical versus the practical. Thus, regarding knowledge, I believe that, strictly speaking, propositional knowledge (knowledge of the truth or falsehood of propositions) is impossible. Whereas, loosely speaking, I consider myself as knowing any number of propositions: I believe I know I’m more intelligent than the average person, that I’m typing on a keyboard at this moment, et cetera. And, as to free will and determinism, I believe that, strictly, determinism is true and that, therefore, there is no free will. If we’re free to act on our desires and intentions, yet those desires and intentions are predetermined. But, in a loose, everyday sense, I feel and act as if we had free will. I think I have a choice about what I do, and so inwardly scold myself for not working harder (which would seem to make no sense if I truly believed I had no real choice); and I feel that people who do antisocial acts deserve our punishment. I avoid a conflict by allowing for two different realms, the theoretical and the practical.
● 9-28-2000: I recently heard someone say that you should appreciate the miraculousness of your existence because the odds were greatly against it, as you are a unique product of the sperm and egg cells that became you, and there was only a one-in-billions chance that that particular sperm, of all the competing sperms, would be the one to fertilize that egg.
But from a cosmic or metaphysical perspective, the unlikelihood of your being is significantly greater, for a one-in-billions chance is a finite improbability; whereas, strictly speaking, the odds that you (your consciousness) would ever actually exist, in any form at all, are infinitesimal (it’s infinitely improbable). For there are infinitely times as many potential beings as the number that can ever come into actual existence. And yet, as you read, or contemplate, this; you exist. Which points up a key difference between zero and infinitesimal. If just one of infinitely many possible beings can actually be, you may exist. But if no (zero) potential beings can actually exist, you could not exist. In other words, you owe your existence to the fact that your chances of ever being born were infinitesimal instead of nil.
● 10-10-2000: “Secular Jew” . . . Is that not a contradiction in terms? . . . like “Christian Science” . . ..
● Strict logical consistency or inconsistency pertains to verbal or mathematical statements, but not to actions, since our actions are based essentially on how we feel, and how we feel may change. In other words, thought (or such thought as consists in philosophical or mathematical reasoning) is rational; but action is arational (though perhaps we may rationally think about action). We can make judgments about people’s actions, to determine whether they’re in accord with their own stated purposes or intentions, and determine what the motivations may be. We can argue about what one should do in a given situation. But even if a person agrees that he should take a particular action, he may not actually do it, for what he does is a function of many factors, just one of which being the feeling of moral duty (a feeling that he should do a particular act); it’s also influenced by his possibly subconscious or unconscious desires or feelings, by ambition or laziness, energy or depression, and so forth.
● 11-4-2000: Not all is relative. Happiness and unhappiness are not relative. If you’re unhappy, for instance, they can parade thousands of even more unhappy people in front of you to try to cheer you up and make you feel happier by comparison. But the fact remains, you’re still unhappy, and about equally so . . ..
● Today I attended some further Twelve-Steps drug (Alcoholics Anonymous) meetings, as required by my State Bar probation. In one meeting, the topic selected for members to “share” about was “Pride and Ego.” After several members “shared” to the effect that they had to get rid of their pride and ego in order to let God into their lives, which saved them from the scourge of alcoholism; I said this: “I want to say something good about pride. I’ve been continuously sober for over four years now, despite some moments of temptation. I’ve accomplished this due to my strength and determination. And I feel proud of that accomplishment. I think that this pride is healthy because, first, I think it’s justified. And, second, it’s positive. It’s a good feeling, a reward for my sobriety and, therefore, it provides a positive reinforcement to motivate my continued abstinence.”
[Later note (2020): I’ve been abstinent from drug abuse for about 24 years now. If Twelve-Steps has played any role in my abstinence, it has been a negative, reverse one: When I was in the (Twelve-Steps) drug treatment program, the people who ran the program told me that I wouldn’t stay sober if I didn’t adopt and practice Twelve-Steps. A strong motivation to remain abstinent has been to prove them wrong. I suppose this, too, could be construed as a matter of pride.]
● Another thought about Twelve-Steps. One of the little catchphrases repeated at every meeting is “Keep coming back: It works if you work it.” It refers of course to the Twelve-Steps program. So the meaning is as follows: If you adhere to and practice Twelve-Steps, you’ll stay sober. There may well be some truth in that statement. But there’s an insidious implication to expand the meaning from “If” to “If and only if.” That is, while the program may work for many people, the implication goes illogically further to intimate that it’s the only method that works, that all other approaches are invalid and don’t work. Another way of putting this is that it’s not so much the it in the phrase that’s operative, but rather the work. What matters is not so much which program you “work” as just that you work a program, whatever program a particular person might find congenial.
