2008
● 1-20-2008: If, as John Donne says, every man’s death diminishes me; does every man’s birth enhance me, so that I slowly grow as the population expands? That might explain the rise in the incidence of obesity.
● 1-21-2008: Professor Helen E. Fisher, discussing the question of monogamy versus non-monogamy . . . “identifies three different brain systems that humans have evolved for mating purposes: the sex drive, romantic love, and the sense of attachment. Fisher goes on to claim that these distinct systems can interact or act separately from one another.”
I think those three elements or systems are overlapping and closely interrelated, not distinct. To begin with, romantic love is largely based on the sex drive. The two feelings are often directed at the same person. Surely, heterosexuals, for example, don’t have romantic feelings for members of the same sex. And, regarding the desire for attachment, if you have a satisfying relationship, you naturally want the relationship to continue . . ..
[Later note (4-9-2024): That’s true. But, with a certain person, you might want just one of those activities. For example, you might want to have casual sex with someone with whom you’re not in love, and with whom you don’t want a long relationship . . . which can be problematic when, to have casual sex with someone, you lead her to believe that you want the other activities with her as well.]
● 1-22-2008: Early man’s survival depended on his procreating; modern man’s survival depends on his restraining his procreating.
● 2-14-2008: If (as Alan Watts asserts) the physical world can be described ultimately only in terms of form, and not substance (that is, if there’s no such thing as matter), then in virtue of what is the physical world physical?
● “Time is money” implies that money is the ultimate desideratum—in any case, more valuable than time. It implies that we should exchange all of our time for a sufficient amount of money; that, in other words, for enough money, we would end our lives right now. But surely no amount of money could induce us to do so. “Time is money,” therefore, is false, or at least very problematic. . . . How much of your life would you sacrifice for how much money? (Well, I’d give up the next hour for a million dollars . . ..)
[Later note (4-3-2022): To me, it’s the other way round: money is a means, not an end. Money is important because money is time. With enough money to live on, I could spend my time pursuing my own projects, instead of working for other people.]
● 2-15-2008: Does existence include that which was . . . such that a time could never come when nothing is, because you cannot undo what was?
● 2-24-2008: Philosophy Club meeting. Topic: “Changing one’s mind.”
● Is there truth? Yes. “Twice two is four” is true.
● 2-26-2008 (Tuesday): Last night, for the first time in many years, I actually slept through the entire night, over nine hours; I was awakened by the alarm clock at six o’clock this morning.
● 3-4-2008: Regarding the entries of 10-28-2007 and 11-3-2007; just within the last week, I’ve made a number of significant modifications to the piece (“Why the Left Should Vote”), including a radical rewrite of the third paragraph.
● Today as I was taking a walk, it occurred to me simply to think to myself, at any given time, “This is what I have . . . this is what I have.” I would calmly and soberly accept myself and my situation, and consider, What will I do with what I have. (. . . Among other things, I believe I should walk more often.)
● 3-8-2008: (As of now) the last change made to “Why the Left Should Vote” was made Wednesday evening, 5 March 2008. (Does making and then undoing a change count as making a change?)
● 3-9-2008: lf God created everything, therefore He created Himself, because everything includes God. But that’s impossible (that God created Himself). On the other hand, if God always existed, then it’s possible for something to have always existed, without being created. In which case, why couldn’t that status (always having existed without being created) apply also to the world, or the universe? If God is everywhere, where was he before he created everything else? (Nowhere?) If God could exist by himself, without anything else; why couldn’t everything else exist without God?
● The notion that a proposition cannot be meaningful unless potentially there’s evidence that might disprove it, is problematic; for there’s no evidence that might disprove “twice two is four” and yet it’s true, absolutely true. But perhaps the contention is true as to contingent propositions.
● It seems obvious to me why there’s a Holy Trinity: so that there’s never a decisional deadlock; there’s always one vote to break a tie. (Of course, the same result would be accomplished with just one, or with any odd number. All right, I guess I don’t know why, after all.)
● 3-11-2008: I sometimes get the feeling that Buddhists, seeking to live in conformity with “the eternal way,” are attempting somehow to escape mortality and live forever. But we’re stuck here; there’s no escaping our mortality; we’re here for a short time, and then die forever.
