2009
● 1-1-2009: Notable events in my life in 2008 include: writing the seventh revision of “Morality”; producing my first convincing argument for the impossibility of God; creating a business plan for 1-800-SUE-THEM and making an arrangement with an attorney to fund the advertising and share the profits; getting a new computer system; and developing carpel tunnel syndrome (in my right hand and forearm).
My New Year’s resolutions: to eschew my complacency and act with urgency on ensuring my financial survival; and to prioritize, to spend more time and energy on the important, and less on the trivial. In that spirit, I have today put in final form (and filed away) the Seventh Revision of my “Morality” (a three-month project); and, for now, discontinued revising my drug essays.
[Later note (2021): To clarify, what took me three months’ time was going from the sixth revision of the piece to the seventh revision, not writing the original version and seven revisions of it.]
● 1-6-2009: I had a severe shock today. I discovered that dashes can be part of Internet domain names, and someone else owns 1-800-sue-them.com. I’m trying to acquire that domain name; if I don’t get it, I’ll have to find a way to work around it.
● 1-15-2009: The disproportionate fear of criminals who belong to certain racial groups within a society is unfair to those groups, not because it’s unfair to the criminals apprehended (it’s not unfair to the criminals, no matter what their race). Rather, it hurts the law-abiding segment of the racial subgroup, by fostering prejudice against them by creating the impression that members of that group are more prone to criminality than members of other groups (or at least more prone to criminality than they actually are).
● Job interview/examination with the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office today. I sensed that it went well. But I’ll find out within a few weeks.
● 1-27-2009: God’s will for us, or what God wants us to do, is merely a metaphor for what we want. Until a man knows what he (himself) wants, he might (if he believes in God) attempt to find out by asking what God wants for him.
● 1-29-2009: This is a momentous day. I successfully won a domain auction for 1-800-sue-them.com (the version with the three dashes). I spent twenty-three days working on and agonizing over this (since 1-6-2009; see the entry for that date, above). I would have paid ten thousand dollars to acquire that domain, or even more money if I had it. It turned out that I was the only one who bid (placed a “backorder”) on the name, so I got it for only sixty-nine dollars. My God, what a huge relief; what a blessing, a godsend! I was originally, about three years ago, (mis)informed that dashes do not count as characters in domain names, so I neglected to register 1800suethem.com with the dashes, which is extremely important to me, as I display the phone number with all three dashes (1-800-SUE-THEM), and my trademark is on that configuration. I wondered why when I typed in the domain name with the dashes I got to someone else’s website, and I discovered the problem only when I went to my graphic designer, Arno, (on 1-6-2009,) to design some ads for local newspapers, at which time he asked me if I owned all the domain versions. I said yes, and he showed me my error. It just happened that the previous registrant had the URL for two years, and it expired (without being renewed) on 12-24-2008. So I learned about backordering, and went through the procedure—successfully! What perfect timing! I had perhaps caused the previous registrant to forego renewing the URL by sending him an email earlier in 2008 advising him of my trademark on 1-800-SUE-THEM and his consequent violation of my intellectual property rights, and demanding that he revise or delete his website. Had I discovered the problem at any time within the last two years, I shudder to think what would have happened. I might have taken action that would have caused me to lose the chance to obtain the thing; and in any event I would have gone through untold suffering. As I said, the timing was perfect. Amazing! For the past several weeks, I kept saying to myself that I’d do practically anything to have this. I’ve often spoken of accomplishing whatever I set my mind to. I can’t remember setting my mind to anything harder than this. Having solved this nightmare problem, no other difficulty facing me seems insurmountable, or serious. It has been an extremely trying month. It seems miraculous that I actually acquired the domain name, or even that I managed to get through that three weeks. Every time I got to the end of a day during that period, it seemed like a minor miracle. I’ve been making myself a promise: that if I acquired 1-800-sue-them.com, I’d stop overreacting to minor calamities, like getting enraged over misplaced (or even dropped) keys. I’ll try to keep that promise. I feel most grateful.
