2007
● 1-5-2007: Not both A and not-A can constitute evidence for the same proposition. (This is the self-sealing argument fallacy.)
[Later note (4-7-2024): That kind of reasoning is familiar in religious talk. For example, if a man is very ill and he recovers, then God exists and intervened to save him. If, instead, the man dies, then he’s having a better life, with God, in Heaven.]
● 1-10-2007: I have enough confidence in my intelligence to be able to acknowledge when I don’t know or don’t understand, and to admit when I’m wrong.
● 1-19-2007: Senator Hillary Clinton, so careful to say nothing wrong, ends up saying practically nothing.
● 1-21-2007: When I read one philosopher’s note that boredom is, or is caused by, a lack of meaning, I thought he was making too much of it. But later it occurred to me that I’m rarely bored, which I think has to do with my being too busy to feel bored. But being busy comes from feeling a purpose for one’s activity, and purpose is closely connected with meaning (one important definition of meaning is purpose); so perhaps it’s true that boredom centrally involves a lack of meaning.
● 1-29-2007: Misanthropes don’t study anthropology.
● 1-31-2007: Zen, which speaks of the unity of everything, denying a man’s distinctness, overlooks that my consciousness and yours are separate (your death affects you differently than it affects me) and that I can volitionally raise my own arm but not my neighbor’s arm.
● 2-2-2007: By and large, destruction is faster and easier than creation.
● 2-7-2007: We can make rational arguments as to what we should do, insofar as we recognize that the suppositions (and hence the conclusions as well) are grounded in human nature, in our own preferences, and not in metaphysics.
● 2-14-2007: On President Bush’s increasing the number of U.S. troops in Iraq: Going faster in the same direction does not constitute a change of direction.
● 2-18-2007: To those who say that the United States’ leaving Iraq would be to “cut and run”; it is cut, but not cut and run: it’s cut our losses.
● All men are philosophers; but some are better philosophers than others.
● At the heart of my metaphysics is the juxtaposition of actuality and possibility: pictured somewhat like a sphere floating in space (the sphere being the actual, and the space being the possible), the infinitude of the first being to the infinitude of the second as the finite is to the infinite. This conception is the essential engine, for example, of my view of the (physical) universe; of my argument against reincarnation; of my argument for the impossibility of knowledge, free will, and God; and, most important of all (so to speak), of my argument for the impossibility of intrinsic value.
● It seems to me that the clearest instance of true discreteness is consciousness—the distinctness of one percipient from another.
● The grand project of my life is to write as well and as much as possible (and sufficiently so as to be remembered by posterity as a great writer).
● The distinction between creativity in constructing an argument and rationality in checking it for error is, in practice, problematic. An argument may be well known and accepted for centuries. But then someone comes along and finds a flaw, which no one else had been able to do. There is such a thing as creative rationality.
● My right and left brain are perfectly integrated and balanced. I practice creative rationality.
● 2-25-2007: “Tomorrow never comes.” And yet, today is yesterday’s tomorrow.
● 2-28-2007: The philosopher (ideally) combines the functions of judge and lawyer: judge-like, he seeks the truth; lawyer-like, he argues for it when he thinks he’s found it. And if at any time he becomes convinced that the truth lies elsewhere, then (like the judge and the lawyer with integrity) he accordingly revises his argument (and perhaps his conclusion).
● 3-5-2007: The noble lion, on the verge of starvation, prays to God to save his life and allow him to catch the gazelle. The innocent gazelle, on the verge of being devoured, prays to God to save his life and allow him to evade the lion.
● Size is not absolute, except for the categories of zero, infinitesimal, finite, and infinite (there is absolute nothingness, infinitesimal, finitude, and infinitude).
● 3-13-2007: Why do we prefer certain different sorts of food at different times of day?
● 3-15-2007: I aim for a lapidary writing style.
● An alternate version of one of my arguments in my essay “Thoughts on the Big Bang Theory”:
Footnote Two
I’ve recently heard Heinrich Olbers’s argument that the universe could not be infinite, that there could not be infinitely many stars, because, if there were infinitely many stars, we would see, wherever we might look in the sky, a solid sheet of light, corresponding to stars at all points in the visual field.