● 3-13-2008: The topic for the 16 March 2008 Philosophy Club is: “Can you be rationally persuaded to convert to a religion?” My initial answer: No, because religion is, one, nonrational, and, two, false. If you think belief in God is rational, is polytheism rational as well? What of belief in witches and goblins? (If so, why?) In his article “Religious Epistemology,” Professor Kelly James Clark makes a case, a fairly good one, I think, that very few of our (quite reasonable) beliefs actually satisfy the strict, classical requirements of rationality: that the belief be self-evident, evident to the senses, incorrigible, or logically deducible from such fundamental propositions. In this view, the only beliefs that are truly irrational are ones inconsistent with obviously true statements, inconsistent assertions like “two plus two does not equal four.” Which supports my foregoing statement that religion is nonrational, not irrational. In light of that understanding, it occurs to me that perhaps we nonbelievers should strike this deal with believers: We won’t call your belief irrational if you won’t claim that it’s rational (that is, demonstrable, rationally compulsory). More generally, perhaps the focus of philosophy should be, not whether a given belief is rational, but simply which side has the better reasoning; not the rationality of propositions, but the quality of arguments.
But just where does the concept of the nonrational fit in? Perhaps we could define the rational as based on reason; the irrational as inconsistent with reason; and the nonrational as neither based on reason nor contradicted by it. The classification in this regard of certain propositions and arguments may be unclear, and even a mere matter of judgment or opinion.
[Later note (2021): My conclusion that religion is nonrational, may be wrong. In my piece “The Impossibility of Knowledge, Free Will, and God” I argue that God is logically impossible. Since belief in God is fundamental to religion, would that (the impossibility of God) not make religion (at least when it’s interpreted literally) irrational? . . . On the other hand, if a person doesn’t understand and agree with my argument for God’s impossibility, then, perhaps, by Clark’s definition, my thesis about God would not be self-evident, and so such a person’s belief in God would not count as irrational.]
[Later note (2-13-2022): But wait. Does that mean that an absurd belief is not irrational, as long as the believer doesn’t understand its absurdity?]
● 3-18-2008: The supposition that before the Big Bang there was nothing, violates the law of the conservation of energy, according to which, energy can be neither created nor destroyed.
● 3-19-2008: Religion comes down to this: If I’m feeling bad today, but there’s no readily apparent reason for it, I can either say “I don’t know why” or suppose that the man in the moon put a curse on me.
● 3-21-2008: Today I finished a brief piece in response to last Sunday’s (3-16-2008) Philosophy Club guest speaker, regarding the rationality of religion. I’m very pleased with it. Here it is:
At the 16 March 2008 meeting of the Philosophy Club, guest speaker Professor Juan Herrero advanced this argument (I paraphrase):
Like everything that is, the universe as a whole had a beginning, before which there was nothing. Something cannot come from nothing—except by magic. Therefore, the cosmos was created by an all-powerful magic being. At this, I asked Professor Herrero the following questions. If all things must be engendered, who made the magic being who made the universe? Or, if the magic being always existed, couldn’t the cosmos, too, always have existed? In response to which queries, Professor Herrero explained that the metaphysical laws that govern reality do not govern the world of magic, and so in reality (or rather in magicland) the great magical being who created the universe always was . . . even when there was nothing, before the advent of something.
Professor Herrero went on to insist that his argument is rational. How so? Well, in the magic realm, logic works in mysterious ways.
● 3-24-2008: Is religion irrational? Well, I’m prepared to say religion is not irrational, if we can call it nonrational, or a-rational. But as to arguments purporting to prove religious beliefs, I find them absurd, an insult to my intelligence . . . and, frankly, irrational. How does one rationally argue against the assertion that the universe was created by magic?! When challenged by the religious to come up with a better explanation, we may respond, “I can’t explain it; but I’m pretty sure your explanation is wrong.”
● 3-25-2008: “Supernatural” is a word we use in connection with the mysterious to enable ourselves to feel as if we understand it. Of course, our ignorance is thereby just compounded, because we still don’t understand, only now we think we do.
● It seems to me that cosmological arguments for the existence of God ultimately come down to “I can’t explain it; therefore, it must be God.” Which leap strikes me as transparently irrational. What’s wrong with the simple, elegant, intellectually honest “I don’t know”?
● “God” is a convenient stopper to plug holes in our understanding.
● We admire risk takers . . . but just when they win. Those who risk and lose, we despise along with the countless other luckless souls.