[Later note (2020): “I can’t remember setting my mind to anything harder than this.” I guess that statement was prompted by the great emotion of the moment; but now, more than a decade later, looking back over my life with equanimity and greater perspective, the statement strikes me as untrue. To me now, this seems like a routine win, though an important one. You pursue various goals. Sometimes you win; other times you lose. This was one I just happened to win. In the scheme of my whole life (up till now), this win seems almost trivial compared to, say, my composition of my masterpiece, “Ethics.” That seems miraculous; I’m still amazed that I actually wrote it.]
● 2-7-2009: All those politicians who explain that the errors in their own income taxes resulted from mere oversight or carelessness . . . it’s interesting that the errors always seem to be in their favor (paying too little rather than too much).
[Later note (2020): On the other hand, maybe there are both overpayments and underpayments, but we hear just about the underpayments.]
● 2-8-2009: One day God announced to the members of the church that, through some divine mistake, there was room in Heaven for just one more person, and that all the rest of them would have to go to Hell. God further stated that He felt the only fair way to determine who would go to which afterlife was for Him to make a random selection. The next day, God conveyed the results to the congregation. But He added that He was having second thoughts about the appropriateness of the selection process, and invited the flock to submit to Him their comments about it. Subsequently, the man chosen for Heaven delivered to God an eloquent essay supporting the process’ fairness; the rest submitted equally impassioned compositions making a case for its impropriety.
● 2-15-2009: Philosophy Club meeting; topic: “What is art?” A sunset would not constitute art. But what if you invited a group of persons to a place to view the sunset and then put up a large gilded picture frame in front of them, so that they viewed the sunset in the picture frame? Would that count as a piece of performance or conceptual art?
● 2-18-2009: Until everyone has enough, those with more than enough have too much.
● 2-23-2009: Were both men and women created in God’s image?
[Later note (2-13-2022): The Biblical story of the creation of humans is a male-chauvinist conceit: God created man (the male human) directly. Then He created woman from a man’s rib—a being of secondary importance, as a mere afterthought.]
● 2-26-2009: Appointment today with hand specialist, Dr. Christopher Shean. He instructed me to discontinue wearing, during the day, the wrist brace I’ve worn on my right wrist for the last four months straight. Now I’m to wear it just at night.
● 3-1-2009: For over a week now, the sound of chirping birds has begun.
● 3-12-2009: “Being, or living, in the now,” in the standard sense of the phrase, doesn’t work for me. What I truly value is my accomplishment, my body of work, rather than my experience. Moreover, even my sense of well-being, and my happiness, in the moment, depends largely on my feeling about my body of work and my progress in building it. I never feel so good as just after I’ve finished writing a new piece of work that I’m proud of, my sole source of joy.
● 3-17-2009: I got a rather bad shock just now. Sef Krell has informed me he’ll no longer run the 1-800-SUE-THEM ad in the Penny Saver newspaper—he says he’s thus far gotten no response to it.
● 4-3-2009: The 1-800-SUE-THEM.com website is done.
● 4-15-2009: A book on the tax laws of Texas could be called TEXAS TAXES. A book on the tax problems of a man named Tex could be called TEX’S TAXES.
● 4-18-2009: [A comment I posted on the (now-defunct) Philosophy Club website:]
I find two of Carl’s above statements problematic. First, “. . . [T]he Infinite includes Everything . . .” (1-12-2009; 4:01 p.m.). The infinite need not encompass everything. The set of all odd numbers, for example, is infinite, but omits, among other things, even numbers. The reverse, of course, is true, that everything includes the infinite. Everything, by definition, is all-inclusive; if there’s an element that’s not part of Everything, then Everything is not everything . . ..