Preliminarily, let’s clarify what Olbers is saying. He’s saying that only finitely many stars exist. He seems to suggest that this means a finite universe (finite space). The connection between the number of stars and the size of the universe (of space) makes sense. A finite number of stars would probably mean a finite universe, for this reason: A finite number of stars would necessarily be confined within a finite space (see my essay “Thoughts on the Big Bang Theory”), and it’s extremely unlikely that, in an infinite space, stars would exist in one finite area—and nowhere else. Conversely, an infinite number of stars would mean an infinite universe, because an infinite number of stars could not fit within a finite space.
Olbers’s assertion that infinitely many stars would produce, for an observer, a solid wall of light, is wrong, as follows. Imagine a (finitely large) tire inflated with a certain (finite) amount of air (say, to a pressure of thirty pounds per square inch), and you put another identical tire similarly inflated next to it. You have twice as much enclosed air; but, because you also have twice as much space or volume, the density of air remains the same (thirty pounds per square inch). So, too, with our finite cosmos (the entity created by the Big Bang), with its finite number of stars and finite amount of light; if you duplicated its space and content, you would not have, in any given volume of space, twice as much (or any more) light. Nor if you had ten such entities would you have, in any given space, ten times as much (or any more) light. And neither if you had infinitely many of them would you have, in any certain region, infinitely much (or any more) light. Which, however, is what Olbers’s reasoning implies: that, if you have an infinite number of finite volumes of space, each containing a finite quantum of light; in virtue of there being infinitely many of them, each finite volume would then somehow contain a greater amount of light.
One could say, therefore, that Olbers’s argument’s flaw is, in effect, to confuse density with (overall) amount.
From a slightly different aspect, let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that there are infinitely many stars. The amount of light in a (finite) region of space around the Earth is either finite or infinite. If it’s finite, the nearest stars account for a finite portion of Earth’s light, and they account for more of it than do stars farther away. If you extinguished the nearest stars, and then you extinguished the next nearest stars, and then the next nearest ones; as that process continued, Earth’s finite starlight would progressively diminish, until hardly any starlight was visible, in which case Olbers’s conclusion would be false (infinitely many stars, but a dim night sky). If, on the other hand, the starlight reaching us were infinite, the source would be an infinite number of stars, distributed throughout an infinite universe. Consider Zeno’s paradox. There, you’ll recall, Zeno observes that an arrow traveling to its target must go an infinite number of sub-distances (half the distance to the target; then half the remaining distance; then half of that, and so forth). He argues that, since the arrow must cross an infinite number of finite distances, it would take an infinite amount of time to reach the target, and hence can never reach it—implying that the distance between the arrow and its target is infinite. Olbers’s argument has the same structure as Zeno’s: instead of an infinite number of smaller and smaller distances, it’s an infinite number of smaller and smaller brightnesses. And just as Zeno concludes that the fact he cites adds up somehow to an infinite distance, Olbers concludes that the fact he cites adds up somehow to an infinite amount of light reaching Earth. Zeno’s conclusion that the distance between the arrow and its target is infinite, is false (the distance is finite). Because Olbers’s argument has the same structure as Zeno’s, and Zeno’s conclusion is false, so too is Olbers’s conclusion.
Postscript. What we’ve proven (if we’ve proven anything), is not that there are infinitely many stars, but merely that Olbers has not disproven it.
● The problem with men putting in their “two cents’ worth” is that it often takes more than two cents’ worth of time to read or hear it, let alone to digest it.
● 3-19-2007: On the desirability of simplicity: We should simplify the over-complicated, and complicate the oversimplified.
● 3-23-2007: If “love is everywhere” . . . Where is hate?, anger?, envy? Would love still live on Earth if all sentient life here ceased? Is there just as much love on Jupiter as on Earth, in a stone as in a lover’s heart? If so, wherever love is or isn’t, it’s nothing we should want.