● 4-6-2008: Life in general is long; life for the individual organism is short.
● Religion is anti-spiritual; it blunts the sense of wonder by purporting to explain (but not actually explaining) the mysterious.
● 4-8-2008: One way perhaps in which religion is socially destructive is that it restricts our flexibility and creativity in finding means to solve our problems or to improve our situation. For example, if you believe the Christian Bible is the final, definitive word of God; you may look just to the ten commandments, when what’s needed is an eleventh or twelfth rule of action or of analysis.
● 4-10-2008: Love of man cannot be based on belief in God. Love arises directly and spontaneously, not from being commanded to love, or from feeling somehow that we should love.
● 4-12-2008: The statement “If I can do it, anyone can do it” evinces a lack of empathy for those of lesser ability.
● 4-13-2008: In the movies, a man will sometimes say to a woman, “You’re everything I’ve ever wanted.” And I think to myself, didn’t he ever want a gun, or a dog, or a car . . .?
● 4-19-2008: The theory that man’s (or a man’s) meaningfulness derives just from his relationship or involvement with an all-good, omniscient, omnipotent God, possesses this flaw: If God, in and by himself, is perfectly and infinitely good, then we humans (nay, all other things) are superfluous (that is, meaningless).
● 4-24-2008: A summary of the history of the Jewish people: they went from oppressed to oppressor.
[Later note (2021): That’s a little simplistic. I was of course referring to Israel. I fell into the trap I’ve discussed elsewhere: identifying Israel with the Jewish people. The Israeli government does not represent all Jews. It’s easy to fall into that trap, though, when Israel calls itself the Jewish state. Inevitably, Israel’s actions reflect on Jews.]
● 4-25-2008: The proposition that God is omnipotent, and the ground of the universe, is inconsistent with God’s being unable to make “twice two is four” false.
[Later note (2021): I think that’s wrong. That conception of God could still be consistent with analytical truth, if we define God as omnipotent in being able to do anything that’s logically possible, and as the ground of the physical, or contingent, universe.]
● If God is infinitely good, by what criterion or measure is he better than another infinitely good being? Moreover, the supposition that he’s infinitely good conflicts with the cosmological arguments that hold that an actual infinite cannot exist (for example, the universe cannot always have been, thus requiring God to have begun it).
● 5-9-2008: One shortcut to testing an argument’s soundness: if the conclusion is false, the argument is unsound. A corollary to the foregoing observation: a sound argument cannot be constructed for a false conclusion. A second corollary: The philosopher who wishes to write sound arguments should start by selecting true propositions to argue for.
● 5-17-2008: The brain of a dullard is more miraculous than the finest work of the greatest genius.
● The conflicts in theories of well-being can be chalked up to human, all-too-human, human nature.
[Later note (2021): Until now, every time I reread that, it seemed to make sense, and I thought I knew what I meant by it. But when I reread it just now, I haven’t a clue what it’s supposed to mean. Why would that be particularly true of conflicting theories of well-being and not of the countless other philosophical issues that I argue about? Perhaps I don’t know what I meant by it because I’m losing my memory. It feels like finding a piece of memorabilia whose significance you’ve forgotten. But you continue to save it, thinking that someday you may remember.]
● 5-18-2008: Well-being cannot be precisely defined or identified or specified.
[Later note (12-28-2023): Well, yes and no.]
One thing we can say about the decision whether to enter Robert Nozick’s Experience Machine is this: If you decide to enter, you won’t regret it! (As with drug abuse, the only time you have a free choice in the matter is when you’re out of the machine. Once in, you feel too good [at least in the early stages of drug abuse] to want to stop.)
There’s an interesting relationship (well, let’s just say, a relationship) between this topic and that of meaningfulness. Many persons view the choice to enter the Experience Machine as a selfish one, relinquishing making a positive contribution to the world for the sake of one’s own happiness. But such action is not necessarily selfish, for surely one’s own happiness counts toward the world’s happiness, and when you make yourself happier, you have ipso facto thereby made the world just that much happier . . .. I wouldn’t enter the Experience Machine, because I value my (creative) productivity over my happiness. But for someone who’s not creative, or who doesn’t value his creativity, enhancing his happiness (but producing no other effect) might make sense.