The second questionable statement, “My own ethical metric is based upon cooperative diversity . . . it is a metric and not the ethical outcome itself . . .” (1-19-2009; 12:22 a.m.). To begin with, to propose a metric of the good without positing the good’s content, strikes me as putting the cart before the horse—or without the horse. How can you measure something without knowing what you’re measuring? Be that as it may, cooperative diversity seems a flawed metric, failing, for one defect, to reliably measure different amounts of good. Take a cooperatively diverse world. Everyone’s becoming happier would, presumably, be more desirable, but not necessarily more cooperative or diverse. A possible further shortcoming of cooperative diversity, it might not accommodate disvalue (the bad). Diversity simpliciter is inadequate, because, here, the worst that could be is a total lack of diversity, or zero. What would constitute negative degrees of cooperative diversity—competitive diversity?
● 4-19-2009: Philosophy Club meeting. Topic: “Boundaries.”
● My philosophy seems to me very complete and comprehensive. And yet, I know there are many branches of mathematics I don’t know. I wonder how my philosophy would be different if I knew more, especially about mathematics.
[Later note (2021): Rereading this just now, it struck me as funny: “[T]here are many branches of mathematics I don’t know.” As if I know some branches of mathematics. Practically the only branch of mathematics I know is simple arithmetic: adding, subtracting, multiplying.]
● Regarding the distinction between phenomena and noumena, how is consciousness itself characterized? It’s an actually existing entity in the world.
● 5-8-2009: My essays are like musical compositions in which truth is the base line; beauty, the upper voice.
● 5-17-2009: Philosophy Club meeting; topic: “Parenthood and Procreation.”
● Most if not all good philosophy is applied philosophy, in the sense that it ultimately pertains, or applies, to man or man’s life.
● 5-24-2009: Today I posted to the Philosophy Club website my revised argument on the impossibility of God, titled “On the Impossibility of Knowledge, Free Will, and God”; it’s one of my very finest arguments and pieces of writing, one of my greatest achievements.
[Later note (2020): I eventually dropped the “On” from the title. . . . Usually, as to entries in my Diary that refer to essays of mine, when I put the entry in this Eisner’s Journal, I simply change the essay’s title to the current title.]
● 6-3-2009: Met with Michael Williams, District Manager for Farmers Insurance. I may become an insurance agent.
● 6-7-2009: California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s decision to close the huge state budget gap by slashing public services but not raising taxes is a decision that the lives of the poor should go from discomfort to misery, rather than that the wealth surplus of the rich go from three times as much as they need to only twice as much as they need.
● On parallel universes: There are no other actual universes. There are infinitely many possible universes, but just one actual universe (this one).
● 6-14-2009: The advice, “be yourself,” as during a job interview, is problematic in that there is no regular or standard you. You are significantly different in various settings, whether in a job interview; with friends; or by yourself. In fact, the only persons who are always the same are the very old, the very young, and the very sick. The closer a man is to his prime, and the more vigorously alive he is, the greater the variety of his personal presentation modes. Perhaps an oversimplification.
[Later note (9-22-2024): On a job interview, you should disguise yourself if you’re unpleasant; you should reveal yourself if you’re personable.]
● To those (presumably heterosexuals) who insist that homosexuality is a choice, rather than an inborn drive, I would simply ask this question: Is your heterosexuality a choice? Could you just decide to be sexually attracted to members of your same sex, and not to persons of your opposite sex? (No? Then why should that be different for homosexuals?)
● The most profound observation anyone ever made about me (that I know of and remember) was the comment by my old psychotherapist Fred Penrose to the effect that, contrary to my own belief at the time, the most valuable aspect of me was, not my emotions, but my intellect.
● 6-17-2009: The (cultural) prohibition on eating dogs makes little sense, in that we freely eat pigs, which are higher (more intelligent) animals than dogs.
[Later note (9-22-2024): Of course, even those of us who might disagree with such prohibition conform to it our of respect for the feelings of those who agree with it. . . . No, that’s too charitable. A more likely reason is that eating dogs is illegal, and because dog meat is not available in stores or restaurants. . . . Not that I’ve looked for it (I haven’t).]
● 6-22-2009: Politicians often rhetorically bemoan the plight of those who experience economic hardship despite their having “played by the rules.” This seems disingenuous, for the very rules of capitalism (a system the politicians heartily support) are designed to (or at least inevitably) create a situation in which there are economic winners and losers.