● 3-25-2007: In my work I aim to combine truth and beauty.
● I write, therefore I am.
● One hundred people buy lottery tickets, and each prays he’ll win. The winner then lectures the other ninety-nine on how to pray effectively.
● 3-29-2007: Strictly speaking, reason and faith are not necessarily inconsistent, in that reason governs the relationship (consistency) between propositions, but, except for logical truths and falsehoods, not their content. (On the other hand, the two are consistent only when defined strictly.)
● 4-5-2007: Two glib (and facetious) answers to a glib question: Is it better to be loved or feared? Answer one: It’s better to be loved, because love is preferable to fear. Answer two: It’s better to be feared by the bad and loved by the good.
● I value my creative productivity. I enjoy and appreciate and seek my happiness; but I don’t value it.
● 4-9-2007: I used to enjoy the sport of boxing (as a spectator, not as a participant); but now I don’t enjoy it, because I think it’s barbaric. Why should that opinion defeat my enjoyment of it? Whatever the logic of it is, that’s the effect. Perhaps the cognitive dissonance becomes so great as to negate the enjoyment.
● 4-13-2007: There is no R in “Washington”; though starting the name of the United States’ capitol with “war” is fitting.
● Nietzsche’s keen observation “A thought comes when it will, not when I will” neatly capsules the deterministic argument against free will.
● I might be reluctant to commit suicide: I’m the only me I’ve got.
● 4-17-2007: Intuition is the glue that binds the steps of deduction, the ground in which the steppingstones of deduction are set.
● 4-20-2007:
Premise 1: John has this.
Premise 2: John has that.
Premise 3: John has the other.
————————————————————-
Conclusion: John has this, that, and the other.
● 4-25-2007: It seems to me that the assertion that God is love, or that God is everywhere and everything, bespeaks, not so much the existence of a separate entity (God), but instead merely a description of or an attitude toward all else, perhaps life, or human life; as, for example, that it’s sacred, or valuable, or good. But in the attempt to expand the concept of God to the greatest possible degree, it’s been diluted to the point of meaninglessness.
. . . If God is love, is the Devil hate?
[Later note (4-13-2022): But if God is everywhere and everything, then God is the Devil, too.]
● 4-26-2007: My philosophical triumphs include proof of the impossibility of intrinsic value; and, now, proof of the impossibility of God!
● 4-29-2007: Only within the last two weeks did I discover why it’s impossible that God have free will. I first asked the question on 4-23-2006. I recently revised that note accordingly (the final draft of the argument appears as the last item in the 4-23-2006 installment), though I now wish I had left the original entry untouched and written the new argument separately, so that the evolution of my thought could be seen more clearly. I consider this discovery/argument a significant tile in the mosaic of my philosophy: it not only answers the question whether God could have free will, but also provides a further, and a more universal, argument for the impossibility of free will; and, in a sense (perhaps just by supplying a second reason), crystalizes my argument for the impossibility of God.
● I’ve recently become an atheist of an even stronger sort: I disbelieve not only in the existence of God, but also in the possibility of God.
● 5-1-2007: The bigger the entity of which you’re a part, the smaller the part of it you are.
● 5-5-2007: It’s common for a person involved in an argument to ask his opponent, “Could you be wrong?” Strictly speaking, the question is nonsensical. If you’re wrong, then, of course, you could be wrong (you are wrong). But if you happen to be right (even if you don’t know it or don’t have a good basis for your assertion) . . . could you be wrong?
● 5-6-2007: I’m virtually doubt free. I’m utterly convinced that it’s necessarily true that twice two is four, but also that I cannot know it . . ..
[Later note (9-2-2023): What does the material in that second sentence have to do with being doubt free?]
[Later note (10-2-2023): I think my point was this. Usually, an inability to know is associated with doubt. I was observing that, with me, it’s the opposite—that, though I believe I cannot know, it’s precisely because I have so comprehensive a philosophical understanding of (the strict impossibility of) knowledge that my understanding of these matters feels so firm and clear.]
