2003

● 1-2-2003:   I seek the truth, not as an end in itself, but rather as a means to achieve fame and greatness. And I agree with Nietzsche that, in the pursuit of their various professions, most men act from such ulterior motives, usually ego satisfaction.

[Later note (2020): They do it also to eat—is that an ulterior motive? Perhaps he means that any personal motive is ulterior.]

● 1-4-2003:   Though probably no general agreement will ever be reached as to what constitutes a good life, we may be able to agree that a certain element of life is good—it makes any life better. That element is happiness. Because it’s appreciated universally, regardless of circumstances, it may be considered quasi-intrinsically desirable. (To apply this notion to Nietzsche’s philosophy, one circumstance is society. If you were the sole conscious being, alone in the universe, you wouldn’t seek power, for power essentially involves interpersonal relationships, or an audience; instead, you would seek just happiness, which, of course, you would appreciate in society as well—in all circumstances.)

● 1-6-2003:   I wonder if the collective unconscious is not vaguely related to Schopenhauer’s notion of The Will and Kant’s idea of The Absolute.

● 1-8-2003:   Professor Robert Solomon writes: “As usually understood, morality is at war with self-interest; the right thing to do clashes with what one wants to do. Nietzsche rejects this paradigm. The right thing to do is what one wants to do, once one realizes what he or she really wants to do.” Nietzsche’s thesis here is utter nonsense, apparently totally disregarding the actor’s effect on others. It’s true that what one wants to do may also be the right thing to do, that acting just to advance one’s own well-being can also maximally advance the group’s well-being. An example is Mozart’s writing his music, which was the best thing he could have done, both for himself and for society. Also, a person is part of the group, and his own welfare is part of the group’s welfare; so that, even if others are hurt by it, if the gain to himself is great enough from advancing his own interests, that may still optimize the group’s good. In many cases, however, personal gain, or action intended to accomplish that (or doing what you want to do) conflicts with the general good. Surely, many people would really want to torture and kill all their rivals, or everyone they happen to dislike. I believe Hitler really wanted to do what he did. Is that the right thing to do?! (I think not!)

On the other hand, most people spend their time mainly pursuing their own interests, within certain bounds, rather than explicitly seeking the general good. Paradoxically, as a practical matter, this may advance the group’s welfare more than if everyone constantly thought about society’s well-being, since, probably for most people, the greatest human well-being they can (positively) effect is their own. If everyone thought only about the good of others, few people would much enjoy their lives, which in turn would diminish collective happiness. It’s a little like following rules rather than simply basing decisions on results. Practically, we need to follow certain rules, or the results would suffer.

. . . Nietzsche argues essentially that people pursue their own selfish interests, and that altruistic motives are a sham, covering selfish, nasty motives. I agree that this is so for most people most of the time. But I disagree that it’s always true, let alone necessarily true. Certain people at certain times genuinely, sincerely feel moral obligations and altruism. These are not false or meaningless concepts. (See my essay “Morality.”)

● 1-16-2003:   Why do fish have vertical tail fins, but marine mammals have horizontal ones? I suppose it’s because marine mammals need to come to the surface to breathe, and the horizontal tail fin is better suited to up-and-down motion, enabling an animal more easily to tip its head up to breach the surface to breathe.

● So, how fit is a fiddle?

● 1-18-2003:   When we talk about loving the country, what do we mean by country? Do we mean the people? When certain men accuse others of not loving the country, the accusers would not purport to love the ones they’re accusing. Are the accused supposed to love the accusers? Whom of their countrymen are they (the accused) not loving, whom they’re supposed to love? If the country in this connection does not mean the people, what parts or aspects of the country are we supposed to love when we love the country? The government? The prevailing political or economic system? Capitalism?

● 1-19-2003:   It’s a strange characteristic of graphic art that in can be owned. The notion that a certain person owns, say, a Rembrandt painting is a little ridiculous; truly, the work belongs to the world, to mankind. Supposed ownership of a great work of graphic art would not give the “owner” the right to destroy, or even damage, or even risk damaging it.

● To speak of the meaning of life makes no more sense ultimately than to speak of the meaning of a week’s vacation. You go where, and do what, you wish. You may visit a museum; attend a concert; read a book; write a letter or two, perhaps even a poem; go for a drive; or just lie about the house and do nothing. That the holiday has no meaning does not stop you from taking it and enjoying it and making of it what you will.

● Life is a brief vacation from oblivion.

● Life is a tiny oasis in an infinite desert of oblivion.

● I felt an interesting sensation today. I went for a drive in my car and was playing a tape of a radio program recorded about six months ago. While stopped at a traffic light, I looked at a person in another car, and, for a split second, I thought that perception was a six months’ old recorded experience.

● 1-21-2003:   As a practical matter, what keeps us from considering other animals as a coequal species (such that we would view killing them as murder) is that we don’t speak the same language.

● Every time I clean the house, it just gets dirty again.

● Before you can feel content with the fulfillment of your potential, you must feel satisfied with the stature of your potential relative to that of other men. In order, that is, to be satisfied with the actualization of your potential, you must feel satisfied with your potential.

● 1-22-2003:   My boss is . . . highly demanding, hypercritical, pugnacious, short-tempered, overbearing, bullying, abusive,

● 1-24-2003:   A pediatrician is a medical doctor who takes care of pedestrians.

● 1-29-2003:

Lawyer: “Your Honor, I request that the court postpone the trial of this case.”
Judge: “But, counsel, this is the third time you’ve requested a postponement.”
Lawyer: “Well, Your Honor, it’s the third time I’ve had a good reason for it.”

● 2-1-2003:   When a fatal tragedy occurs, we say that our thoughts and prayers go out, not to those who have died, but rather to their family and colleagues. This is because the dead do not suffer, and at all events cannot be helped.

● 2-2-2003:   When President John Kennedy was in Germany, he made a famous speech in which he said, “Ish bin ein Berliner.” (“I am a Berliner.”) It’s a good thing he was in Berlin at the time, and not in Hamburg or Frankfurt.

● 2-3-2003:   To say that the astronauts on board the Columbia space shuttle (who died last Saturday when the spacecraft disintegrated on re-entry) gave their lives for science, makes as much sense as to say, if I had a fatal car crash on my way to work, that I gave my life for my job. They did not give their lives for the mission—they merely risked their lives for it, and they probably thought the risk was fairly low. Had they believed they would die, or even that the risk of death was considerable, they probably would not have flown.

● However far man ventures into space, he will always remain only finitely far from Earth.

● Nietzsche criticizes compassion, or pity, as counterproductive, on the grounds that when we pity someone else’s misfortune, our bad feeling doesn’t help the other man, but only adds (by our own bad feeling) to the quantum of suffering in the world. But, if you were suffering, would you prefer that other people were elated by your misfortune? I think that would compound your misery. Moreover, if we feel bad over the suffering of others, that distress may motivate us to alleviate their suffering. The problem is that most people’s compassion is not felt deeply enough to motivate them to take constructive action; instead, it’s merely a superficial, transitory, token compassion, which leads to no positive action. It seems to me that the problem is not with compassion, but with its lack of strength.

● 2-5-2003:   In my writings, when I talk about the Earth, I mean humanity, or society . . . But even if man ventures and lives beyond Earth, it’s hard to imagine man surviving if Earth were destroyed, or made unlivable.

● 2-16-2003:   I seek self-knowledge both to know myself as an individual (what distinguishes me from other men) and to learn what I have in common with other men so as to better understand human nature.

● 2-18-2003:   God is the ultimate placebo: it has no efficacy, beyond our belief in it.

[Later note (6-12-2022): It’s significant that, according to religionists, the one requirement to get God’s or Christ’s help is to believe in Him.]

● 2-22-2003:   My own self-actualization is very important to me. By way of adhering to the Golden Rule, I advocate everyone’s right to self-actualization (I advocate the organizing of society in such a way as to confer upon its members a real opportunity in that regard). But here’s the distinction: I advocate people’s having the right and the real opportunity to self-actualize, but I don’t necessarily advocate their choosing to do so. For some people, self-actualization benefits neither themselves nor society. Plus, widespread self-actualization is antithetical to my own interest, by increasing the number of my creative rivals.

● 2-25-2003:   The so-called supernatural is, not outside nature, but merely outside our understanding.

● In “Ethics,” my standard of possibility is logical possibility; whereas, in “Morality” (in the section wherein I discuss my own vision for humanity and propose the per-capita-well-being doctrine); for different aspects of the argument, I use two standards of possibility: logical possibility and natural practicability.

● My boss, Attorney Gary W, never ceases to disappoint me.

● 2-27-2003:   It always strikes me as curious when famous people summarize how they perform their special skills, as if anyone could simply follow the described procedure and obtain similar results. (If a famous person thought he could give a description that would enable others to emulate his results, he probably wouldn’t give it!)

● 2-28-2003:   What I lack in efficiency, I make up for in effectiveness.

● Someone asked me who my favorite philosopher is. I thought for a moment, and concluded that my favorite philosopher is me (in part because I agree with everything I say . . . after correcting my errors that I keep finding). But I lied, and simply said I don’t have a favorite, that I criticize them all.

[Later note (2021): About agreeing with everything I say after correcting my errors: whenever I think that one of my conclusions is wrong, I change it to what I think is right; in that way, I agree with all my conclusions. You yourself are the only person you can do this with. If you disagree with another philosopher, for example, the disagreement will remain, because he doesn’t necessarily change his conclusion just because you disagree with it . . . especially if he’s dead.]

● 3-3-2003:   To philosophers who advocate personal selfishness as a moral virtue, and as the best way to bring about the greatest general good, one question is this: Does the selfishness philosophy not support the sadistic torturer and the serial killer (in torturing and killing), in that they are therein doing what they most enjoy (and yet their actions hurt society)?

[Later note (2021): I think the first part of that statement, or question, is wrong, implying, as it does, that advocates of personal selfishness argue that it advances the commonweal. The doctrine is ethical egoism, and my understanding now is that ethical egoists admit that it goes against the greater good. Which is a hell of an admission; isn’t that really all you need to know about it?! See my 9 January 2005 essay, at RichardEisner.com, titled “Egoism: a Rebuttal.”]