● 7-2-2009: Many have wondered at the apparent contradiction between Thomas Jefferson’s writing the Declaration of Independence (“All men are created equal . . .”) and his keeping slaves. But that seems to me no more mysterious than the capitalist businessman’s advocating socialism (as I do). The latter may think (as I do), “I favor socialism; but as long as the game is governed by the rules of free enterprise, I’m going to play by them to my own advantage, like everyone else; if I win—if I get rich—I’ll be better able to help change the system.”
[Later note (8-1-2022): Well, yes but . . . unlike “everyone else,” Jefferson, as one of the nation’s founding fathers, had some say in determining the system, the rules of the game. And there may be a qualitative difference between owning businesses and owning slaves.]
● 7-6-2009: “If you keep thinking what you’ve been thinking, you’ll keep getting what you’ve been getting.” . . . If I keep thinking that, will I keep getting what I’ve been getting?
[Later note (9-22-2024): If I’m rich and happy, and I want to stay that way, should I keep thinking that twice two is five, if I think it is?]
● 7-13-2009: In what ways is Justice supposed to be blind; what is it blind to?
[Later note (2021): “Justice is blind” is highly problematic, because one of the things that justice is supposed to be blind to is whether people are rich or poor. But that some are rich and others are poor is itself unjust. And the wealth of the parties is relevant in doing justice. For example, in general, a rich man stealing from a poor man warrants greater (or at least different) punishment than a poor man stealing from a rich man.]
● 7-19-2009: Philosophy Club meeting: topic, “Education.”
Miscellaneous thoughts on Education
I disagree with Aristotle that education should explicitly aim at the common good, the community’s interest, and not that of the individual. Many great artists create their art for selfish reasons, as for fame; and yet their producing the art ultimately benefits the community as well. We encourage such art by allowing the artist to pursue his own artistic vision for his own reasons.
Similarly, I disagree with the opinion that great philosophy, or great philosophical writing, like Plato’s dialogues, cannot be motivated by the philosopher’s personal pride. I think a philosopher, or any writer, can strive to improve his writing out of pride in it; such pride can motivate him to bear the immediate discomfort of accepting just criticism of his work, for the sake of its ultimate improvement; and, all else being equal, his work is better for being intellectually honest, and for being sound.
[Later note (2020): A logical problem with the previous sentence, the part to the effect that pride can cause a writer to bear the discomfort of criticism for the sake of improving his work, is that it’s also pride that makes criticism of his work uncomfortable (if he couldn’t bear the criticism, that, too, would be because of pride). In other words, in giving the reason for either action, you would have to specify which pride was the greater, either the pride in his ultimate work, or his pride that’s wounded by the criticism (you can’t simply say pride. . . . If I were to rewrite the paragraph, to remove that error, I might do so this way: . . . (omitted)
If I ever run out of other material for my writing, I could use this as a mode of composition unto itself: explaining flaws I’ve found in my own writing, and suggesting corrections!]
[Later note (2021): As part of the foregoing later note of 2020, I had rewritten that problematic paragraph. When I reread it this time, I found still further problems with it, and concluded that repairing it would take more labor than it was worth, so I simply deleted it.]
[Later note (9-22-2024): My first paragraph in this entry doesn’t make sense: Artists are free to use their education for their own selfish reasons, though we may educate them for the community’s good. Educating for the sake of the commonweal does not require us to try to constrain students’ use of that education.]
● Monday, 7-27-2009: I sent a letter to my sister, Jane, today, asking for her help in finding a job.
● Modern popular songs are such unimportant pieces of music that they’re commonly identified by their performers rather than by their composers.
● 8-1-2009: For the first time in about twelve days, I’ve gone more than twenty-four hours without changing my new little essay on education. Perhaps it’s finished.
● 8-5-2009: I started my piece on education on 17 July 2009. Thereafter, I made changes every day for about two weeks (ending on 30 July 2009), until at that point it was complete, and I made no further changes (with the exception of yesterday, when I revised one sentence). . . . Okay; today I changed another sentence . . . and again rewrote the one I changed yesterday. Now I’m sure it’s done!