[Later note (2021): More generally, it’s likewise a myth that, to stay sober, the recovering drug abuser must use some “program,” such as Twelve-Steps. Many former drug abusers don’t need to do so; the programs indoctrinate people to think they need to be involved in a program forever.]
● At one AA meeting today, a man offered a customary argument for God’s existence. He said he thought things were too complicated and well designed, and functioned too well, not to have been designed by some intelligence (God). But it seems to me that there’s a certain inconsistency in approach or viewpoint when such people go on to assert that God is also morally Good. I think that if they applied the same sort of “rational,” scientific, observational reasoning to the question of God’s morality, they would look around at the world and see that there’s no evidence for God’s goodness. That bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people about as readily as the reverse (or, more simply, that misery outweighs happiness) suggests, if anything, that God is either downright evil or entirely neutral (nonmoral).
● 11-8-2000 (1:30 a.m.): I’m rather depressed at the apparent election of George W. Bush to the U.S. presidency. This event gives new meaning to the notion that in this country anyone can grow up to be president . . ..
[Later note (2021): Well, not exactly. You don’t have to be among the best and the brightest, but you do have to be wealthy.]
● 11-12-2000: People often criticize political gridlock. But it occurs to me that no-movement is better than movement in the wrong direction . . . that stopping something bad, is good.
● When we hear about someone’s death, and we feel sad; we feel so, not for the person who’s died, but rather for those who were closely connected with him. Death is a misfortune, not for the deceased, since death in itself is not a painful or unhappy state (it’s utterly neutral), but rather for the living, whose lives are adversely affected by the loss of the departed person. We’re perhaps also feeling bad for ourselves, because other people’s deaths remind us of our own mortality, or for our loss if the deceased person significantly benefitted the community. (If we feel bad for someone who finds out he has not long to live, we feel bad for his sadness while still alive, not for his death itself.)
It’s not death that I fear or regret, but rather not having lived a good life, not having fulfilled my creative potential, or my work not surviving.
● 11-21-2000: I recently heard a news story about a man sentenced to capital punishment, which sentence was being protested on the grounds that the man was retarded (and so not responsible for his acts, and/or not able to comprehend the reason for his punishment). The evidence cited for his retardation included that, though he’s an adult, he believes in Santa Claus. But if it’s inherently more reasonable to believe in God, Heaven and Hell, and other standard religious notions, than to believe in Santa Claus; why that is so is not obvious to me.
[Later note (2020): Perhaps it speaks to the common bases of our beliefs, many of which we come to, not by direct knowledge of the relevant matter itself, but by the heuristic of our knowledge of others’ beliefs. We believe many scientific facts indirectly by our knowledge about the consensus of scientists. As to Santa Claus, we know that the vast majority of (adult) persons think it’s just a childish fairy tale; whereas, we know that perhaps a good half of the population (and not skewed by degree of intelligence or sanity) believe seriously in religion. So a reasonably mature adult would disbelieve in Santa Claus, but perhaps believe in religion. Some people escape or transcend the heuristic mode of knowing, who happen to have special insight into a subject, as I like to think I have about religion.]
● 11-23-2000: While I think that voting is important, and that everyone who can cast an intelligent vote should vote; yet, strictly, metaphysically speaking, the notion that every vote counts is problematic. For example, if I vote for a candidate who loses, how can it be said that my vote counted? The result would have been the same had I not voted, or voted differently. From this viewpoint, all the votes for the losing candidate do not count. In other words, every vote should be counted, but not every vote will count.
[Later note (7-17-2022): When people say, “Every vote should count,” they probably mean that every vote should be counted.]
● The opposite of finite is infinite. But there are two infinites, one above the finite, the other below. Upward, there’s infinitely large (or simply infinite); downward, there’s infinitely small (or infinitesimal).
● We were not created in God’s image. Rather, of course, God was created in our image. Actually, though, God cannot look like us, cannot be like us physically, since God is supposed to be infinite, but a human body is necessarily finite. More generally, the infinite has no form.