● 5-11-2007: I’m at once a philosopher and an artist; my work—my best work—represents the intersection of truth and beauty . . . philosophical content in artistic form.
● 5-19-2007: Buddhism is a quasi-religious, quasi-philosophical mishmash of largely arbitrary doctrines and declarations. . . . The foregoing comment was made before reading the Philosophy Club material on the subject. Now, I agree with Alan Watts that Buddhism makes more sense as a sort of psychology, or psychotherapy, than as a philosophy.
● 5-20-2007: Don’t hide something so well that you can’t find it!
● To the Christian who believes in responding to violence by “turning the other cheek,” I would ask this: Do you think we should abolish the police force and the courts, and let men commit murder and rape with impunity? (If we do so, those cheeks of yours are going to get pretty sore!)
● 5-26-2007: I’ve come to the conclusion that Buddhism is a religion, not a philosophy or a psychology, because Buddhism is nonsensical, which befits only a religion.
[Later note (7-12-2022): That doesn’t follow; some philosophies are nonsensical. Perhaps I should say “which better befits a religion.”]
● The Buddha said that his teachings could not be understood rationally. I agree, in that Buddhism is irrational.
[Later note (2021): On the other hand, the conclusion that a certain thing is irrational is a product of the rational mind. The rational mind judges the question of rationality. In that endeavor, it will adjudge some things nonrational, other things rational, and still other things irrational. . . . In other words, even if Buddhism is irrational, it (its irrationality) can still be “understood rationally.”]
● I’m very proud of the essay I’ve just written on Buddhism (“Four Critiques of Buddhism”). I wrote it more quickly than any other significant piece I can recall: just six days from rough notes to polished work (during which time, of course, I had to do many other things as well). But minor polishing continues. As of this moment (6-1-2007), I feel the piece is done, done, done. So, thirteen days from rough notes to fully polished work. Considering the result, that speed of composition, for me, is rather amazing.
● My life’s mission is to mine the gold mine that’s my mind.
● We’re in the same state before we’re born as after we die: the state of nonexistence. Our chances of being reborn are the same as our chances were of being born: infinitesimal. If the likelihood were zero, we would not have been born. But as to the prospect of your coming again . . . don’t count on it.
● 6-9-2007: In the typical life, happiness is but an oasis.
● There but for me goes the grace of God.
● 6-10-2007: A set of suits of clothes, or any sets of identical household items, will last longer if you use them one at a time, rather than using all of them in turns. That way (one at a time), you’ll discover what you’re doing that causes the thing to break or wear out, and use that knowledge to make all the other ones in the set last longer. For example, I had a suit that I wore exclusively. The suit became unusable when a fray appeared in the front of the pants just below the belt line. I worked out that the damage was caused by my repeatedly pulling the car seatbelt over that area, so now I avoid the problem by placing a thick cloth across my lap to protect the pants from seatbelt wear and tear. (Had I instead worn all the suits in rotation, then, by the time I noticed the problem, all of them would have been—irreparably—damaged.)
● 6-16-2007: In general, the shorter the piece of writing, the more compact the expression.
● 6-22-2007: The Buddha’s own biography seems to contradict his dogma, thus: We’re told that the Buddha, a prince, lived an insular life confined to the palace, until he ventured out as a young man, whereupon he was shocked to learn of suffering, in the world outside. Presumably, that difference within versus without the palace was attributable, not to enlightenment or non-enlightenment, but rather to a difference in material circumstances—wealth (inside the palace) versus poverty (outside).
● Happiness is fungible.
● The proposition that man was created in the image of God, may be flattering to man; but it’s not terribly flattering to God.
● Ultimately, no one knows how he does what he does, for such would involve an (impossible) infinite regress: knowing how we know how we do it, and so on.
● 6-25-2007: The difference between our conduct and that of the evildoer (now, there’s a presumption!) is perhaps not so much our lack of bad elements, as it is the absence in the bad person or in his life of certain elements we possess that neutralize the common antisocial forces or discourage them from coming to the fore.