● 3-8-2003:   I’ve been working on my essay on optimism and pessimism for many months; progress has been arduous and excruciatingly slow, with long interruptions by my job. It seems one of the most difficult pieces I’ve written, or at least that I’ve worked on—I can’t say “written,” because it’s not finished, and I can’t know that I’ll finish it, though I’ll surely try to. It’s difficult, not because of the difficulty of any one concept, but rather in finding a way to organize all the various thoughts or points into a coherent, flowing composition. It will be interesting to see how my old trusty brain solves the problem.

● A problem with the gold standard is, what happens if you suddenly find a lot more gold?

● 3-9-2003:   I disbelieve in a transcendent, supernatural world distinct from this one. But I believe that we can find transcendence in this world, in great works of art and other sublime productions of the human mind.

● There may be two sides to every story; but the two sides may not be equally valid.

● There may be two sides to every story—but not always two valid sides.

● 3-12-2003:   The theoretical and the actual are not mutually exclusive. That which is theoretically true may also be actually true. And, of course, the reverse: that which is actually true is (necessarily) theoretically true—if the theory says otherwise (that what’s actually true is impossible), the theory is wrong!

● 3-15-2003:   I’ve completed a good working draft of my essay on optimism and pessimism. . . . I’ve done it again!

● 3-23-2003:   A work of art is called experimental just until the experiment is deemed to have succeeded.

● 3-24-2003:   In writing, be as simple as possible, as complicated as necessary.

● I’ve completed a polished draft of my essay on optimism and pessimism. I’m quite proud of the work; it’s one of my best.

● 3-29-2003:   At its most fundamental, generic level, the Faustian bargain may be described as a person’s consciously giving up a common or long-term good to gain an exotic or short-term one; then, after losing it, coming to fully appreciate the more basic or longer-term good, and regretting the trade.

● 4-3-2003:   When missiles or bombs go astray and kill Iraqi civilians, U.S. military spokesmen claim that it’s not U.S. bombs or missiles that are responsible, but rather Iraq’s own anti-aircraft shells. But the claim, which is probably false, anyway, misses the point. In one way or another, such civilian deaths are an inevitable consequence of war, and thus, broadly speaking, whoever is responsible for the war is responsible for the civilian deaths. And the United States government is wholly responsible for this completely avoidable and unnecessary war.

● 4-6-2003:   Why must we construct stories and myths to give us a sense of life’s meaningfulness and wonder? Why can’t we feel it directly, as it were?

● “Do what you love, and the money will follow.” . . . That hasn’t worked for me.

● 4-7-2003:   Part of the dynamic of the “rally-round-the-flag” phenomenon, whereby some people begin to support even an opposed, unpopular war once the fighting actually begins, may be that the other country’s killing our soldiers is somehow taken as an independent injury, regardless of the other country’s right to defend itself.

● I had another interview with State Compensation Insurance Fund, the Riverside office.

● To counteract procrastination, it may be useful to think, “Do the difficult.” (Take that task which you are most avoiding, and simply start working on it.)

● I agree with the existentialists about the importance of passion, or emotion. Passion is not irrational, but simply a-rational. Our intellect is driven, directed, by our interests and values, which are matters of feeling. Without emotion, we could not function; nothing would impel our mental operations; we would be as if catatonic. Without passion, we would have no cause for or interest in thinking. The best philosophers (even the most intellectual ones) have a passion for philosophy. Without passion, we would simply not bother.

● 4-10-2003:   Sisyphus’s experience was (for him) bad if he was unhappy, good if he was happy. Ultimately, any activity or experience is meaningless.

● The U.S. government shows pictures of Iraqis waving at and cheering for American soldiers, to prove that the citizens of Iraq truly welcome the United States in their country. But when Saddam Hussein (the Iraqi dictator, whom we overthrew) was in power, those same people cheered for him . . . Swaggering, smirking Bush. Someone ought to wipe that smirk off his face!

● 4-11-2003:   Nietzsche criticizes utilitarianism, arguing that most people primarily seek power, or self-actualization, creative expression, rather than happiness. I agree with Nietzsche in the limited senses, one, that I think men act from many motives, not all of which can be reduced to the quest for happiness, and, two, that self-actualization is an important human drive. But I don’t think this is quite the point. The larger question is whether it’s good that we seek desiderata besides happiness. I happen to share Nietzsche’s own drive for self-expression, to create art that will be admired by posterity. But I pursue this goal simply because it happens to be my goal, because it’s the urge with which I happen to be burdened. To look at the question objectively; I think, insofar as the individual subject is concerned, all that really matters is happiness. Ultimately, in practical terms, so to speak, to be creative, or to feel your life is meaningful, if that doesn’t make you happy, what’s the point? To choose a miserable but creative life over a happy but uncreative life (in terms of the experience itself, not the outward effects) simply makes no sense. I value creative self-expression over happiness, but to the extent that this preference makes me less happy, I think, objectively speaking, I’m unfortunate. Which would you choose for yourself: a very creatively productive but unhappy life, or a very happy but unproductive life—if we supposed that, at the moment of your death, the world would end?

● 4-12-2003:   fawugmentis: In a dream I understood this as a word coined by Winston Churchill, and meaning the willingness and tendency to resist unfair compromise and to fight for what’s justly deserved.

● An easy concept is one that I understand. A difficult concept is one that I don’t understand.

● 4-14-2003:   Gary W, my erstwhile boss, paid me today. That nightmare is finally over!

● 4-15-2003:   I believe that twice two is six . . . by a leap of faith.

● To ask how we reconcile reflection and experience makes no more sense than to ask how we reconcile love of music with love of graphic art, or hunger with lust. These inclinations are simply various aspects of our human nature. Sometimes we’re in the mood for one; at different times, for the other. Since nothing intrinsically matters (life is ultimately meaningless), it does not, strictly speaking, matter whether we pursue reflection or experience. Indulge whichever predilection you wish.

● 4-16-2003:   A person’s car would express his personality (you would be what you drive, as it were)—if you could afford to buy any car you pleased, which is not true for most of us.

● 4-25-2003:   The American ship of state is a battleship.

● 4-27-2003:   Often when I’m listening to the radio especially intently, I also look at the radio. Why?

● Practically, selfishness is evil.

● 5-1-2003:   A deaf composer is possible, but a blind painter is not.

● 5-3-2003:   What kind of tape do you use to repair a duck? Duck tape.

● Existential philosophers use absurd to describe “the condition or state in which human beings exist in a meaningless, irrational universe wherein people’s lives have no purpose or meaning.” But here irrational is a misnomer. The universe’s meaninglessness is not irrational, but simply a-rational. What’s irrational is men’s expectation that reality be otherwise.

● 5-4-2003:   Neutrality in the face of the outrageous is itself outrageous.

● It seems to me that, just as in Aristotle’s philosophy there is an unresolved question what the good consists in, whether in contemplation and/or artistic/intellectual flourishing, or in active political involvement; so also in Nietzsche’s philosophy there is the open question, Which is his ultimate value: life itself (as in “saying ‘yes’ to life”) or, alternatively, more specifically, creative self-expression (as in “the will to power”).

● 5-6-2003:   Professor Robert Solomon writes, “In Hegel, history and humanity have an ultimate purpose, a pervasive rationality, a rational direction.” But even if humanity as a whole has a purpose, it would not necessarily be an ultimate or inherent purpose—just as an individual may have, or feel, a purpose (my purpose, for example, is to maximize my body of creative work), and yet the purpose is not an ultimate one, and does not make that person’s life intrinsically valuable or meaningful. If one man’s purpose is not ultimate, why should two men’s purposes (even if their purposes are the same) be ultimate? And so forth for any number of men. . . .

● Kierkegaard said the ethical mode and the religious mode could be opposed, as in Abraham’s struggle to decide whether to obey his ethical duty not to kill his son or his religious duty to obey God’s command to do so (to kill his son). But it seems to me that such religious considerations are subsumed within the realm of ethics, in that any question “What should I do?” or “How should I act?” is an ethical one. (See my essay, “Morality.”)

● My moral philosophy is a blend of the otherworldly and the worldly. The original elements of the philosophy (set forth in my “Ethics”) being for the most part abstract (and the practical implication being individual and negative); several decades hence I managed to wrest from them a very positive, useful implication (as propounded in “Morality”). Taken as a whole, my philosophy uses rigorous logical, mathematical, metaphysical analysis to discredit otherworldly concerns and to support a focus on this world, an excision from the traditional utilitarian formula of the otherworldly component, number of people, leaving the this-worldly element, our happiness. Philosophy, in its very nature, establishes abstract truths about that which exists. And all moral philosophies advise man how to live. But not all philosophies are equally sound or as practically helpful. My philosophy’s greatness, I like to think, lies in the totality of its soundness, the perfection of its unification of the metaphysical and the actual, and the generality and helpfulness of its guidance in living.

[Later note (2021): That’s high praise. Of course, you have to consider that the source (me) may be a little biased.]

[Still later note (2021): On recently rereading “Ethics,” I realized that the positive, useful implication I mentioned in the foregoing entry, was adumbrated in that piece (“Ethics”). I made it the thesis of my (later) “Morality” by in essence merely switching the sequence of ideas (putting the one to be emphasized, at the end).]

● No less than in science; soundness, or truth, is a virtue in philosophy. (All else being equal, a philosophical doctrine that’s true is superior to one that’s false, or less accurate, or less comprehensive.)

● To the extent that Kierkegaard conflates the life of pursuit of pleasure and the life of creative productivity, as species of the aesthetic mode of existence, with its inherent tendency to boredom, I disagree with him. Having experienced both modes of life, pursuing artistic creativity is psychologically entirely different than living for pleasure. Pleasure for pleasure’s sake does lead to boredom, but art for art’s sake does not (unless, perhaps, one is really not very artistically creative). The two are almost opposite in this respect. Moreover, the artist does not pursue pleasure per se; rather, he pursues his art, for whose sake he may willingly endure considerable suffering. Kierkegaard makes a perceptive observation about the hedonistic lifestyle, but to put the creative life in the same category in this connection is wrong.