● 8-6-2009: . . . I just realized that the Education piece has a flaw. The last few changes did not solve the problem. Just two hours after jotting the previous sentence (in this entry), I’ve come up with a replacement sentence (in the piece on Education) that does seem to solve the problem. I’m very pleased with myself.
● 8-7-2009: . . . I then rewrote and transposed two adjoining sentences. . . . As of Sunday, 8-9-2009[?], I’ve made no further changes since 8-7-2009. I think it’s finally done (but only time will tell). Here it is:
It’s useful here to distinguish between education’s definition and its purpose. Defined most simply and broadly, in this context, education is the conveying, to others, of information or knowledge. Whereas, our purposes for educating may vary. For instance, we might educate for the sake of the learners, or for purely selfish reasons, as to enable our own work to live on.
By way of introducing my own vision of education’s purpose, I offer the following comment on the article by David Brooks.
In “What Life Asks of Us” (26 January 2009) Brooks contrasts two approaches to education: respect (for tradition and institutions) versus iconoclasm, and he argues for the former. But I believe this opposition cannot be so neatly drawn. The two modes are interrelated, intermingled, interdependent. The rebel needs the culture, and the culture needs the rebel. To effectively criticize an idea, one must first understand it; to intelligently break the rules, one must first master them. Errors in received wisdom are discovered, in part, by scrutinizing that very body, and are shown by the use of other received elements, while novel thoughts must fit with what’s still sound. Old work (including that of history’s great iconoclasts) provides present thinkers and artists with inspiration, models, raw material, and points of (even radical) departure, for making their own artifacts, the finest of which (including revolutionary ones) in turn becoming essential, and playing the same roles for the future. New vistas are a function of our own stature and the steps laid by generations past. It seems to me that the purpose of education is to hand down the best of man’s existing culture and (thereby) to foster its advancement, for the gratification of our highest intellectual and aesthetic faculties, as both audience and creator.
● 8-9-2009: The contents of consciousness and the identity of the one who is conscious are part of what actually exists.
● Ultimately, if a man is remembered, it will be, not for how many different kinds of things he did, but for what he did best.
● Court appearance note: When seeking a writ of attachment, always request a re-delivery bond (which the defendant/debtor must post in order to get the attached property back), in the amount of double the value of the collateral sought to be attached.
● 8-17-2009: I just had a beautiful, delicious sleep, beautiful dreams.
● 8-19-2009: I’ve injured my right hand (last joint of middle finger) by the therapy exercises I’ve been doing for my carpel tunnel syndrome. I’m upset about that (I’m assuming the injury is permanent), and yet that displeasure is overwhelmed by my fear and worry over my precarious life situation (no job, no money)—if my father dies soon, I could become homeless, and lose everything.
● 8-23-2009: The recent injury to the middle finger of my right hand is resolving; the doctor tells me it will resolve completely. What a relief!
● 8-24-2009: Rough note/sketch: In general, those who value their experience, live for the present; those who value accomplishment, live for the future. Of course, this is an oversimplification, one reason being that happiness cannot effectively be achieved by aiming at it directly: it’s a byproduct of other activities. Another complication is that, even to the extent to which happiness might be achievable directly, one may maximize pleasure by strategic planning over time. For example, if going on a cruise to Europe would be especially pleasurable, you might choose to delay taking a cruise until a European one is available, or until you’ve saved enough money for it.
[Later note (2021): Of course, if you don’t have enough money for it, you couldn’t take a cruise now, unless you stow away, which probably wouldn’t be very pleasurable.]
[Later note (2021—later in the year): That earlier “Later note” strikes me as bizarre; what I meant, obviously, was that you could now take a less expensive, non-European cruise, but you might want to wait until you had enough money for the European one.]