● Well, I significantly reworked the first paragraph of my “Four Critiques of Buddhism” (which at least puts an asterisk after my earlier statement that I composed the piece in just thirteen days’ time).
● 6-28-2007: Experience, energy, and effectiveness are positive or negative traits in a politician depending on whether his intentions and policies are good or bad (for example, we would wish to enhance Gandhi’s effectiveness, but to reduce Hitler’s).
● 6-30-2007: A man’s feeling toward humanity is largely a function of his feeling about his own standing within it.
● 7-1-2007: There once was a country in which, for no good reason, an official rifle squad shot dead a certain number of Black citizens every month. One national political party, the “Affirmative Actionists,” fought for the racial integration of the victim group; another party, the “Socialists,” fought for an end to the killings altogether.
● Perhaps it’s well that nothing is intrinsically good or bad, so to speak, because it seems that, wherever sentience is, suffering predominates.
● 7-9-2007: With my unreliable car, every time I drive for more than a few miles on the freeway, I feel like Charles Lindbergh must have felt crossing the Atlantic—praying that the motor keeps running.
● I think the theories are absurd that suggest that the United States government planned and executed the 11 September 2001 attack on the World Trade Center. I don’t put it past them in terms of their ethics; I put it past them in terms of their competence (and in their ability to keep the secret).
● What does it mean for a footrace winner to thank God for his victory? Does it imply that, without God giving him a special advantage in the race, he would have lost, that his opponent was actually the better runner?
[Later note (1-8-2022): Or it could mean simply that he’s glad that God saw fit to allow the best runner (him) to win the race . . . had God been annoyed with him, God could have made him lose.]
● 7-19-2007: Buddhism is sour grapes writ large: The Buddhist says, “Because they are ultimately impermanent, those things that men find desirable are really not worth having.”
[Later note (4-7-2024): According to Buddhism, what is worth having?]
● 7-30-2007: How can I truly be angry about others’ inferiority? My superiority, in which I take so much pride, depends on it.
● 8-2-2007: I just realized that the term “on the blink” probably comes from the flickering of a lightbulb, the condition immediately preceding the bulb’s complete failure.
● 8-6-2007: I’m depressed and anxious. I spent nearly three thousand dollars, all the money I had, to send out a solicitation-mailer to about 4,350 plaintiff personal injury lawyers in Los Angeles regarding an advertising arrangement (1-800-SUE-THEM.com). I got exactly thirteen responses, to which I sent proposals. None of them called me again; I’ve started calling them, but of the two spoken to thus far, both have thoroughly rejected my proposal. I’ve painted myself into a corner in my life. I have no savings, and only a meager income that’s grossly insufficient to support myself. I’m being primarily supported by my father, who pays the rent and, from time to time, lends (gives) me money for my economic shortfall on the rest of my expenses. He’s very old and in precarious health. I have no one else in my life. When he dies, I could be literally out on the street, everything, all the writing I’ve done, and all the writing I could do in the future, lost. Everything lost. Suddenly, it occurs to me that for so long now I’ve existed in delusion, indulging in the luxury of philosophizing and writing, to the almost total exclusion of my longer-term survival, counting on this legal advertising venture (1-800-SUE-THEM.com) to save me, putting all the rest of my spare time into developing and pursuing that. And now I’m faced with the horrible realization that it probably won’t work, and I may have run out of time. I took a high-stakes gamble, and I may have lost. I’m in pain.
(8-7-2007) I’ve been badly shaken. And yet it may be a good thing, in having finally woken me from my self-indulgent complacency, and spurred me to action. Part of the galvanization process is to make the dread of impending doom caused by our inaction far more painful than the needed actions themselves.
● 8-10-2007: Dr. Wayne Dyer: New Age pablum.
● 8-15-2007: Sometimes I think I would like to be a bird, so that I could fly. But then it occurs to me that, of all the bodily gifts of all the creatures of the world, by far the most wondrous and enviable is man’s brain.