[Later note (4-6-2022): The quality of the art is probably irrelevant.]

● Using Kierkegaard’s schema; in a sense, my choice to pursue the aesthetic mode of existence was arrived at by rationality (by reasoning to conclusions which led me to abandon the ethical mode, which he opposes to the aesthetic mode).

[Later note (4-6-2022): . . . In a very narrow sense.]

● 5-9-2003:   Values are subjective; but the impossibility of intrinsic value and the subjectivity of values is objective.

● Concerning Kierkegaard’s modes of existence; most people, I think, do not stay within any one mode, but rather flow between them daily, even hourly. (And, incidentally, it seems he leaves out a major mode: the scientific.)

Though I agree with Kierkegaard that the choice between modes of existence is subjective, I believe that even the content of ethics is subjective, that there is no rational basis to prefer one moral standard over another.

[Later note (4-6-2022): The foregoing paragraph seems to conflict with the entry before last, which is why I tried to qualify it as being true in a very narrow sense.]

● Utilitarianism is a good general, theoretical principal; but in practice we need specific and enforceable rules of conduct. If we had no specific rules of behavior, but instead allowed everyone to act simply as he thought best to bring about the greater good (even if everyone were so motivated, which he’s not); the result would be chaos and mayhem, a quite counter-utilitarian situation. Moreover, to maximize the general good, we need more than just individual action or helpful personal interaction; we also need collective action, the structuring of society through social institutions. For example, a person should vote for politicians who are dedicated to the good of the general public, rather than to the good of a few (such as the rich), at the expense of the whole. And yet, people should spend some time and energy pursuing their own happiness; else no one would much enjoy his life, and so, ipso facto, collective well-being, too, would suffer.

● 5-10-2003:   If Nietzsche philosophizes with a hammer, I philosophize with a scalpel.

● I had a mildly shocking experience yesterday. I took a drive I hadn’t taken for perhaps a few years, where there was an extended beautiful view of rocky mountains. But yesterday the roadside was so built up with houses and other buildings that I could hardly see the mountains at all. As I drove, I kept hoping that just a short way down the road the construction would end, and the view would open up. But it never did; it felt a little like gasping for breath.

● 5-11-2003:   Nietzsche criticizes the focus on the otherworldly; but I think there’s a significant difference between two of the instances he cites: the religious notion of the afterlife (Heaven and Hell) versus utopian visions of a future more-ideal society. Though the religious afterlife is pure fantasy, the future is a real part of our world. Thus, while focusing on Heaven, at least to the extent that it causes us to neglect real life, is arguably pointless and even counterproductive; to focus on the future is important, both selfishly, in improving our own lives, and ethically, in providing for posterity.

● Recently in looking over some previous Diary entries, I came upon something I wrote to the effect that “one should strive to act according to one’s values.” I hasten to clarify that this was, not a statement of ethics, but rather a casual bit of advice on living.

● The United States is engaged in a war on drugs, a war on terrorism. But while drugs and terrorism, and all the other innumerable objects of this country’s wars, are problems; far more destructive, and probably even a significant cause of some of the evils against which it purportedly wages war, is the United States’ war-making itself. . . . Perhaps we need a war on war.

● I suddenly feel good, optimistic, about my writing . . . and therefore in general. I may finally be getting over the trauma of the great loss, twenty years ago, of the bulk of my writing, perhaps because I sense that, now, the work I’ve created since then outweighs what was lost, which development concomitantly makes me more optimistic as well about my future productivity.

● Tonight, I attended my fifth meeting of the Philosophy Club.

● It’s incorrect to speak of perfect happiness. Happiness is a matter, not of perfection (or completion), but rather of degree.

● To say that this is the best possible world implies that this world is, on balance, good (that the good outweighs the bad), thus: A possible world is no-world-at-all (a null world, with no good or bad). For this world to be the best possible one, it must be better than that one (a null world). And for this world to be better than one with zero net good, it must have some net good.

● Concerning the real world versus the apparent world; of course, we can know just our perception (the apparent world). A certain important aspect of our perception, however, coincides with ultimate reality: namely, happiness and unhappiness, which is what ultimately counts, to the extent that anything does (though it doesn’t matter absolutely), and happiness and unhappiness are just as they’re experienced, or perceived. It is, as it were, a metaphysical fact or truth which is directly and plainly observable. To use a modern colloquialism, “What you see is what you get.” (Or, slightly altered for the purpose at hand: “What you see is what there is.”)

● Someone at the Philosophy Club meeting asked, what’s the relationship between randomness and causal determination, which I thought an interesting question (there does seem at least a certain tension between the two concepts, as determination suggests a necessity of sorts).

● She felt almost totally frabizzled by the sheer bishboinklum of the situation. Her frabizzlement would have been total except for the fact, which had all but escaped everyone else’s attention but John’s, who was well known for his keen acclostopy . . ..

● 5-14-2003:   Ideally, for his own sake, a man should make good money doing work he enjoys. Failing that, he should at least do what he enjoys or make a lot of money. If at all possible, he should avoid the worst possible situation in this regard, making little money doing work he hates.

● 5-15-2003:   Life is a Gordian knot ultimately cut by death.

● 5-16-2003:   Whether man survives may come down to whether environmental destruction will galvanize people to action before the destruction becomes irreversible.

● Fighting terrorism is not George Bush’s purpose; it’s his pretext.

● 5-19-2003:   It seems to me that the Palestinians are in a paradoxical, catch-22, no-win situation, regarding their violence toward Israel: it’s counterproductive and yet necessary. On one hand, any Palestinian violence against Israel is used by Israel as an excuse to further repress them (the Palestinians). On the other hand, violence may be the only available form of resistance to Israeli aggression and the only source of detriment to Israel to motivate Israel to change her conduct toward the Palestinians. Israel’s actions, too, are paradoxical. Her violence toward and brutal repression of the Palestinians both discourages Palestinian counter-violence, by punishing it and so providing a disincentive, and yet also encourages it by provoking the rage that fuels it.

● Generally, a person can more easily affect the well-being of those closer to him than those farther away; and sometimes most easily of all, his own well-being.

● My formula of the greatest average happiness conflicts, not only with traditional utilitarianism, but also with the Biblical injunction, “Be fruitful and multiply.”

● 5-21-2003:   (Dick, Happy Birthday!)

● In his philosophy, Nietzsche, to a large extent, conceives of a person’s responsibility as being to himself (to enjoy life, to be virtuous, develop his abilities, and the like), rather than to others.

[Later note (2021): I wonder if being virtuous isn’t out of place there: If you enjoy life and develop your abilities, why would your being virtuous enhance your own well-being? Isn’t your being virtuous of advantage just to others? . . . But wait: that’s my list, not necessarily Nietzsche’s. So the simplest solution would be to delete that item from the list. And yet, having gone to the trouble to write this note, it seems a shame to delete it.]

● When I tell people my name, they not infrequently inquire—jokingly, I assume—whether I’m any relation to Michael Eisner (the Chairman of the Disney Corporation). I cheerfully go along with the humor; but a very small part of me is incensed, feeling that by rights it should be the other way round: people should ask Michael Eisner if he’s any relation to Richard Eisner! But of course I don’t show that feeling.

● 5-22-2003:   Debating whether the essential human motivation is achievement of happiness or of power, etcetera, is like debating whether food or drink is more important to the human diet. With varying emphases, men seek both desiderata, and numerous others.

[Later note (5-17-2022): That’s a flawed analogy, because, though both questions lack sense (which is my point), the reason for the illogic is different: the first inquiry is illogical because neither thing is essential; the second, because both are essential. How might I rewrite that? Try this:

Debating whether the essential human motivation is achievement of happiness or of power, etcetera, is like debating whether meat or vegetable is more important to the human diet. You could live without either. And most men seek both—both foods and both desiderata—and many others besides.]

[Later note (5-18-2022): The whole entry seems awkward and problematic. Practically, the great majority of a normal diet is either meat or vegetable. And criticizing as nonsensical the debate between seeking happiness and seeking power is itself nonsensical, as that debate is a central theme in my writing (I hope it makes sense).]

● Don’t be concerned about having to abide by the speed limit (that is, abide by it, but don’t be concerned about it)—just be glad you’re not in stop-and-go traffic . . . The higher the velocity, the less the difference in travel time caused by a given difference in speed. For example, you’ll experience a greater increase in your travel time if your speed is reduced from fifteen miles an hour to five miles an hour than if reduced from 65 to 55 miles an hour.

● Can one person change the world? If you significantly affect the life of one person, have you changed the world? . . . if there are just two people in the world? . . . three people? . . . four? . . . five? . . . ten? . . . ten thousand? I would answer, Yes; you change the world if you change even one person’s life, perhaps even if you change just your own life. The reason why we may deny this is that “change the world” connotes doing something that makes you famous. But I think it needn’t be so dramatic a change. All the acts recorded in the history books are insignificant compared with all the ones that aren’t. The world, however large, is simply a collection of individual people. (I just finished watching a television program designed to educate high school students, which may account for the tone of the foregoing paragraph. I’ll probably edit it later.)

[Later note (2021): When I reread that paragraph recently, I didn’t notice anything strange in that way. It seemed clear and well-written. Which may vindicate a piece of writing advice my old English professor Dr. Lesley Johnstone once gave me: write as if your audience was an intelligent teenager.]

[Later note (4-6-2022): On the other hand, maybe I did edit it (but don’t remember doing it), and that’s the edited paragraph. . . . But probably not.]

● 5-24-2003:   A (general) tax reduction benefits a person if his tax reduction (the reduction in his taxes) exceeds the value of the public services he loses, and vice versa (it hurts a person if the value of the public services he loses exceeds his tax reduction). To change tax policy so that it hurts the poor and benefits the rich is in effect to take money from the poor and give it to the rich. To the extent that his tax policy has this effect (and it does), George W. Bush is an anti-Robin Hood, and, for that matter (since Robin Hood shared this element of philosophy with Jesus Christ), also an anti-Christ.

● 5-26-2003:   If you traveled into (infinite) space, you could, theoretically, eventually pass any point, but not every point.