● 8-26-2009: I plan to rewrite parts of my piece “Ethics,” substituting the language in the third paragraph of “Life after Death” for some of the existing language in “Ethics.” Specifically, . . . [I’ve omitted the rest of the sentence. As I said in the introduction to this Journal, I omit material that significantly overlaps the essays.]
● 9-7-2009: I’ve spent my life doing what I liked and wished to do, and almost completely neglected doing what I needed to do—to the point where, strangely, I’ve created for myself a reason to live, but may soon lack the means to live. Because of which, moreover, what I’ve managed thus far to create may perish with me.
[Later note (2020): That may be an unfair oversimplification. If I truly did just what I liked and wanted to do, and not disciplined myself for the sake of my long-term well-being, or survival, I would not have finished law school or studied for and passed the Bar exam; or spent long hours and days learning workers’ compensation law to enhance my employment prospects; or maintained perfect abstinence from drug abuse for the last 24 years (as I have done). Even earlier in my life, in my late teens, I was extremely fascinated by psychedelic drugs, especially LSD. I read at least one tome on the subject. But I’d heard that a possible side effect of these drugs was an adverse effect on the mind. So I determined not even to try them, LSD or any other. I had numerous opportunities to do so, and had acquaintances who used psychedelics frequently, even in my presence, when I would smoke marijuana but go no further. One time, one of those people—the person who had introduced me to marijuana—asked me to keep for him a container with 120 capsules of pure LSD, which I did. In retrospect, I think he was trying to get me to take LSD, too. Some months later, I gave him back the little container—with all 120 capsules intact. I’ve always been proud of that. I’ve never taken a psychedelic drug, not even once. It’s true that my life planning and self-discipline have been far from ideal, but it’s also unfair to say that I’ve spent my life doing just what I liked to do.]
● 9-8-2009: Question: Which is the worst sort of disaster: fire, flood, tornado, or earthquake? Answer: The one that affects me.
● 9-11-2009: Justice pertains exclusively to man, because, alone among the animals, he has the ability to control his social relations.
● 9-20-2009: The Right are anti-government, except when it comes to war, as to which they (the Right) are almost invariably pro-government and contend that anyone who disagrees with or opposes the government is “unpatriotic.”
[Later note (2021): The Right tend to tout patriotism, but to be anti-government. Yet patriotism is defined as “love and devotion to one’s country”; but without its government, would there be a country?]
● 9-26-2009: Philosophy is not so much about proving our conclusions (many if not all of which ultimately are unprovable), as about simply illuminating our thinking.
● 9-27-2009: The absence of war may not be all that’s necessary for peace, but it’s necessary for it, and it’s a good start (and it’s an improvement: a situation without war is better than the same situation with war).
[Later note (4-13-2024): “A situation without war is better than the same situation with war.” True. But war is a means, not an end. Usually when we go to war, we understand that war will cause us loss and pain; we go to war to bring about a better situation, and we calculate that the benefit of the eventual better situation will outweigh the detriment of war. . . . On the other hand, anger may be so strong as to bypass reason, and spur people to war, though calculation would suggest that war is counterproductive.]
● 10-10-2009: I’d like to be a senator and receive a salary of one million dollars a year, and work four days a week, ten months a year . . . because I want to serve my country.
● I saw a newspaper article title, “What Your Car Says About You.” I know what my car says about me: I’m broke.
● 10-16-2009: Started new, albeit part-time, job, as a lawyer, with Galindo Fox Law (Atty Marcia Galindo).
● 10-19-2009: Music is a universal language. English is the universal verbal language.
● 10-20-2009: I was let go from the job I started last week, because my legal proficiency wasn’t sufficiently broad for that law firm. I was greatly relieved to be free of it (the job felt very tedious).
● 10-28-2009: Hearing test today showed slight (further) deterioration in high frequency hearing in both ears. To be honest, I hadn’t noticed any difference. And, in any event, that should be the least of my worries right now.
● 11-8-2009: Sometimes I feel as if the difference between the two major political parties in the United States is that one does harm, the other does nothing.
[Later note (6-4-2022): Of course, doing nothing is better than doing harm.]