● 8-20-2007: The question, Could there be less (than there is)? seems essentially the same question as, Could there be nothing? (If something could vanish, or cease to ever have been, so too could everything.)
[Later note (2021): “Could there be nothing?” Is that a philosophy question, or a science question?]
● 8-22-2007: What language does God speak?
[Later note (2021): He’s omnilingual.]
● 8-23-2007: In one of his lectures, whose title I think is Not What Should Be, but What Is, Alan Watts contradicts himself. He starts out saying that we’re not in control of anything, but toward the end of the lecture asserts that each of us “causes” the universe. Another problem in the lecture is that, from the observation that we lack free will, he infers the nonexistence of individuals, which of course doesn’t follow. On some level, in some way, we bring about certain effects; is Mozart to be given no more credit for his music than I am?, or than his pet dog is (if Mozart had a dog)? And even dismissing any notion of free will, we’re still individuals in our experience. It’s metaphysically, absolutely true that experience comes in individual packages: it’s experienced by individuals. Even if the content of the experience is the same, it’s happening to me, to you . . . and when I die, it will no longer be happening to me. And if everyone dies (and we’re not replaced by other individuals), then no one experiences anything—there’s no experience.
● 8-25-2007: Irish coffee . . . so you can get drunk and sober up at the same time.
● If a man wishes he could fly like an eagle; it may be that, had there been no eagles, he would not want to fly at all. A particular inclination does not necessarily translate to a more general one. (??)
● 8-26-2007: Christ is God, Jr.
● 8-31-2007: Interesting week. I took a job as a real estate finance trainee/telemarketer; and I created the next generation of my 1-800-SUE-THEM.com flyer. I’m very pleased with the new flyer, a significant advance over the previous one; and the execution of the concept—and a concept is only as good as its best execution—is excellent. This is all the more amazing, considering how good the prior version was. It was my best version for a very long time; I thought it was unlikely that I’d be able to improve it. Indeed, perhaps a function of the law of diminishing returns, the better a piece of work becomes, the harder it is to further improve it.
● A concept is only as good as its best execution; a good idea that doesn’t work is a contradiction in terms.
[Later note (5-30-2022): Yes, but . . . a concept is only as good as its best possible execution; but how do you know that your best execution yet, is the best one possible? I often think my essay is the final, perfect version; then a month later I revise it again . . ..]
● 9-3-2007: Ultimately, the only absolute, true negative desideratum is pain. Every other supposed negative is merely the lack of a positive. For example, ignorance is the absence of knowledge. There are no negative values of it. (But what of foolishness and delusion; might a man not rather be dead than a fool? . . . Answer: not if he could also be happy.) There are certain quasi-negatives, in that certain things go in a negative direction—tending to reduce good, instead of enhancing it. Also, we commonly adjust to our present state, taking it as the given, the starting or neutral point; and we deem an improvement in it good; a deterioration of it, bad.
● 9-10-2007: Bush’s argument that our involvement in the war in Iraq should be determined by the generals is fallacious: The determination how to fight a war may be at least largely a military one; but the decision whether to be at war at all is a political one, to which latter decision military analysis is but one relevant factor among many.
● My boss, Jerry Paradise, told me the story of a woman diagnosed with terminal cancer and given eighteen days to live by her physicians; the woman prayed to God to remove the cancer and she’s still alive, twenty-eight years later. He implied that this proves the existence of God and the power of prayer. But physicians don’t know enough about cancer to be able to cure it; and they frequently misdiagnose it. The story is far more simply explained by human error than by supernatural miracle. Besides which, why should God intervene to save a person from death if he prays, but not if he doesn’t pray? God’s answering prayer implies His rewarding prayer, which in turn entails His punishing the lack of prayer, which, in my book, makes God despicable. It’s a good thing He’s not real.
Those who attribute their good fortune to God’s intervention, do so inconsistently, in that they never ascribe their losses to divine intervention. For example, a boxer ascribes his triumph to God; but next week, when he loses, he doesn’t attribute his loss to God’s intervention in his opponent’s behalf. Rather, it was his own bad luck or poor strategy or training.