● I just read an article on new cosmological theories of “multiverses,” which theories suppose an infinite number of “universes” like ours. The author concludes that it’s highly probable that, because there are only finitely many combinations of atoms composing a (sub-)universe, there are infinitely many (sub-)universes exactly like this one, in which every creature has an exact copy and even performs all the same actions, and so forth. A question that comes to my mind is, with an infinite number of doppelgangers of ourselves, why do none of them have our same consciousness? . . . In other words, another being with a different consciousness, however otherwise similar, is not the same creature. In that sense, you and I are in this universe but no other one, which makes this universe unique.

● 5-27-2003:   To paraphrase (or vary) Emerson, Believing that you understand, when you really don’t, is a hobgoblin of mediocre minds.

● 6-1-2003:   Why should God have the privilege of living forever, whereas I must die?

● Strange, we are often angrier with those who help us, just not quite in the way we would prefer to be helped, than we are with those who don’t help us at all, or even with those who hurt us.

● That happiness, and only happiness, is ultimately beneficial to the individual is supported, not only by the fact that it’s the sole desideratum appreciated in all circumstances, but also by the fact that we commonly speak about happiness, rather than other qualities, as the touchstone for desirability. For example, when we argue that God is not all good and all powerful, we cite the world’s suffering (negative happiness), not the world’s lack of money. And when we inquire whether a person will benefit by a proposed course of action, we ask if it will make him happy.

● A Note on Procrastination:   The anatomy of procrastination is simple. We engage in it to avoid discomfort (we don’t procrastinate doing something we’d enjoy doing). And the solution to procrastination is equally simple, if not easy. First, accept that overcoming procrastination will involve, at least initially, and possibly longer, experiencing some discomfort (to avoid which, recall, is why you procrastinate). Abandon the hope that there’s some special, magical trick you might discover that will make it easy or painless; searching for such a device is part of procrastination’s very mechanism, and will just make you lose yet more time. Next, simply (if not easily) begin actually working on the task(s) you’ve put off. Here are a few suggestions on starting that phase of the process. If you know exactly what you should do, do it, for as long as you can manage at a time. If you don’t quite know what to do, pick any item on your to-do list and begin working on it. Alternatively, imagine yourself twelve hours or so hence; and ask yourself what your day would have looked like such that at the end of it you could think (in terms of conquering the procrastination), “This was a good day.” But beware of the following pitfalls, among others: One; like seeking a way to make hard work easy, waiting for a more opportune time is almost always just another means of procrastination, and, in fact, the longer you wait, the more difficult the task becomes. Two; remember your purpose, and don’t start work with the expectation or hope that the unpleasantness will quickly end. Focus on working solely to get the work done, rather than to feel good. (Inasmuch as you do consider your feeling, bear in mind that you’re sacrificing a measure of short-term comfort for greater long-term satisfaction.) Three; after beginning work, don’t allow yourself to pause for long (to celebrate, to rest, or for any other purpose), which would be to relinquish your success. Unless hard work comes naturally to you, procrastination is a lifelong foe, which you must fight continually. Finally, don’t forget that . . . little of importance is accomplished without work. And, in lieu of wishing you “Good luck!”; let me remind you that . . . The harder you work, the more “luck” you’ll have, and the less of it you’ll need.

● 6-2-2003:   When we’re young, we have many questions about things. Later in life, we find answers or accommodate ourselves to a lack of answers.

● From an anthropic point of view, we might define universe as all that is; and the world as us and all that immediately affects us.

● 6-5-2003:   Sartre says consciousness is nothingness, in that it’s about something, and cannot take itself as its own object. This, I suppose, is like saying a camera cannot photograph itself. . . . But it can do so with the help of a mirror . . ..

● 6-8-2003:   Why is it only man who was made in God’s image? If God created man, he created all the other animals as well. Are not the dog, the cat, the rat, the whale, and the elephant, too, made in God’s image?

If God had a son (Jesus), couldn’t God have a kitten? And if that happened just once, wouldn’t it be God’s only begotten kitten?

● We sometimes distinguish between doing as someone says versus doing as he does. If we do as a philosopher says, we follow his philosophy; if we do as he does, we philosophize.

● Heidegger note:   Heidegger, if I understand him, rejects the traditional distinction between the percipient and the (rest of the) world, holding, instead, that the nature of our experience is more accurately viewed as an inseparable melding of our awareness and the world, and, most typically, our involvement in carrying out tasks in the world, which organic unit Heidegger dubs Dasein, or engaged-in-the-world, or being-in-the-world.

I disagree with Heidegger’s conception, for it disregards our basic, reasonable understanding of such a distinction, which we glean from any number of considerations. One such consideration is that, when our consciousness ends (when we die), the world goes on, which is an essential part of our reason for having children or creating art (the continued appreciation by other people of our work or our children’s work after our death). Thus, when Heidegger (or at least Professor Robert Solomon in his lectures on Heidegger) emphasizes the point by saying that there’s no Dasein without the world, and no world without Dasein, I agree with the first part of the statement, since, though we may be distinct from the world, we are nonetheless part of the world (the world is everything that is—if the world ends, everything that exists ends, including us), yet I disagree with the second part, in that, when we die, though the world may end for us, yet the world (albeit changed with our absence from it) goes on.

Further, to speak of being-in-the-world prompts the question, whose being? And the answer is that there’s my being, your being, and so forth, which suggests the traditional notion of the self, the individual consciousness. The individual is that element of being-in-the-world which distinguishes one person from another, you from me. (Even if we reject the notion of the rest of the world as a physical entity, there are entities distinct from us in the form of other sentient beings, other awarenesses.)

Of course, we cannot know whether there’s an objectively existing, outside world, though we may reasonably suppose there is. My own comprehensive statement on this point is this: Are consciousness and the world separate? Yes and no. Yes, in that, if an “objective” world exists, consciousness is separate from it (though our awareness is part of the world). Moreover, even if consciousness is all that exists, and physical space and material objects are an illusion, there is nonetheless a sense in which there’s a world outside of one’s awareness: the existence of other percipients (whose existence, again, we can’t prove or know, but we may suppose). But no, in that we cannot know that there’s an objective world. It’s possible that all that exists is our consciousness, in which case our awareness is the world. From a slightly different aspect, the relationship between consciousness and the world is as follows. Though our awareness and the world are interrelated, in that our consciousness is part of the world, and we are conscious of the world; yet the two are analytically distinct: consciousness is simply the content of our awareness, together with the identity of the percipient that’s having the awareness, and the (rest of the) world is everything other than us and our awareness, that which still exists when we lose consciousness.

In a related vein, Heidegger asserts that our primordial, pre-reflective experience is simply engaged-in-the-world, rather than the perception of our selves as separate percipients. But why should we exalt the pre-reflective? Surely, philosophy is more concerned with man’s most sophisticated thoughts than with his least; more concerned with the thoughts of philosophers (though hopefully philosophers exercising common sense) than the thoughts of peasants; with the thoughts of men rather than the thoughts, or the experience, of mice. And Heidegger seems rather inconsistent here. On one hand, he praises pre-reflective existence. On the other hand, he reverses the preference, depreciating pre-reflective experience, by talking of speech versus idle chatter, thinking versus mere calculation, and characterizing the primordial condition as fallenness.

Finally, Heidegger rejects the traditional conception of knowledge of propositions and, according to Dasein, talks of our experience as involving tasks, so that it’s more appropriate to speak of knowing how, rather than knowing that . . . What, then, is our task when we do philosophy? . . ..

● 6-11-2003:   Some writers may use a cryptic or jargonistic writing style to disguise the shallowness of their ideas.

● 6-13-2003:   In my advertising pieces (slogan/telephone number/logo) I created for KPFK Radio, I feel I’ve outdone myself, in advertising pieces; it’s a minor masterpiece, which I feel I achieved by one third luck, one third inspiration, and the other third hard work. Of course, the specific percentages are arbitrary; the most one can say is that it was a combination of the three elements.

● 6-15-2003:   The one and only piece of supposed program music I’ve heard that works, in terms of depicting images, let alone also as music, is Beethoven’s sixth symphony (the Pastoral).

● 6-19-2003:   In all I’ve written about Nietzsche’s philosophy, I still can’t spell his name! (That is, I can’t remember the spelling. Every time I write it, I have to look it up.)

● 6-21-2003:   I am to John Stuart Mill as Einstein is to Newton.

● 6-23-2003:   With respect to a series of three elements, transposing the terminal ones is equivalent to reversing the sequence. (A trivial fact.)

● 6-24-2003:   The phrase “surrounded by death” or “a great deal of death” seems to me a strange locution. Essentially, death is nonexistence or absence (of life), and it makes little sense to talk about a considerable amount of nonexistence. If you were standing in the middle of a desert, with no other people, would you exclaim, “I’m surrounded by death!” If you were a teacher of a classroom full of, say, thirty students; and one day they were all truant, and you were alone in the room, would you say, “I’m surrounded by absent students” or “I’m surrounded by absence” or “Considerable absence is present” or “I feel the presence of much absence”?

● Here’s a very rough thought, to be revised, or perhaps deleted, upon further research or thinking. Authenticity is sometimes associated with alienation, lack of connection with other people. But it strikes me that, when people behave authentically, they typically (or at least sometimes) write philosophy or produce some other form of art. And usually such art is done, not exclusively for one’s own interest, but instead ultimately for an audience of others, for appreciation by society at large. In those cases, authenticity is not a lack of connection with society, but rather a different sort of connection with it: a longer-term engagement instead of an immediate one.

● 6-25-2003:   Life would be so much simpler without other people!

● 6-27-2003:   Regarding Emerson’s famous maxim, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds”; the trick, of course, is to be able to distinguish the foolish consistencies from the non-foolish ones.

● Confusion can be good, as a guide to indicate that you don’t fully understand. It’s a natural motivation to thought, and may lead to new insights.

● If it’s true that this; that that; and that the other, it’s true that this, that, and the other.

● 6-29-2003:   Music occurs in time; graphic art, in space.

● 7-3-2003:   Michael Moore’s thesis in his new, or recent, book, Stupid White Men, is fundamentally misconceived. The rich are not stupid, but instead selfish—one might even say evil. What they do—promoting continued economic growth, for instance—may hurt society as a whole (it diminishes per capita well-being); but it benefits them. The ones who are stupid are, not the wealthy, but the rest of us, for taking their professed purpose (to help the average person) at face value, and for failing to act against them.