The religious concept of Heaven (in the afterlife), and drug intoxication, seem like the Experience Machine: a wonderful experience, but no accomplishment. Which prompts these further thoughts: Whether you’d be inclined to choose the Experience Machine, or, for that matter, drugs, would depend, in part, on your stage of life. If you’re very young, or in your prime, you might be inclined to opt for real, and sober, life; but if you’re dying, or old, past your most productive years, you’d be more inclined (more inclined than you’d be when younger and healthier) to wish to enter the Experience Machine or to take drugs. Moreover, unlike drug abuse, or the hypothetical Experience Machine, in which you would sacrifice accomplishment for happiness; an afterlife Heaven would not affect (this) life, since it exists only after life.
● 5-21-2008: From May 2003 (Diary-Journal): At times I’ve referred to my moral philosophy as a version of utilitarianism. But that description, while true in a sense, oversimplifies my thesis, and undervalues its originality. My doctrine uses the traditional formulation of utility, the greatest happiness for the greatest number, merely as a point of departure, differing from it in many important respects, including the following three. One, unlike utilitarianism, which holds happiness to be intrinsically desirable and therefore proposes a moral obligation to maximize it; I disavow the intrinsic desirability of any desideratum, and thus the consequent (strict) ethical duty to maximize it. Two, even in a loose sense, I don’t insist on happiness or any other particular desideratum or quality as the single, ultimate desideratum, but instead focus generally on men’s well-being or quality of life, allowing each person to determine the specific content of it for himself. And, three, my denial of the possibility of intrinsic value not only replaces strict moral duty with mere motivation, but also replaces the advice to maximize total happiness with the advice to maximize per capita (our own) happiness, or well-being. Though I have some sympathy for the notion of the desirability (though not intrinsic desirability) of happiness in particular (I’ve described it—happiness, or pleasure—as quasi-intrinsically desirable, in that it’s the sole entity which is appreciated by all sentient beings in all circumstances); probably the key commonality between my doctrine and traditional utility is the broad concern for men’s real welfare.
● 5-26-2008: Finished my rebuttals to two ontological and two cosmological arguments for God’s existence.
● 5-27-2008: Slight aggravation of left knee.
● Free will is impossible, because, for a being to have free will, it must create itself, which it cannot do.
● 6-6-2008: When a politician says he supports or opposes a policy because of its “effect on the economy,” you can usually decode his words by substituting for “the economy” the term “my pocketbook.”
● 6-17-2008: The battle between proponents and opponents of same-sex marriage is literally a conflict between love and hate.
● 6-21-2008: Finished a revision of the 1-800-SUE-THEM business plan prepared by consultant Ken Grimsley.
● 6-22-2008: The only streetlight on the block on this side of the street is directly outside of my house (the house we’re renting).
● 6-25-2008: The Jews were much more sympathetic as the oppressed than they are as the oppressors.
● 6-27-08: Resumed taking Sam-e.
● 7-20-2008: Sunday, Philosophy Club meeting. Topic: “Environmentalism.” I’m an anthropocentric environmentalist: I’m for a healthy environment just insofar as it conduces to the well-being of man (which it does). In the literature, there’s an argument called the last-man argument, a thought experiment involving a last human, who has a choice, when he dies, to either let the rest of the planet’s life continue, or to destroy it. According to the argument, we intuitively feel he would be wrong to destroy the rest of life, which supposedly implies that non-human life (as well as human life) has intrinsic value. The conclusion doesn’t follow. At most, it might show that we believe that other life is intrinsically valuable. But that we believe it, doesn’t mean it’s true. In fact, it doesn’t even mean we believe it. We might wish the last man to permit other life to survive for reasons having nothing to do with its value, intrinsic or otherwise. For example, we might hope that intelligent forms would eventually evolve and uncover human artifacts, thus allowing humanity to live on in the appreciation of our art. I want my work to survive, but I disbelieve in intrinsic value. (Conversely, belief in intrinsic value might prompt you to want the last man to destroy non-human life. If anything were intrinsically valuable, it would be, not sentient life, per se, but rather pleasure. But pain is disvalue. And life generally, both human and non-human, is, on balance, miserable. Hence destroying all life would bring about a greater ratio of value to disvalue . . ..)
● We go on despite the misery of our lives, not because doing so is rational (or rationally compelled)—it’s irrational—but merely because of our animal instinct to survive.