● 11-9-2009: I’d like to market a line of running shoes made of snakeskin. The shoes will be called snakers.
● If I have any money left after that venture, I would like to establish a candy manufacturing company, to be called The Bingles Candy Company, and specializing in jellybeans. I’ll advertise the product with a ditty: “Bingles Jells, Bingles Jells, Bingles All the Way!” . . . set to the tune of the Christmas song Jingle Bells.
● I would like to start a greeting-card store called The Blow Down, in a Middle Eastern country, because if it was bombed, the headline would read, “The Blow Down blew up.”
● I’d like to own an instant oil-change business next to a seafood restaurant, so that I could call it the Lobster Lube-Star.
● I’d like someday to own a restaurant that serves hotcakes, because . . . you know how those sell.
● I’d like someday to own a bank associated with a Christian church; then you could advertise the bank with a sign saying: “Jesus saves here.”
● 11-11-2009: We like to imagine a just and loving god. But if we want a just and loving world, we must provide these elements ourselves, and in particular establish them in our societal institutions.
● 11-12-2009: A desire with which a man identifies is one that he would choose to retain or to acquire. For example, a painter who values primarily the maximization of his artistic output might wish to strengthen his desire to paint, and reduce or extinguish his needs and desires for sleep, food, sexual pleasure, drug intoxication (the time spent on which activities he might ideally rather spend in direct pursuit of his art).
● 11-15-2009: The History of Man, according to Richard Eisner: First, Man was born, with the knowledge of good and evil. Then Richard Eisner came, and Man learned that there was no knowledge and no good or evil.
● 11-20-2009: This has been a year (2009) of bodily deterioration but artistic and intellectual accomplishment. Among other losses, I’ve sustained a loss to my hearing, in the high frequency range (all the more significant given my love of and spiritual and intellectual connection with classical music). And yet I’ve written two of my most important works: the piece on reincarnation (“Life After Death”), and the argument for the impossibility of knowledge, free will, and God.
● 12-1-2009: I believe in and live for something larger than myself: my work. Beyond that, I believe in the culture, in which my work fits.
● 12-13-2009: Philosophy Club meeting; topic: “Kant’s Categorical Imperative.”
● Kant’s counterintuitive maxims are a natural result of his philosophical position to disregard actual consequences.
● 12-22-2009: I’ve had a shock today. Florence McKenna, my father’s home companion, called me and said that she’s concerned about my father—he’s deteriorating physically and mentally rather swiftly. If he dies, I could end up homeless and lose everything. I would commit suicide before that happened. I may very well not make it.
● 12-23-2009: . . . I may very well make it. What a difference a day makes. I’m getting a good response to my resume and related Web documents. In fact, today I got a particularly good telephone call, from a partner in a law firm—this may be my next position. Yesterday was one of the worst days of my life; today was one of the best (partly because of the sense of relief). It occurs to me that you can pull yourself up by your bootstraps—if you do it one leg at a time, as in climbing stairs.
● I don’t understand why some people find the idea of God comforting. Our situation is as it appears: we live a short, miserable, “unfair” life. I for one would prefer to think that our calamity is accidental, rather than planned. The first is unfortunate; the second would be outrageous.
● Questions about Kant:
– What would Kant consider a morally impermissible act, and why?; a morally compulsory act?
– What does Kant take to be evil? (If Humanity is of absolute value, what constitutes disvalue?)
● 12-25-2009: Yesterday (12-24-2009), the ecstasy of the previous day continued in the morning. But it slowly waned. Then, by the late afternoon, the anxiety, panic, and desperation of the evening of 12-22-2009 returned in full force. Getting that job is by no means guaranteed. In truth, I may not get the job. I can’t count on it.
● 12-30-2009: Well, I didn’t get the job (see the first 12-23-2009 entry, above). But I’m glad; based on the interview, I think I would have hated it, and it was a grueling, high-volume, high-pressure work schedule that I believe I couldn’t long sustain. As badly as I need the money, I’m glad the decision was made for me. I am, frankly, relieved.