● 7-5-2003:   People, perhaps straining to say something positive, sometimes describe a failed attempt as “a great idea that didn’t work.” But this locution, likewise, doesn’t work: An idea that doesn’t work is not a great idea!

● 7-7-2003:   It was just announced on the news that two more U.S. soldiers were shot to death in Iraq. I guess the Iraqis are taking up President-select Bush’s challenge to “bring it on.” As to Bush’s related statement that the American military are “plenty tough enough to take it [violence against them]”; were those who were killed “plenty tough enough to take it”? Are their families “plenty tough enough to take it”?!

● Often, when a particular activity is criticized as being socially harmful, those who benefit from doing the activity reply to the effect that abolishing it would cost jobs (put people out of work). But the answer to that is simply that such people should get jobs doing work that helps society, rather than hurts it. And, even if they’re unable to find new work, it’s better to be unemployed than employed doing something harmful to society. . . . Undoubtedly, guards in World War II Nazi death camps lost their jobs when the camps were liberated; but maintaining the guards’ jobs was not a good reason to keep the camps running.

● I note, perhaps influenced by Sartre, a double standard I sometimes evince in performing various tasks. (Sartre’s influence was in noticing the double standard, not in having it.) As to certain actions—say, deciding upon and voting for candidates in an election—if I don’t act, then, among the thoughts I entertain may be a reflection on my lack of ability to make a significant difference, even my ultimate lack of free will itself. Whereas, in less difficult, less time-consuming, less unpleasant tasks, I readily accept my personal power. For example, if I wish to write, but my pen is across the room, I don’t hesitate, I don’t contemplate metaphysical impediments; I simply go over and pick it up. The difference between my thoughts in these two situations suggests to me that my speculation about lack of free will, or the unlikelihood of my action’s making a difference, in the one case, functions less as a genuine philosophical contemplation than as a rationalization or excuse.

● 7-8-2003:   My father, Jerry Eisner, severely verbally attacked my new KPFK fliers. Ironically, whenever he insults or viciously attacks my work, I know it (my work) must be especially good. . . . An exceedingly strange manner of compliment!

● 7-12-03:   Flu-like illness, lasting for several days: weakness, headaches, body-aches. And swollen right leg/foot, lasting for almost two weeks.

● Here (➘) is where I draw the line!

_________________________

● 7-14-03:   If Vincent Van Gogh painted a painting on your back, you might be less than the sum of your parts.

● 7-16-2003:   On 2-27-2003, I wrote: It always strikes me as curious when famous people summarize how they perform their special skills, as if anyone could simply follow the described procedure and obtain similar results.

I’ve noticed a corollary to that observation. If you gave one thousand intelligent, competent, motivated people a fund of money with the instruction to start their own respective businesses according to a certain simple, fundamental set of procedures, such as: do what you know, do what you feel a passion for, and so forth; the great majority (for convenience, say ninety percent) would fail, simply because starting a new business is inherently very risky; and, statistically, the vast majority of them fail. And yet, you hear of books with such titles as “Ten Characteristics of Highly Successful People,” in which the author’s procedure is simply to interview successful people and write about traits they have in common. The flaw is this. The other ninety percent of the people who made similar attempts, but failed, probably also had those same qualities. Thus the characteristics discussed are common to the successful, but not exclusive to them. So such presentations are not helpful, because they purport to give you a guide to what distinguishes the successful from the unsuccessful, but don’t, other than in the most gross, commonsense way, such as the advice to work hard, and to pursue what you have some knowledge of and interest in. And we buy these books because they feed our wishful fantasies, that we’ll not only probably (nay, almost inevitably) greatly succeed, but also love the experience. Whereas, for the vast majority of people, it will simply never happen.

. . . Once, a hundred men risked their life savings to attempt to secure lucrative positions in a wealthy corporation. The corporation’s owner, just by a series of coin-tosses, selected one (though not the most talented of them) and rejected the other ninety-nine. The ninety-nine were ruined. The fortunate remaining man became very rich working for the corporation, and also wrote a best-selling book, How to Succeed in Business.

● My father and I got a shock yesterday: we must move (again).

● It’s fashionable these days to urge people to take risks (or simply to “risk”). But such exhortations are usually irresponsible, as they fail to take into account at least two important associated facts: One, that, by definition, risk entails the possibility of failure, a possibility you must accept if you decide to take a risk; and, two, perhaps more important, that to risk intelligently, you must prepare: both to maximize the chances of success, and for failure in case that occurs. The question is not, as usually implicitly framed, what is stopping you from taking a risk (the unstated assumption always being that you should take the risk); but rather a series of questions, including, how to evaluate whether a particular risk is worth taking: is this the right, or best, time to take a risk?; exactly what risks should you take?; and what should you do to prepare to take the risk? Perhaps this can be summarized by noting that risking is subsumed within the concept of planning.

● 7-17-2003:   If someone told me that he refused to vote because he was unwilling to vote merely for the lesser of two evils, I would start reasoning with him by asking, “Which would you prefer: the greater or the lesser of two evils?” Then I’d ask him, “Should you not vote your preference?”

● The greatest contribution most humans can make to the world’s happiness is to enjoy their own lives (if everyone succeeded therein, it would, ipso facto, be a good world). But to bring about and maintain favorable world conditions, a man should also treat his fellows kindly; and (more important at some times than at others) participate in collective action to structure society in such a way as to enhance group welfare, concerning such factors as population size relative to available resources (including room), and the distribution of resources among people. The Golden Rule provides useful guidance with respect to the former (individual interpersonal interactions); but utterly fails to address the latter, the overall structuring of society, a significant weakness of the Rule.

● 7-22-2003:   How naked is a jaybird?

● 7-25-2003:   What’s the significance of the fact that pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps is literally, physically impossible?

● The only thing I dislike more than hot weather is cold weather.

[Later note (2020): As the weather (both the hot and the cold) has continually gotten hotter and hotter, my preference has reversed: now, the only thing I dislike more than cold weather is hot weather. In fact, I cherish cool, even cold, weather.]

● 7-26-2003:   To say that I’ve sorely neglected practical aspects of my life would probably be an understatement. I’ll endeavor to improve in that regard, an effort which has now been given a most unwelcome prod: The landlord is selling the house, and we must move, which is always a nightmare.

● 7-27-2003:   “Political scientist” strikes me as a strange phrase . . . not nearly as strange, however, as “Christian Scientist,” almost a contradiction in terms.

[Later note (2021): Well, probably some scientists are Christians. But that’s probably not what the phrase means.]

● 7-29-2003:   It may sometimes be useful to distinguish between your mood and the state of your life. You may be passing through a bad mood, even though your life is going fairly well. (At times I tend [wrongly] to infer from my bad mood that things are going poorly, which inference may [unnecessarily] intensify and prolong the bad mood.)

● 7-31-2003:   I’ll take a risk and avail myself of an opportunity that has arisen to earn some fast money, because my lack of funds is a severe handicap to improving my situation. It’s hard to get up and running when you’re in a hole. [A note from 8-8-2003: The risk turned out to be significantly greater than I thought, and in fact too great to warrant taking it.]

● Don’t wish simply for long life. That could be hell. Instead, wish for long, healthy, productive, happy life. (Of course, this may go without saying, in that you tend to wish for long life when things are going well, when you wish your current state of affairs to continue; when things are going badly, you wish for better conditions, not for long life.)

[Later note (2021): . . . Unless, of course, your life is going badly because you’ve been diagnosed with a terminal illness. Then you may wish for long life.]

● 8-4-2003:   Sartre says consciousness is free, not caused. But he also says consciousness is nothingness. Does it make sense to ascribe properties (like freedom) to that which does not exist? If we say of something, as it were, that it’s free, an interlocutor might inquire what we’re referring to as being free. If we answer, “Nothing”; our companion may conclude, “So you’re saying, ‘Nothing is free.’” Another flaw in Sartre’s reasoning is this: His argument seems based on a contrast between that which can be an object of consciousness and that which cannot be, as follows: “If something can be an object of consciousness, it can be caused. Therefore, if something cannot be an object of consciousness, it cannot be caused.” In other words, “If A, then B. Therefore; if not A, then not B.” Which of course does not validly follow. Here’s an example: “If it rains, the grass will get wet. Therefore, if it does not rain, the grass won’t get wet.” That doesn’t follow, because, even if it doesn’t rain, the grass might still get wet—say, by a sprinkler system. Besides which, it’s not true that any object of consciousness can be caused. I can be conscious that twice two is four; but an analytic truth cannot be caused. Yet Sartre admits that the content of our consciousness is subject to outside causation, which is largely to concede the very point he attempts to refute. Be that as it may—whatever Sartre admits or doesn’t admit—our consciousness is caused, because everything that actually is, is caused. To say that your consciousness was not caused, implies that either it always existed, or it caused itself. Both of which alternatives are false: it did not always exist—it didn’t exist before you were born (certainly not before you were conceived). And it didn’t cause itself, because, just before it began, it did not exist, so as to have been able to cause anything, including itself. I do, however, agree with Sartre that, practically, our consciousness is not simply passively received. In part, we direct it. I can decide whether to continue to look straight ahead and view the tree, or turn my head to the right and look at the chair . . . or to scan the area and focus on all the furniture, or on all the floras.

● Sartre describes emotions as helping us deal with the world. But the emotions are an essential part of the very situations that Sartre says our emotions help us deal with.

To like effect, Sartre says our emotions function in part to magically transform the world, to enable us to think of ourselves or our situation more favorably. In such instances, however, what we’re transforming is not the world, per se, but instead our emotions themselves. So, our emotions work to transform our emotions? . . . If certain emotions work to cope with other emotions, why use an indirect process? Why not simply alter the original emotion itself? One might reply that we’re not demanding that nature “make sense,” but, rather, simply describing what is. Nonetheless, it’s appropriate to ask a “why?” question here, because Sartre is asserting that emotions are not matters merely of instinct, but are instead matters of human choice, strategy.