[Later note (2020): “The infinite has no form”? But what of an infinitely long tube?—it’s infinite but has a form of sorts: tubular . . ..]
[Later note (2021): But, like the universe itself, God is supposed to be everywhere. And everywhere is amorphous—it includes the space around the tube, around any form.]
● Where is God? The cosmos, referring to the entity that resulted from the Big Bang, is finite. But God is supposed to be infinite. Does that mean that only an infinitesimal portion of God is in our own particular universe, and the rest of Him is spread throughout the remainder of infinite space and within all the other cosmoses scattered throughout that space?
● 11-26-2000: I was going to write that I really don’t feel that I’m lazy; that, rather, I’m simply demoralized by how badly things are going in my life, that I just don’t know what to do; nothing seems to work, I can’t get traction. But on thinking about it further, I believe that to say so would be to let myself off the hook too easily. It would be to give myself an excuse that isn’t warranted, since I’m not doing all I can do to improve my situation. I need to try harder, to work harder, and to use my time more productively.
● 11-29-2000: I’m quite miserable just now. The semi-regular work doing depositions and court appearances for other attorneys has suddenly stopped, and I’m left without income. I must suddenly look for a job, probably a full-time job. I can anticipate nothing but misery there, because I don’t foresee enjoying the work, and a full-time job will leave me very little time and energy for myself.
I’m receiving nothing but rejection letters on the manuscript I’ve been trying to publish (Drugs: Decriminalize but Abstain!), and I feel pessimistic about it being published. I have no source of pleasure or fulfillment in my day-to-day life, and I feel little hope of attaining either in the future. I find no relief from my bladder problems, insomnia, and fatigue. Unauthorized chemical use would offer only temporary relief and then very soon only make the situation worse. My various losses from the past, especially the loss of my writing, continuously, unremittingly weigh on me. I feel despair, and my mind continually runs to contemplation of suicide. But I suppose that some vain hope for the future, or the simple instinct to survive, will keep me alive to the miserable end. My hold on life, though, is very tenuous. I sometimes feel an almost overwhelming impulse to commit suicide when some significant setback, in health or other circumstances, appears.
I hate my life; and that which I value above all else, my life’s work, the long-term, cumulative building of my body of creative work, I feel may never happen, or amount to anything at all. It may be a total loss. I’m in great pain.
● 12-3-2000: Yesterday I attended the last of my required drug meetings.
● The statement “God helps those who help themselves” arbitrarily inserts the notion of God as an explanatory element with respect to a situation, or correlation, that’s perfectly explained without the notion of God—so perfectly explained without God, in fact, as almost positively to suggest the noninvolvement of God or other supernatural force: the simple correlation, namely, that those who help themselves consistently do better than those who don’t help themselves. Of course, people who get more help (from God or otherwise) tend to do better than those who get less help; and, in this case, the statement stipulates a non-God source of help—people’s own self- help—that fully accounts for the difference in results people get. (The foregoing could be said much more simply, like this: “God helps those who help themselves.” Either that, or God helps no one [because He doesn’t exist]; so, those who don’t help themselves get no help, whereas those who help themselves at least get their own help. . . . It’s like saying that God helps those with lawyers. The idea of God is utterly superfluous: with or without God, people [in legal proceedings] do better with lawyers [than without them]—because of the lawyers.)
“God helps those who help themselves” is like the expression, “God works in mysterious ways.” The latter statement is a rather desperate attempt to rationalize or explain a phenomenon that for all the world seems more to contradict than to support the traditional notion of a well-intentioned and omnipotent God, which phenomenon is the lack of apparent correlation between good or bad fortune and people’s deserts . . . or, more broadly, the preponderance of suffering over happiness.
Why do people thus delude themselves? It’s very simple: For most creatures, existence is miserable and pathetic; we’re born, we suffer, and then we die (the luckier few may suffer a little less, and even experience more happiness than pain). Religion allows us to view this wretched life in a positive way. We imagine a great being (God) who is all-good, all-knowing, and all-powerful, watching over us and guiding us. Suddenly we can see all the bad things that happen to us as not bad at all, but good: as part of a grand Devine plan. And we don’t even die, really. Instead, we return to dwell with God forever, in peace, harmony, and bliss . . . making our insignificant life, with all its suffering, both meaningful and worthwhile.