● 9-11-2007: On the Christian prejudice against homosexuality: Christian hatred of love . . . ironic.
● 9-12-2007: If God actually existed, He’d have much to answer for.
● 9-13-2007: Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh said in an interview that terrorists commit terrorism because of their “wrong perceptions,” and that we can get them (the terrorists) to change their perceptions, not by bombing them (the terrorists) and shooting at them, but rather by sitting down with them and “deeply listening” to them. How, though, can you deeply listen to someone if you come to him with the conviction that his perceptions are wrong and with the purpose of changing his perceptions?
● 9-16-2007: Whereas bad acts detract from a man’s morality, or his character; bad works do not detract from his oeuvre, which is constituted just of his good work. I completely identify the value of my life and myself with that of my oeuvre.
● Philosophy Club meeting; topic: “Friendship.”
● Tentative, rough Notes on Friendship:
○ One author writes that a certain consideration explains, but does not justify, friendship. Whence the need to “justify” it? Is human nature and human need not sufficient in that regard? Do we feel we must justify eating, beyond the fact of its satisfaction of our biological need to do so in order to live, and our instinct and wish to survive (and the pleasure we get from consuming delicious food)?
○ Friendship involves mutual caring; it’s like the social contract theory of ethics at the individual level. We care for the friend for his sake, but implicitly on condition that the caring be reciprocal.
○ A friendship is a relationship between two persons; if one changes so much that he becomes a “different person,” the friendship can no longer exist. (And how much would the relationship have to change so as to no longer be the same relationship?) So the topic of friendship is connected with the topic of what is, or what constitutes, an individual, or an entity.
● 9-18-2007: To reduce crime and violence, we must make people’s lives better, so they’ll have less to gain by committing crime and more to lose in getting caught.
● 9-23-2007: Derogating education is . . . ignorant.
● Could God commit suicide?
● 9-24-2007: It’s not enough merely to feel you are actualizing your potential; you must also feel satisfied with your potential, relative to that of other men. (For example, you’re more likely to want to cultivate your writing skill if you think you could be a great writer than if you think you could be only a mediocre one.)
● The Bush administration is a peculiar combination of evil and stupidity.
● 9-28-2007: Produced the new version of my 1-800-Sue-Them flyer, adding the “.com”; this was a great advance over the prior version. It’s come a long way. Around now, I put up my first website, also seeking an investor for 1-800-Sue-Them.com.
● 10-3-2007: I know the back of my hand like . . ..
● 10-4-2007: I quit my job as a real estate finance telemarketer (Paradise Financial Group). It lasted for about one month, part time.
● 10-6-2007: We extol risk taking but despise the risk loser.
● 10-17-2007: The perfect Buddhist is a dead man: without desire, and without suffering.
● There is considerable truth in Buddhism’s idea that desire is the cause of suffering. The doctrine falls short, however, insofar as desire is likewise essential to joy and all else we value. In this context you could substitute life for desire. Life involves both the good and the bad. You can’t eliminate the bad alone; it (the bad) is the price we pay for the good.
[Later note (2-17-2024): That’s not true theoretically, but it is practically.]
● 10-19-2007: Buddhists urge meditation as a break from thinking. I would be afraid, however, that, if I stopped thinking, I might not know to resume thinking, or I might not remember where I left off, so to speak. In other words, I’d be afraid that an interruption in thinking might be permanent. Moreover, I disagree with this Buddhist doctrine, in that I consider thinking very healthy and productive. It has been so for me.
● 10-21-2007: Philosophy Club meeting; topic: “world government.”
● It is said that the purpose of world governance is to end war. But an ultimate purpose cannot consist in the absence of something. On second thought, why must its purpose be “the ultimate purpose”? The purpose of a pest control company is to eliminate pests—a useful and appropriate purpose, though not the ultimate one.
World governance is desirable for the same reasons that national governance is desirable: to keep the peace and distribute resources, for example. Its feasibility is suggested by such organizations as the United Nations and the European Union, and I think it will eventually be compelled by the increasing ability of smaller groups to threaten the world’s very survival, with nuclear weapons, environmental destruction, and so forth.