. . . If a man decides that his goal in life is to be happy, and if he chooses his emotions; why does he not simply choose to be (and therefore be) happy all the time?

In a more abstract vein, to choose our emotions implies that they’re not caused by something outside of ourselves—that we cause our choice of emotions. But that couldn’t be, because our initial choice in that regard arose after our birth or conception, before which, we didn’t exist so as to have caused anything.

● Sartre expends much energy arguing that consciousness is not caused, on the grounds that causal determinism would defeat the notion of responsibility (and he can’t abide that, since responsibility is the centerpiece of his philosophy). My own view is that causal determinism is true, and so, strictly, we’re not responsible; and yet, practically, we seem to be responsible, and we are responsible. A disadvantage of Sartre’s approach to the relationship between determinism and responsibility, vis-a-vis my approach, is that it frees from obligation people who believe in causal determinism.

● 8-6-2003:   What You Think is What You Get? The currently popular saying “If you keep thinking the way you’ve been thinking, you’ll keep getting what you’ve been getting” is sometimes attributed to Einstein. I disbelieve that Einstein said it, because, while it’s obviously true that not all personal tactics and strategies are equally effective, this particular variation of that idea, though plausible and appealing at first blush, is, upon reflection, inane. Its most fundamental flaw is the assumption of a correspondence between “thinking” and situational outcome. Imagine a chess game between two highly skilled and experienced players. From the game’s opening through the middle, black dominates. White is frustrated and worried, but persists. Toward the end, white gains the upper hand, and wins. Now, did the turning point come as a result of white or black changing his mode of thinking? Hardly! Instead, both players throughout the game thought in their accustomed excellent way; and, indeed, white followed the opposite maxim, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” Another example. Two people of modest means go to Las Vegas and spend the weekend gambling. One hits the jackpot and becomes rich; the other loses what little money he had, and lives the rest of his life in poverty. Did these two men employ different thinking? No! A situation evolves in unpredictable ways; sometimes your best strategizing succeeds, other times it doesn’t. When we contend with life, the outcome is simply not always within our control. “The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.”

Further, the motto offers no guidance in what respect(s) you should change your thinking, as it implicitly purports to be able to do.

Most outrageous of all, perhaps, is the implication that people are responsible for whatever happens to them; that the poor are poor, not because of social injustice, maldistribution of wealth, but rather because of their own bad attitude; that, with the proper adjustment of thinking on each person’s part, everyone could be rich; or that the rape victim, somehow due to her thinking, is as much to blame for the crime as the rapist.

● The assertion that every person is responsible for his own situation is a vainglorious and callous boast, or perhaps just a rationalization, by the fortunate.

● 8-9-2003:   Avoiding a bad deal can be as important as making a good one.

● 8-12-2003:   Those who account for disagreements between right- and left-wing people in terms of conflicting views of the world give too much credit to the right-wing. The right-wing act as they do, not because of a certain metaphysical conception of the universe, but rather because of simple selfishness and greed.

● 8-17-2003:   To be perfectly honest, I suspect I would break the law if I were assured I could get away with it (I would steal money from those who, or which, have plenty of it). I suppose that the great majority of people who obey the law, do so, not because they’re somehow of good character, but rather because of a base calculation that the risks for themselves outweigh the potential benefits.

● The benefit to me of studying modal logic turned out to be the reverse of what I envisioned when, at university, I decided to study it. I expected that it would help me in the means of criticizing arguments; but the main advantage was in providing me with content with which to make arguments.

● 8-20-2003:   Which would you rather be: the richest, the greatest, and/or the happiest man who ever lived, five minutes after he died . . . or you, now?

● 8-21-2003:   That which is wholesome for man to accumulate is cultural artifacts, not consumer goods.

● Music is the flowing river that carries the vessel of your emotions.

● 8-27-2003:   I just now finished watching the documentary movie, Bowling for Columbine, by Michael Moore. I started out expecting to agree with what I understood to be the film’s thesis, that the ready availability of guns to this country’s populace is a major cause of the staggering amount of gun violence here. But this thesis was roundly contradicted by some of the film’s own material (for example, the Canadians have a huge supply of guns in private hands, and yet they have an extremely low rate of gun violence). Then I thought the conclusion might somehow involve the American historical character, our hostile and violent treatment of those who would stand in our way. But this notion is expressly contradicted by Moore, for instance, citing the actions of Germany in World War II, a country which now has one of the lowest incidences of firearm violence, only a tiny fraction of that in the United States. At several places in the movie, Moore asks, “What is it about the U.S. that causes such an astonishingly high rate of gun violence here?” It’s a question that Moore never explicitly answers, but which, in the course of viewing the movie, one senses Moore is attempting to implicitly answer. In thinking back on the movie as a whole, however, I can’t determine what the answer was. I’m at a loss to make out just what the film’s point is.

[Later note (2021): I’ll venture my own point on the topic: Prevalent gun ownership may not be sufficient for widespread gun violence, but it’s necessary for it. And where gun violence is rampant, and you can’t readily identify another factor that could more easily or conveniently be controlled that would solve the problem, you must change the condition you know would solve it: you must significantly reduce the prevalence of guns (widespread gun violence is too high a price to pay for so-called gun rights).]

● 8-31-2003:   Concerning people who oppose hunting on the grounds that it’s cruel to animals; is it less cruel to kill cattle in a slaughterhouse? (If the hunter did not eat game, he’d eat beef instead.) Moreover, I’d rather die of a gunshot than of what naturally kills animals in the wild: being eaten by other animals, or expiring slowly of illness or injury without medical care, or of thirst or starvation.

● To religious fundamentalists who “martyr” themselves in killing people whom they believe are enemies of their religion, I would pose this question: If death is beneficial to you, why is it not beneficial to those you murder? (And presumably the idea is to hurt, not help, the enemy.)

On the other hand, you expect rationality from religious fundamentalists??!! The answer, of course, is that the martyrs are good, but their enemies are evil; and God will consign the former to paradise, the latter to hell. Or some such convenient dodge.

● Aristotle was a great philosopher.
You can say that again!
Aristotle was a great philosopher.
You can say that again!
Aristotle was a great philosopher.
You can say that again!
Aristotle was a great philosopher.
You can say that again!
Aristotle was a great philosopher.
You can say that again!
Aristotle was a great philosopher.
You can say that again!
Aristotle was a great philosopher.
You can say that again!
Aristotle was a great philosopher.
You can say that again!
Aristotle was a great philosopher.
You said it!

● 9-21-2003:   I just woke from a nightmare, that my father died. Being financially supported by my father, I’m hanging by a very tenuous thread. I must make securing decent employment a higher priority.

● 9-22-2003:   Death is the ultimate means of killing time.

● 9-24-2003:   Negative freedom is freedom from; positive freedom is freedom to.

● 9-30-2003:   Some years ago, my psychotherapist at the time, Lynn Weinberg, asked me why I wished to be (or to become) a great writer. When I replied to the effect that it was just how I’m made, she criticized me for failing to give a more in-depth, philosophical, or analytical answer. To respond to the criticism now; ultimately, our wishes, values, and motivations are given to us. We are not responsible for them, because this would require us to be responsible for the inclination to be so motivated, and for the inclination to be so inclined, and so forth for each antecedent inclination, which is impossible because the first one came about after we were born, and we couldn’t have caused it because, before that, we didn’t exist so as to have caused anything. Ultimately, we do not cause ourselves, but rather are caused.

Similarly (though this has nothing to do with my old psychotherapist), as to skillful acts we perform; strictly speaking, we do them intuitively, by instinct. That is, we don’t know how we do them, for such knowledge would require that we know how we know how we perform, and so on, a chain of causal events that, going back in time, likewise fatally crashes at our birth.

● It irks me when right-wing politicians are described as “ideologically” driven. No. Not unless greed is an ideology.

● Why should we fear death? Our sole experience is life. We’re either dead or alive. If we’re alive, we have nothing to worry about, as it were, in this regard. And when we’re dead, we don’t know it. In other words, we never personally, directly experience death, for death is the absence of experience. We live until we die. Moreover, death is neutral; just life is good or bad.

● 10-1-2003:   The big toe is the lower extremity equivalent of a combination of the thumb and the index finger.

● In commenting on other philosophers’ work, I almost exclusively focus on my disagreements, rather than on my concurrences, because the former tend to make for more interesting and substantial pieces of writing. Now, however, I’ll indulge in the exception and note that Sartre’s conception of the conflictual nature of interpersonal relationships strikes me as a profound truth, for which he deserves considerable credit. . . . You see—not a very interesting comment, was it? . . . Let me, then, supplement my statement. Sartre, like most people who newly discover an important truth, overemphasizes it, out of pride of authorship. In reality, we develop associations with others, not only because of our wish to enhance our self-image, but also from our needs for companionship, affection, emotional support, and so forth.

● 10-2-2003:   Experience and ability are positive qualities in a politician if the politician is well intentioned, but negatives if he’s ill-intentioned. (If a Nazi politician were running for President, you wouldn’t think, “Well, I hate his policies and his philosophy; but he is more experienced and capable than his opponent. So I’ll vote for him.”)

● Even if French barbers were generally better than English ones (just hypothetically speaking); nonetheless, a good English barber would be better than a mediocre French barber.

● 10-3-2003:   My concern is to be a good writer, not necessarily a good person. Or, more accurately, I’m more concerned with being a good writer than with being a good person. (. . . Or is it more accurate?)

● 10-4-2003:   I heard someone say she wished to learn religion so as to help God. But why would an all-powerful being need her help?! People who act to help God flatter themselves to an amazing extent, to believe that God needs their help! . . . or that their “help” would be at all helpful to Him.

● The other day, I heard a left-wing radio personality preach that people should not vote, but instead engage in educational activities to educate the people on political realities. Of the many questions I would have liked to ask him is this: If we followed your advice and succeeded, and a significant majority of the populace became politically enlightened, by what means, or mechanism, would they then choose someone to govern them—if not by voting? Ultimately, how else but by voting do members of a democracy make collective decisions?