● At one of the Twelve-Steps drug meetings yesterday, people were asked to share their thoughts on the topic of freedom in relation to drug abuse and Twelve-Steps. I said that there’s an important relationship between freedom and drug abstinence, in that drug addiction or habituation is enslaving. Drug abuse significantly limits our activities, our mental outlook, and our opportunities in life. The freedom that abstinence brings, however, is only (the first) half of the solution. It’s like being in a prison cell. Ceasing drug abuse unlocks the cell door, but you have to go further and take the initiative and expend the effort to actually open the door and walk out.
● 12-5-2000: Ultimately, I want to study, philosophize, and write. More immediately, though, I need to earn a living . . . I have brilliant potential; but I’m having extreme difficulty getting “traction” in any area of my life, even in merely obtaining a productive entry-level job. I’m willing to work hard, if it will lead to something. But I’m only spinning my wheels, getting nowhere. I don’t know what to do or where to turn. And my precious time is fast evaporating. I’m becoming despondent.
● I’m truly despondent. I truly do not see a way out of my difficulties in life. I can’t find a decent job, with decent prospects of advancement. I’m unwilling to live poor, and I don’t have the wherewithal to come by decent money. I’m unwilling to endure the misery of a full-time job, with sleeplessness and fatigue, doing work I find tedious. I’m seriously considering suicide. Right now, it seems the only way out.
● 12-15-2000: The U.S. Supreme Court’s action in stopping the presidential vote recount in Florida was fraudulent and corrupt. On Saturday, the state of Florida had begun a statewide ballot recount, which a judge had ordered be completed within about 18 hours (by 2:00 p.m. Sunday), well in time to meet the deadline of the following Tuesday (arguably a “soft” deadline, anyway). But that same Saturday, merely 5 hours after the vote recount had begun, the U.S. Supreme Court, on its own motion, ordered the counting stopped, on the grounds that presidential candidate George Bush (who was opposing the recount because he was ahead by a razor-thin margin) would probably prevail on the merits in his case to prohibit the recount (reasoning that, if Bush did prevail; then, to have conducted a vote recount that favored the opposing candidate would serve only to undermine the legitimacy of Bush’s presidency if that recount was ultimately invalidated). Accordingly, the vote counting stopped. The following Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard candidate Bush’s case to prohibit the recount. The next day, Tuesday, at 10:00 at night, just 2 hours before the expiration of the deadline to finish the vote recount, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision, prohibiting the recount—on the grounds that the counting could not be finished in time to meet the deadline!!
● A Thought on Suicide: It’s true that no one ever said life would be easy. On the other hand, no one ever said that, after prolonged effort, life would remain miserable. It may be reasonable to think that one should put forth at least a minimum effort to achieve a decent life. But a person should not necessarily be blamed for choosing not to continue an unpleasant life if sustained effort has failed to bring relief. We’re told we have the right to pursue happiness. But the right to pursue happiness logically includes the right to pursue the avoidance of unhappiness. What amount of effort to produce a satisfactory life, how much time spent working toward that goal, is reasonable, or even what constitutes a satisfactory life, are purely subjective matters. The weighing of present discomfort against the likelihood of its diminishment or cessation, or the worthwhileness of living despite continuing pain, is a balance that only the person experiencing the pain has a right to make.
If you’re confronted with the possible suicide of someone you care about, it would be unfair to insist that he must stay alive. Rather, perhaps all you have a right to urge upon him is that you hope he’ll continue to live, because his life matters to you, and that you’ll do what you can to help ease his discomfort and to make him feel that living is worthwhile . . . but that you empathize with his pain and accept that whether to go on is ultimately his own decision.
When confronted with someone’s expression of contemplated suicide, it’s wrong to criticize, ridicule, or dismiss that expression, because, first of all, when you’re in serious pain, especially when the pain is long-standing, considering suicide is perfectly natural. If you were not productive in any way that mattered to you or anyone else, and if your existence made no one else’s life more pleasant or meaningful, and you were experiencing only unhappiness, and there was no prospect of a change in that state of affairs, it would simply make no sense to continue living. Suicide would be indicated. Furthermore, the very fact that another person understands that you’re in pain can itself go a long way to easing that pain, which may be why someone shares thoughts of suicide. If you attack or belittle his doing so, you deny him that relief.