● 7-28-2008: In the last two months or so my memory seems to have significantly deteriorated. In that time, my diet has significantly changed; I’ve been eating only once a day. I’m now going to return to eating twice a day to see if that helps the memory. [Later note (2020): It must have done.]
● Friday, 8-1-2008: Sef Krell offered to fund my 1-800-SUE-THEM advertising.
● 8-6-2008: “Never give up!” I like that sentiment. Of course, the statement’s weakness is that it offers no guidance as to the object of our persistence. Not every idea is good, nor every project worth pursuing; and success requires also the wisdom to know when what we’re doing isn’t working, and the flexibility to change direction accordingly. So the question always remains: Never give up—on what?
● 8-10-2008: Philosophy Club meeting. Topic: “Secession.” It seems to me that there may be various degrees or levels of a right to secession. Thus, it may be desirable for a group to secede, though the merits are not so compelling as to give the group a right to resort to violence to accomplish its objective in the face of resistance from other parties affected. Generally, I think secession should be discouraged, available only as a last resort, because the world’s problems can be solved only, or at least most effectively, through global cooperation, which easy secession makes less likely, by fostering the proliferation of independent states, thus fragmenting authority, rather than consolidating it. At the same time, a stronger global government may have more control over member states to prevent and remedy injustice and oppression against certain minority groups, thus reducing the need or motivation for secession.
● 8-17-2008: I took some codeine for pain. It helped, not by reducing the pain (which it didn’t do), but by balancing the pain with euphoria.
● Tuesday, 8-19-2008: Dropped off my Business Plan and new proposal re 1-800-SUE-THEM to Jim O’Callahan at Girardi & Keese.
● 8-22-2008: The Harry Potter books are a children’s allegory, indulging a child’s wish to be special and respected.
● 8-23-2008: What do angels wear? What does God wear?; the Devil?
[Later note (1-8-2022): The Devil, we now know, wears Prada.]
● 8-24-2008: I’d rather win one gold medal than a hundred silver medals.
● 8-31-2008: This—the entire entry—is a test; it’s a “test”; yep. And this is a test, because I’m using it to perform a test, just a plain old test. Sometimes I think the test will succeed or fail depending on . . . well, I guess there are more kinds of tests than one, if we judge by the nature of the outcome.
There are tests that have right answers or correct results, on which tests the taker will pass or fail or otherwise perform well or badly, depending on his performance’s correspondence with predetermined right answers, or other predetermined standards.
There are other tests wherein we perform an action simply to find out what happens when we do it. This is such a test. What do I hope to find out? Well, that’s my own secret, which I’ll share with no one, unless you inquire; then I may tell you, if I feel like it. Of course, there’s no guarantee that I’ll “feel like it.”
Oh, by the way, please don’t reply to this posted item. My intention is to delete this very shortly after posting it, because it’s just a test, one whose success has nothing to do with getting replies. I suspect that, once a reply has been posted, I’ll no longer be able to delete this. Anyway, now for the test. Bye-bye.
● Posted to the Philosophy Club website my “Rebuttals to Four Arguments for God’s Existence.”
[Later note (2020): I recently reread these and found them to be good arguments. But I don’t include them here or in my online essay collection, because I found them a bit long-winded and tedious. And they’re superseded by my far superior—and very short—argument “The Impossibility of Knowledge, Free Will, and God” . . . which is in the online essays.]
● 9-5-2008: When what you know intellectually conflicts with what you feel emotionally, act according to the former (by definition, it is correct, or more likely correct).
[Later note (4-13-2022): If something is, not simply true, but merely more likely true, it’s not so by definition.]
● 9-14-2008: Met with my cousin Danny Zuckerman, whom I hadn’t seen in 25 years or so.
● 9-21-2008: The preceding paragraph [omitted; it’s an early version of my argument “The Impossibility of Knowledge, Free Will, and God”] is a breakthrough for me. I’ve been trying to find a proof of those conclusions for a long time.
● 9-28-2008: God is a metaphor.
● 9-29-2008: A paradox is, not an inconsistency in nature, but a defect in our understanding.
● 10-19-2008: Once there was a country in which people voted for the Public Marksman, who had the duty of shooting undesirable persons, and determining their identity. In one election, Smith was running for Marksman on the platform that citizen Jones was undesirable and should be shot. Green was running against Smith for the position, on the platform that Jones was desirable and should be protected, and Jones’s enemies, instead, should be shot. Nonetheless, Jones voted for Smith for Marksman, because, although Green’s position on the issues was better than Smith’s, Smith was more qualified for the job than Green, because he (Smith) was a better shot.