[Later note (2021): If his answers to those questions were unsatisfactory, I would tell him this: Part of why things keep getting worse for poor and working people is that the rich always vote, and they vote in their economic interest, but the rest either don’t vote, or vote ignorantly. The best single piece of political education you could give the masses is that voting is important.]

[Later note (7-28-2022): I would also ask him this: What form of government do you favor? . . . because without voting, it’s not democracy.]

● 10-9-2003:   Sometimes, when what you know intellectually conflicts with what you feel, you must just get hold of yourself and act on what you know. In any event, in conflicts between the head and the heart; logically, the head must be the final arbiter. But, of course, the head must take into consideration the heart’s desires.

● I’ve always believed that a literary work must be interpreted and evaluated based on the work itself, regardless of the author’s intent gleaned from sources extrinsic to the work. But it also seems useful to examine numerous pieces of writing by the same author to ascertain common themes or philosophies which the writing suggests. I wonder if there isn’t some conflict between these two views; that is, does looking at works of a particular author not involve an attempt to discover his intent?

● 10-12-2003:   The move to this new house was especially traumatic. On 4 September 2003, I sustained a long, deep cut on the palm of my right hand and a splinter in my left index finger. The right hand seems to be healing very well; but, on 9 September 2003, in what I now see as a misguided medical reaction to the splinter, the hospital performed surgery on the finger to remove the splinter (an attempt that failed!). The surgery left a noticeable and uncomfortable scar, which has been a source of considerable psychic pain for me ever since. . . . It seems there’s always something, always some one defect or injury or loss in myself or in my life, which, like a lightning rod, my mind picks out as a focus for anguish—if that tallest object is eliminated, the attention is simply transferred to the next tallest one, endlessly, but always with the same intensity. It’s almost as if I can’t tolerate happiness, and am impelled to find some cause, the cause of the hour, the day, the week, the month, the year, the decade, for misery. At the moment, this feels like a physical problem (the finger injury). But a part of me knows that it’s mainly a psychological problem, my psychological response to the injury.

● We make a moral distinction between other species and our own, in large part, not because we genuinely feel other animals are unworthy of our treating them well, but rather out of selfishness and a sort of might-makes-right principle, in that, unlike our fellow humans, animals can’t retaliate against us for our bad treatment of them. Indeed, the Golden Rule, in addition to its ostensible altruistic aspect, has a selfish, defensive aspect as well. We do unto others as we would have others do unto us, not just because we wish to treat others well and the Golden Rule serves as a useful guide to how to treat them well, but also because we realize (as the Rule subtly, implicitly reminds us) that others are likely to do back unto us as we do unto them.

● 10-13-2003:   That the glass is half full (rather than half empty) is not very helpful if the glass is half full of poison.

● 10-16-2003:   In constructing arguments urging people to act in certain ways, I don’t attempt to establish that people should so act as a matter of fact or logic; rather, I simply set about to explain the bases of my own (admittedly logically arbitrary) preferences and inclinations in the matter.

● 10-17-2003:   If democracy is distinguished by open and vigorous public debate, and despotism essentially involves the replacement of debate with governmental coercion; then the government’s resort to outright lies to prevail in debate may be regarded as an intermediate state between democracy and despotism.

● Always curious about the meaning of words, and interested in building my vocabulary, I just heard someone on the radio use “triumphalism.” I looked it up in the dictionary and it occurred to me that I’m a triumphalist: I do indeed think my own philosophy is superior to all others. Inwardly, I’m not modest at all.

● 10-23-2003:   There is some overlap between the metaphysical and the metaphorical.

● “The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” . . . Not strictly, literally, of course, because the whole truth is infinite.

[Later note (2021): Well, the phrase is used with respect to particular matters. It means, Don’t leave out a fact whose omission would be misleading.]

● It strikes me that, if Plato’s thesis in opposition to the Sophists were right: namely, that an argument can be good (a worthwhile artifact, or piece of philosophy/literature worth studying) only if its conclusion is true . . . Plato (or his work) would be in serious trouble!

● Consider this classic form of exchange between a teacher and a student:

Teacher: “In this hypothetical situation, what should a person do?”
Student: “He should do such-and-such.”
Teacher: “Why?”
Student: “Because he would be happier.”
Teacher: “So a person should always do what makes him happy?”

A common false assumption in many discussions about ethics is that general rules of conduct can be extracted from (or applied to) particular situations. Rather, our decision to act is a decision to act in a given situation; and the reason we cite for such action will not necessarily and infallibly guide us in another situation, wherein a unique mix of factors and considerations will be at play. There are no hard and fast, universally applicable rules of conduct—only guidelines, which inevitably admit of exceptions. Of course, this is a law of life, not of logic. A man could contradict it in practice if he were determined to do so, to prove a point, regardless of consequences. But most prudent, reasonable people would find such a single rule impracticable.

● 10-30-2003:   When you’re dead, you have no “problems.”

● 10-31-2003:   The electorate’s focus on politicians’ personalities and scandals instead of their political, social, economic policies and philosophy is wrongheaded. It’s as if you were hiring a chauffeur, and you chose the one who proposed to drive you in the wrong direction rather than the one who would take you in the right direction because the latter was bald or had a wart on the back of his neck, which you disliked seeing.

● 11-1-2003:   The question whether to balance a governmental budget by raising taxes or cutting spending translates to the question, Who are to sacrifice to balance the budget: the rich, or the poor.

● I just had a most bizarre experience. Another driver, in a “sport utility vehicle,” chased me, with an obvious intent to injure me, for no reason which I can fathom. At one point, he stopped at the curb, and I pulled up behind him, a short distance away, and made motions as if I were writing down his license plate number. He got out of his truck to confront me, and I of course knew better than to get out of my car; and, as I drove by him, he kicked my car. He then got back in his vehicle and resumed pursuing me, this time with seemingly even greater hostility and determination to somehow injure me. I had to run a red light, speed up, stop suddenly, and make a U-turn in order to escape. But I got away without injury to myself or damage to my car. He probably got the worst of it, since he failed in is attempt to injure me, he may have a sore foot from kicking my car (no damage to my car), and he may well have some anxiety over the possibility that I got his license number (I didn’t) and that I may take some legal action against him. All in all, I think I performed (and drove) quite skillfully.

● 11-5-2003:   I recently heard a portion of one of William Blake’s poems quoted in a movie:

“ . . . Some are born to sweet delight
Some are born to endless night.”

Several criticisms: The lines wrongly suggest that people are born condemned to certain sorts of experiences; that our experience is either purely pleasure or purely pain (whereas, typically, it’s mixed); and that our experience is substantial—“endless”—(it’s not: life is short). But I’m probably taking the words too literally.

● 11-6-2003:   What is patriotism? . . . Patriotism is that which a patriotism test measures.

● 11-9-2003:   U.S. President John F. Kennedy’s famous statement “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country” emphasizes one part of a truth, asserting that, among our prime interests are those which might be described as collective, including the well-being of other people and the preservation, beyond our own lives, of our species and of our works, an aspect of humanity which too many men forget in their selfish pursuits. But neither must we lose sight of the other side of the equation, as we appear to do when we utter such sentiments about people as, “What’s he good for?!” In these instances, we overlook that individuals are the final unit of life and experience, that society is but a collection of individuals, and that, to the largest extent, and most basically, an individual lives for his own sake, and that ultimately society exists for the benefit of people, not vice versa.

In the last analysis; broadly speaking, these two aspects are not only consistent, but also mutually supportive. Especially, the organization of society affects the welfare of individuals; and the collective control of population size in relation to the environment, and the equitable distribution of wealth, are critically important to the maximization of people’s individual well-being.

● Every dog is either a bitch or a son of a bitch. I hate dogs: their barking has caused me so much grief, destroying my peace and quiet, and ruining my sleep.

● 11-10-2003:   Some commentators, in arguing against proposed governmental restrictions on immigration, note the great artistic, scientific, and other contributions to the United States made by immigrants. But that immigrants have made substantial positive contributions to the country, while true, is in this connection irrelevant. We seek to limit immigration in order to limit population size; population size becomes too great when, in relation to scarce environmental resources, an increase in population brings a decrease in per capita well-being. Even if immigrants’ contributions were greater than those of others; if we must (and we must) limit population growth, we must limit immigration. The alternative would be to expel people already settled here, which obviously we can’t do. Indeed, no one disputes that we must limit immigration. If we let in everyone who wanted to come, we’d be overrun. So the question is, not whether we should limit immigration, but how much, and how.

● Underlying many disputes on the question of overpopulation appears to be a certain fundamental difference in outlook. In attempting to rebut the proposition that we’re overpopulated, people often declare that we’re (still) able to sustain a greater number of humans, which sentiment is perhaps implicitly based on the notion that human life is intrinsically valuable, and so ought to be maximized. Whereas, contrariwise, I believe that human life has no intrinsic value and that the appropriate population size is that which yields the greatest per capita quality of life. We might summarize this philosophical difference as a disagreement whether the standard for human population size should be how many we can bear, versus how many we want: the maximum versus the optimum.

● 11-13-2003:   I have sadly learned that I’m not impervious to many of the harms to which, when young, I felt I was somehow immune.

● 11-14-2003:   Religion is a sort of stylized amalgam of philosophy and fantasy.

● I disbelieve in God factually. But I’m not sure that the concept of God—of a single being with infinite attributes, such as infinite intelligence or power—is even possible.

● Man is the only animal that wears clothes. If we see clothes on other species of animals, it’s by human doing.

● Very simply, obstructionism is good when that which is obstructed is bad, and vice versa.

● 11-16-2003:   When they discuss optimism and pessimism, most philosophers engage in a fallacy of sorts of composition, in at least implicitly conflating that which is good for themselves personally and that which is good for humanity as a whole. Perhaps many of them do so out of a desire to be thought of as good people, in having the world’s interests genuinely at heart.

● 11-17-2003:   “President” George Bush is a very important man, whose safety should be vigilantly guarded: his life is our sole protection against (vice president) Dick Cheney. . . . Dick Cheney is Bush’s life insurance policy.

● 11-18-2003:   Mining gold is like knocking your teeth out to get gold to wear on your finger.

Mining gold is like
Knocking your teeth out to get
Gold for your finger.