Afterthought: On the difference between clinical and situational depression. I’ve said that my depression, or unhappiness, is situational rather than clinical because if my circumstances were different I wouldn’t be so unhappy—surely not so unhappy as to be considering suicide. But sometimes it occurs to me that most people would feel that I had much to live for, and to feel good about. And, to the extent that such matters can be viewed objectively, as problematic as the notion of objectivity is in this context, I do think that there’s plenty to live for, to feel good about, regarding myself and my life. On the other hand, an objective view, so to speak, fails to take into account the way a person feels; you may truly try to “count your blessings” and to feel good about it, and yet chronically fail in your effort to not feel bad. It’s true that how you feel about, how you react to, yourself and your life is subjective. But how do you know whether your feeling is a normal reaction, or normal for you, as it were, on one hand, or, on the other hand, morbid and pathological, a manifestation of clinical depression? Perhaps a test would be to administer drugs particularly designed to counter clinical depression. If the bad feeling substantially abates, then it was probably clinical depression. It would seem that when you chronically feel very bad, the possibility that it’s clinical depression should be thoroughly explored . . . at least before you pursue drastic remedies, like drug abuse or suicide. (Between the latter two expedients, though, drug abuse is preferable to suicide.) Moreover, others might not unreasonably restrain your killing yourself, on the possibility that your wish to do so is transient.
● 12-22-2000: I’m weary, wary, skeptical, about self-help books, and even extended psychotherapy, in that I think they can become a sort of substitute for life, and can foster complacency, by giving you the illusion that you’re actively working to solve your life problems, when you’re not: when, in a way, you’re engaging in entertainment instead of work. It’s easier and more pleasant to read a book than to take the actions we may, at some level, already know we must take. We can get into the habit of endlessly reading self-help books, and it becomes a means of procrastinating the hard actions we need to do.
● Christmas comes but once a year . . . thank God!
● Regarding Step Eleven of the Twelve-Steps, why do we need to determine God’s will for us and then carry it out? If God has a will, why doesn’t God simply do His will? . . . Or perhaps God is doing His will, and anything we do is automatically, already, God’s will . . . So why worry about it?
● 12-26-2000: If we all, or most of us, after we die, go to Heaven to live in bliss forever, what use is this brief, miserable life on Earth? Why not get rid of this dirty little Earth and have only the Heaven?
● Is there a Christ or a Christ equivalent among all species? Is there a dog Christ? Is there a giraffe Christ? An elephant Christ? A dolphin Christ? A whale Christ? No? Why not? Because it’s only such species as are capable of inventing religion that have such notions.
● We often see anthropological presentations with images of human beings followed by an image of a sequence of creatures from which humans are thought to have evolved. In such pictures, the human is invariably the final figure. We speculate about what we came from, but rarely about what we’ll become. And the reason is this: In the comparison with our predecessors, we’re the most advanced, the most intelligent. But if, instead, we extrapolate the progression, our successors might be more intelligent than we are. So, our vanity makes us stop the progression at a point where we’re the best. We like to believe that we’re the ultimate creature, the final, magnificent culmination of evolution. It pains us to think that we’ll be superseded by a more sophisticated being.
It pains me even more than most, since I’m a writer and philosopher who likes to believe that I’ll attain a certain form of immortality, by being everlastingly famous for the creativity and intelligence of my works (perhaps a strange belief considering my everlasting failure thus far to get my work published!). But my (possibly merely imaginary) fame is threatened if people become more intelligent, since fame and greatness are relative. All creative people are in an implicit competition with all other creative people. The less great other art is, relative to mine, the greater mine is. The more intelligent our species becomes, the more intelligent their art will be, and the less great mine will be. People of the future, if they still consider themselves people, could come to view our current work as we might view the work of apes, if apes made art. We would not admire it. If we presented it at all, it would be merely as a foil to our own. It would be shown, not in museums of fine art, but in museums of natural history.
For this reason, I’m ambivalent about our using genetic engineering to make people more intelligent. While, on principle, for posterity’s sake, it would be hard to be against the species’ improvement; yet, from a selfish, personal point of view, it troubles me.
[Later note (2021): Pride is likely one reason for past-only depictions of man’s evolution. But another may be this: the past has already happened, so there’s a fact of the matter, and potential evidence of it, whose investigation is within the province of science. Whereas, the future hasn’t happened, and could unfold in various ways, which is a matter of speculation, not squarely within the province of science.]
● 12-29-2000: Death is a subset of nonexistence. Specifically, death is the absence of life of something that once lived. (You did not exist before you were born; yet—probably—you were not dead.)