● 10-20-2008: Soren Kierkegaard and I agree on one point: religious faith is absurd.
● It’s not surprising that we’re disappointed on meeting a famous man in person, because that for which he’s famous, and by which we know him in advance of meeting him, is the best aspect of him, and his (famous) work is the most concentrated version of that part of him. When we look at his famous work, we see the pearl. When we meet the man in person, we see the oyster.
● In early twenty-first century America, political conservatism is the drive, typically on the part of the rich, or those who hope to get rich, to perpetuate and expand the wealth disparity; liberalism, the drive to reduce the wealth disparity.
● The reason why Democrat Barack Obama will win (and Republican John McCain will lose) the 2008 U.S. presidential election is that, with the current recession, fewer citizens than usual will have the luxury of voting against their economic interest.
● Philosophy Club meeting; topic: “Defining Liberalism and Conservatism.”
● 11-2-2008: The nonreligious are sometimes implicitly criticized (by the religious) for their lack of faith, as if faith is just another form of thinking, and the lack of it constricts one’s mind. I disagree. Faith has many senses, or meanings (I’ll refer to ones given in the American Heritage Dictionary). Two meanings are these: “4. Often Faith. Theology. The theological virtue defined as secure belief in God and a trusting acceptance of God’s will. 5. The body of dogma of a religion: the Muslim faith.” It is of course true that, thus defined, I and other nonreligious persons lack faith. But we have faith in another sense, to wit: “1. Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, an idea, or a thing.” This faith is akin to intuition. I believe that twice two is four, and that there is no god, which beliefs are bolstered by my faith in the efficacy of my mind and of my reasoning and my intellectual judgment. But the implicit criticism that lack of faith constricts the mind, probably has to do with yet another sense of faith: “2. Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence.” Though some religious persons think they have reasons and evidence for the existence of God, probably most believers’ belief in God is based on this kind of faith (belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence). That kind of faith is not confined to the religious. A nonreligious person may be confronted with a proposition on which he has no material evidence or intellectual proof, but he must decide whether he believes it. And he makes a decision, if only provisionally (until such time as he may have reason or evidence, possibly indicating the opposite conclusion). But you can believe on just one side of an issue at a time. It’s not as if faith opens the mind to new propositions or ideas otherwise unavailable. Disbelief in a proposition is not the same as ignorance of it. Indeed, disbelief implies knowledge, or acquaintance. You can’t believe false what you’ve never heard of or thought of.
● 11-13-2008: I signed a new agreement with Attorney Sef Krell today regarding 1-800-SUE-THEM. He’ll pay for advertising initially, and I’ll retain exclusive ownership of 1-800-SUE-THEM.
● 11-23-2008: The instrumental theory of practical reasoning problematically distinguishes ends and means. For example, the instrumentalist might analyze the act of driving to the store to get a cup of coffee as composed of the goal of getting a cup of coffee and the means of driving to the store. But the distinction is in a sense artificial. I may have been able to brew some coffee at home. The driving may be seen as part of an end, and the various choices as a choice among various ends, different ways in which I might spend my day, my time. Going to the store and getting coffee is one activity-Gestalt; preparing coffee at home, another. And yet, it’s true that I wanted to drink coffee, that this was a goal, if not the goal, and that it was an important criterion in the selection of an activity.
● Philosophy Club meeting; topic: “Practical reasoning/rationality.” [To avoid repeated entries, I’ve omitted material here, which I present later.]
● 11-28-2008: Questions for a white supremacist/racist: If one day you discovered that the surface of your internal organs was brown, would that hurt your self-valuation? Why or why not? Are black people inferior to white people in virtue of the color of their skin? If so, why? If not, what is it about them that makes them inferior? Are all black people inferior to all white people?
● 12-14-2008: Excoriate the wild berry, excommunicate the sand.
● 12-25-2008: Many drug addicts will recover with no therapy at all. An addict goes to therapy because he has decided to quit, but, for him, the decision alone is enough. The program serves merely as a rite of demarcation, a symbolic declaration to himself and others of his intention to live sober, a landmark in time, marking the end of an old chapter in his life, and the start of a new one.