● 11-22-2003:   The maxim “power corrupts” suggests that people are essentially selfish, because it implies that, if given the opportunity, a man will benefit himself at society’s expense. (. . . ??? . . . On second thought, these statements are probably too vague to be very meaningful.)

● Resident Push in the White House.

● White racist: “Black people are inferior because there has been no great Black genius, like Einstein [who was white].”
      Interlocutor: “But you are not a great genius, like Einstein. Are you inferior?” . . ..

● 11-27-2003:   A man, curious about how his life would be different with a gunshot wound to his arm, shot himself in the arm. The bullet passed through his arm (injuring him), and thence through his bedroom wall and into the kitchen, where it killed his wife.

● During a drought, an Indian priest, better educated and more sophisticated than the other members of his tribe, told his followers that, at a designated time, he would do a dance to bring rain. Unbeknownst to his fellow Indians, he possessed a radio, to which he listened constantly. In the morning of the day on which rain was forecast for the afternoon, the priest performed his rain dance. Three hours later, it finally rained, and all the other Indians were extremely impressed.

● 11-29-2003:   At this moment, I have absolutely nothing worthwhile to say. (But why should I let that stop me?)

● 12-1-2003:   Arthur Schopenhauer, in his theory of The Will, commits a sort of fallacy of anthropomorphism, in ascribing an attribute (namely, purpose) of individual organisms to life as a whole . . . or, more basically, in thinking of “life as a whole” as an organism at all. We might call this error the fallacious reification of a metaphor, or, more simply, taking a metaphor too far.

● I disagree with those grammarians who assert that hopefully is incorrect. To insist that we always use “I hope” instead of “hopefully” makes no more sense than to demand that we always use “I desire” instead of “desirable.”

[Later note (3-26-2022): It’s not quite the same.]

● 12-3-2003:   I find it interesting that political experts confidently identify the causes of elections’ outcomes which they cannot predict beforehand, even though they have essentially the same information before the elections as they have afterward (except, of course, the information about the results).

● With ants, is it all for one; one for all; both; or neither?

● For the most heinous crimes, I favor a cross between execution and life imprisonment. The criminal would be imprisoned, with an annual administrative review. So long as the panel found that the prisoner was unhappy in prison, his confinement would continue. But if and when the panel found that he was happy in prison, he would be executed. (. . . Of course, this is just an angry fantasy. I don’t actually favor it. Besides, even if I did favor it, I’d have some consolation in realizing that, even if a person is happy in prison, he’s probably less happy than he’d be free.)

● 12-5-2003:   So many of us spend our lives longing for material wealth, whose attainment we imagine would make our lives happy and complete, when we already possess a virtually unlimited number of things whose loss (such as our intelligence, memory, sight, comfort, an arm, a hand, even a finger), if it happened, we would rather have undone than all the money in the world. Perhaps, then, the fundamental problem is one of human psychology—our inability to appreciate what we have.

● Pacifism works when adhered to by everyone.

● Some cite the Bible as authority for injunction against killing (“Thou shalt not kill”). But the Bible also says, “An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth,” which seems to imply a life for a life. A source of two inconsistent propositions cannot, logically, serve as authority for either one. . . . And, now that we’re on the subject, how can the Bible be the inerrant word of God when it contains inconsistent statements (one of which must be false)?

● 12-7-2003:   The U.S. government (the first President Bush) has been criticized for failing to remove Iraqi dictator Sadam Hussein in the first U.S. invasion of Iraq, in the early 1990’s, and more specifically for failing to support the attempt by a segment of the Iraqi population, the Kurds, to overthrow the dictator. I believe the reason the U.S. failed to help the Kurds do that deed is that it wanted Hussein to remain in power to serve as a justification (or pretext) for the U.S. itself invading and dominating Iraq, as it (the U.S.) has now done.

● I just heard on the news that the United States is “investigating” the killing of nine children from a bomb it dropped in Afghanistan to kill a particular targeted person. But the explanation for the children’s deaths is simple: No matter how accurately a bomb is positioned, it’s inherently imprecise, in that, unlike, say, a sniper, who can select particular individuals to kill, a bomb indiscriminately destroys everything within a certain area. And these nine children were simply in the area at the time. There’s no mystery here. Using bombs, especially when delivered from the air into populated areas, almost inevitably kills unintended victims. Indeed, the announcement of an “investigation” of it is just a subtle form of denial or coverup, an attempt to create the impression that unintended casualties are somehow not an inevitable consequence of such bombings. “Oh, my! Other people, too, were killed?! That’s very strange. We don’t know how that could have happened! Let’s investigate.”

● As a teenager, I wished to be, and liked to imagine myself, insane. I no longer do. I now realize that I was very neurotic, but not psychotic. In fact, I now see myself as one of the sanest people: highly rational, with an original and profound philosophy.

● 12-8-2003:   The rhetorician’s fallacy: that failure to advance an effective argument for a claim means that the claim is unsound. . . . When I’m unable to formulate an argument against a certain position, occasionally I do conclude that the opposing position is right. Far more often, however, I continue to believe the opposition is wrong and that the problem is simply my inability to come up with an argument. Plus, there are far more arguments we might like to construct than we have time to make.

Moreover, sometimes action cannot wait for rhetoric. If someone is battering you, or even stealing from you, you can’t necessarily focus exclusively on refuting the batterer’s or the thief’s claim that he has a right to do what he’s doing, for the criminal will never admit that you’ve won the argument. And, unless you don’t mind continuing to be beaten or robbed, at some point you must just act to stop the crime. In law enforcement, the suspected criminal is arrested before being put on trial; and even at trial the prosecutor addresses his arguments for conviction and sentencing to the judge and jury, not to the accused criminal. Likewise, I’m beginning to think that perhaps the Left err in addressing their arguments to the wealthy financial interests they oppose, rather than simply to the masses, for whose benefit the Left struggles and who ultimately will make the decision.

I suspect that many people feel critical of the government and the direction the government is taking the country and the world, but fail to express such opinions, precisely because they lack confidence in their ability to articulate and defend their views.

● Sometimes when we fail to understand a piece of writing, it’s because it’s unintelligible, or just badly written. It may take considerable time and mental effort to determine whether the lack of understanding is our fault or the fault of the material itself—and making that determination is not always worth the effort. Writers should bear that in mind.

● I believe that Schopenhauer wrote his little piece “Thirty-eight Ways to Win an Argument” not to recommend such tactics, but rather to criticize those—all too many!—who use them.

● Are values objective? Yes and no. The answer to the question whether intrinsic value is possible is objective. (And, specifically, as I’ve shown elsewhere, the [objective] answer is that intrinsic value is impossible.) But our values are (what we value is) subjective (though that such values are subjective, is objectively true).

● 12-10-2003:   In the face of intolerable injustice, change is mandatory . . . peaceful change if possible, violent change if necessary.

● 12-11-2003:   How happy are people in Heaven? Are they all equally happy? Is a person’s happiness in Heaven constant, or fluctuating? Does he ever feel bad, or have a bad day? How unhappy are those in Hell? In Heaven, do people actually interact with one another?—and in Hell? . . . Presumably, people in Heaven don’t interact with people in Hell.

[Later note (12-25-2023): If you’re in Heaven, but your kin are in Hell, don’t you ever get to visit them?]

● 12-15-2003:   Ultimately, we all get the death penalty.

● 12-20-2003:   I’m a philosopher because I wish to produce art, and philosophical writing happens to be the best art I can produce. Thus I might compose music instead if I could write music, but I can’t.

● 12-21-2003:   I heard that Mozart once said that he was a great composer, not because of genius, but rather because of love. But is Mozart the world’s greatest composer because he had the most love? . . . Clearly, Mozart’s logic was not up to the level of his music.

● 12-23-2003:   I suffer from a chronic lack of energy. I live from cup-of-coffee to cup-of-coffee, of which I generally restrict myself to two a day (to avoid developing a tolerance and to avoid urinating excessively). I’ve lately taken to roasting and grinding raw coffee beans for my coffee.

● I just heard a news snippet to the effect that someone urged the Israelis to curb their attacks on the Palestinians and return to peace talks. But I wonder: What the hell are they still “talking” about, after all this time?! It seems to me that, past a certain point, talk becomes an excuse, or a cover, for inaction.

● Science treats of fact; philosophy and mathematics, of truth.

● 12-24-2003:   I’m sick of hearing about obscenely wealthy individuals throwing a few financial crumbs to some pet public or quasi-public institution and being hailed as saints! (Charity is what we do in the absence of justice.)

● If I could murder people and be assured that I’d get away with it, I don’t know whether I’d avail myself of the opportunity (I like to think I wouldn’t, but, to be perfectly honest, I really don’t know). But if I knew I could dispatch the neighbor’s dog without being detected, I would do it without hesitation! Any suffering thereby caused the dog owners would only serve them right, for their inconsiderateness in causing me so much grief!

● 12-27-2003:   I will ultimately suffer the equivalent of sorts of a shortened creative life with the loss of the great bulk of the work I created before the age of thirty-two.

● Five Senses of Distance
        One sense of distance is literal, physical space, as in the four hundred miles between Los Angeles and San Francisco. A second kind of distance is emotional distance, as when we say that two people have (or lack) a close relationship. A third sense of distance is the interval between a goal and performance, as, here, in two senses of distance.

● I’m in the extremely frustrating initial stage of composing a piece on the subject of opportunity wherein I have some rough ideas and notes but no clue how to organize the material, or even how to go about working on it—or even whether I’ll prevail. What I know is that, at least in recent years, which is as far back as I can remember it, I always feel like this at the start of a writing project, almost all of which I think have eventually succeeded.

● 12-28-2003:   Perhaps more apt than “long in the tooth” would be “long in the ear.”

● I’ve made a major breakthrough in my little essay on opportunity! I managed a first sentence, and a first paragraph. And then the material just began falling into place, as if by magic.

● 12-31-2003:   This is a sweet note on which to end the year, putting the final touches on my new little essay, “Opportunity and Capitalism,” as to which, just four short days ago (see above), I had only a few rough ideas written down, without a clue how to proceed, and an intense feeling of frustration. And now the piece is all but done!

2004 >>