● 10-26-2007: A wildfire burns four of five houses on a block. If God had intervened, either He blessed the owner of the unburned house, or He punished the others. The religious person chooses the former interpretation, because it makes him feel good.
● 10-28-2007: This was a productive weekend. Among other things, I revised my essay “Why the Left Should Vote.”
● 11-3-2007: Regarding the essay-revision note of 10-28-2007, above; as usual, it wasn’t quite that fast. The revisions continued through yesterday (11-2-2007). Now it’s finished (ha-ha).
● Is God religious? (Well, presumably, He’s not an atheist.)
● How could God be all good, if His creation is a mixture of good and bad (and He’s omnipotent)?
● A good death is part of a good life; dying well is part of living well. On second thought, that’s not true: You could have a good life and then a miserable death. You could have accomplished all your goals (or have accomplished enough to be satisfied with what you accomplished), and then die a painful death. Or you could have many regrets about your life, but die well, experiencing peace and euphoria.
● 11-13-2007: Regarding “instrumental rationality”; a quick, first impression. I don’t believe in it, since it generally concerns modes of living, and the living of life is not a rational affair. [Later note (2021): That statement must at least be qualified. See the 2-20-2021 entries, below.]
● 11-18-2007: When you try to analyze it, fairness is a problematic concept. Why is it fair for us to live a privileged life, when the vast majority of humanity live in misery? Is it fair that some are born with greater intelligence than others? Is it fair that some are born, though infinitely times as many potential others will never be at all? If you could design it from scratch, what would a truly fair world look like?
● 11-27-2007: Sef Krell told me that he’d be in a financial position to act on my proposal (legal advertising with 1-800-Sue-Them) in three- or four-months’ time.
● 12-3-2007: What sense does it make to speak of discrete miracles, when all that is, by the very fact that it exists, is itself a miracle?
● 12-4-2007: How appropriate that the United States’ official emblematic animal is a rapacious predator!
● If philosophy is the love of wisdom, is the greatest philosopher the one who most loves it (wisdom, that is), or who most acquires it and expresses it? (I would suppose it’s the latter.)
● 12-23-2007: I recently heard the argument advanced that belief in God comes naturally, as the default state, so to speak, whereas atheism or agnosticism must be learned. This seems counterintuitive. And it further seems to me that the counterintuitive position bears the burden of proof. Nonetheless, here’s a consideration that supports the reverse assertion; which consideration is that persons by and large take up the specific religions of their parents: most Christians have Christian children; Jews have Jewish children; Moslems, Moslem children. And the same for monotheism versus polytheism, etcetera. I suspect that the first humans did not “believe in God.” That concept first appeared much later. (Besides which, the first such belief was belief, not in God, but in gods [plural].)
● Religion seems to me the very opposite of spirituality, in this way: Central to spirituality is the feeling of wonder and awe—of mystery. But fundamental to religion is the fear of mystery and the attempt to eliminate it. With any deep, open mystery; the secularist savors it, whereas the religionist frantically runs to plug it up with an explanation (to wit, God). How did the world come about? To me it’s a wonderful mystery. But when the question confronts the religionist, he quickly answers—God; and stops, completely satisfied with his solution. . . . Religion is precooked, instant spirituality for the unimaginative.
● 12-30-2007: Coffee is happy juice.
● An artist is not as bad as his worst work; rather, he’s as good as his best work.
[Later note (4-8-2024): A criminal is as bad as his worst crime; an artist is as good as his best art.]
● 12-31-2007: All in all, it’s been a good year. I created or finished a number of important pieces of writing (especially “Why be Moral?”; “Four Critiques of Buddhism”; and the third revision of “Thoughts on the Big Bang Theory”) and I made significant progress on my 1-800-SUE-THEM advertising endeavor.
● Desire is a more definitive fact than satisfaction (I can more easily tell what I want in life than the extent to which I’m satisfied).