2011
● 1-2-2011: My ethic, the greatest average (or per capita) happiness, assumes a world in which average happiness is positive. In the opposite situation, negative average happiness; the formula that would seem to pertain is, not the greatest average happiness, but the old rule: the greatest total happiness (or, more particularly, the least [total] unhappiness). This asymmetry reflects the idea that just a predominantly good world is worthwhile; an irremediably bad world is better off not being. Nonetheless, so long as we consider our existence an essentially positive thing (which we must continue to do to continue to be), my formulation will remain valid.
● 1-7-2011: An oval is to a circle as a rectangle is to a square.
● 1-9-2011: Belief presupposes these elements:
○ A (verbal) language.
○ A proposition susceptible of having a truth-value. And
○ Mental assent to the truth or falsity of such a proposition.
● Insights are the mutations of our intellectual evolution. (Insights are to our intellectual advancement as genetic mutations are to biological advancement.)
● Einstein said that imagination is more important than knowledge. Both are important. Without knowledge of science, as it then existed, Einstein’s imagination would have had no raw material to work with to produce what he produced. To think outside the box, you have to be familiar with the box. Had Einstein been trained only as a blacksmith, he certainly would not have come up with the theory of relativity, though it was his imagination that made him special. Imagination is what distinguishes the great genius from the merely very intelligent man. Imagination is to knowledge as wings are to air; without the air, wings are of no use. And yet, we all walk and breathe; it’s the man who grows wings and flies who will be remembered.
● 1-23-2011: The maldistribution of wealth keeps poor persons poor and hurts the environment, because a man with little income cannot afford to . . . think that we are all going to go to the cleaners if the neighbor would go to hell and I think he really ought to. I’m just writing for the sake of writing, since he makes a noise in hopes that it will distract me and I’ll lose my train of thought and stop typing. So to spite him, I keep typing, even if it’s just nonsense. That’s my new strategy. I’m paying for this low rent apartment!
● The maldistribution of wealth keeps poor persons poor and hurts the environment, because a man with little income lacks the means to purchase more efficient products that will save energy (and so hurt the environment less) and in the long run save money for him. (Ha! I even recovered my train of thought!)
● 1-25-2011: I have a very poor memory for names and faces. It takes me an inordinate number of exposures to a new face before I’m able to recognize it. Likewise with proper names. People tend to remember me; unfortunately, I don’t reciprocate.
● 2-3-2011: I consider myself a prophet.
● 2-5-2011: Last Thursday, 2-3-2011, I read through (the latest version—the ninth major revision—of) my longer piece (about 4,600 words) “Morality”; I changed two words, and changed a semicolon to a colon. Today, Saturday, 2-5-2011, I read it through again; in one place, I inserted a comma; in other places, I deleted a comma, and changed a semicolon to a comma. I think the work is essentially finally done!
● 2-8-2011: I started listening to a recording of John Cage’s 4’33”; I stopped about two minutes in, by which time I figured I’d got the point.
● 2-12-2011: The Philosophy Club’s topic for tomorrow is: “Does the free market corrode or improve moral character?” My comment: Capitalism, to enable the few to live in luxury, causes the many to live in wretchedness, ever lacking the resources to realize their potential or their dreams, thus ruining their lives . . . but strengthening their moral character.
● 2-18-2011: I’m getting unremitting, unprovoked hostility from one of my apartment next-door neighbors. I feel I must forge a counter-weapon. I’ve held off doing so for as long as I could. Sometimes the price of “peace” is simply too great.
● 2-20-2011: A computer recently beat human competitors at the game “Jeopardy.” Why would anyone now take pride in solving puzzles, or riddles? I could never be proud of doing what a machine (or for that matter another human) could do better than me . . . or of finding answers that are already known, even if by only a few persons.
● 2-22-2011: I keep thinking that my “Morality” is finished; yet the revisions continue to dribble out, seemingly almost despite myself. But I’ve just read the work through, and I’m very, very pleased with it. (I’ll restrain myself from declaring that it’s finally done, though I once again feel so, as experience has taught me that it would be silly; though the changes are occurring at the word level, rather than at the paragraph or even the sentence level; and certainly the composition is getting better and better, more and more nearly complete.) The demarcation between revision 8 and revision 9 is a bit arbitrary, as there was no gap in my editing process between the two “versions.” In contrast, there was a significant time interval between all the other revisions, from several months to several years. This last revising session (starting with revision 8, seven months ago) has, I think, been far more prolonged than any of the earlier sessions, one reason being that during this time I’ve had it in my mind to actually, finally publish the work, by posting it on the Philosophy Club website, where I’ve posted many of my (far shorter) other works over the last six years. It’s now been ten years since I wrote the original version of the piece. In a larger sense, however, it took me all my life to produce this work, because I’ve been working on the ideas that compose it, practically all my life. But I feel that all the time and effort that went into creating it, both immediately and generally, has been very well worth it.
● 3-3-2011: Many who denigrate teachers’ unions complain about the difficulty of firing inadequate members of the profession. Some such persons (who denigrate teachers’ unions), perhaps attempting to make a positive statement on the subject, exclaim that every student deserves to have a great teacher. But I wonder if there are so many “great” teachers. Isn’t the average teacher . . . average?
[Later note (1-12-2022): But if you took the top ten teachers, out of millions, each of the ten a great teacher, and you put all ten of them in a building by themselves, and all the other teachers died, so that just those ten remained . . . wouldn’t the average teacher then be a great teacher?]
[Later note (10-4-2023): Perhaps. But before that event happened (when the situation was as it is now), the average teacher was average.]
● 3-10-2011: Why does the last bite of a pastry or other dessert often seem to taste the best? Perhaps because we know it’s the last of it and so we savor it more. And perhaps also because of the physical situation: every bite before the last one is followed quickly by the morsel’s replacement with another piece of food. Only the last piece is followed by a clear interval in which you can contemplate the lingering, dispersing flavors in the mouth. (Perhaps we should eat more slowly.)
● These days I mark my progress exclusively in terms of my editing of “Morality.” In all other ways, my life seems to be stagnant, stalled.
● 3-29-2011: My primary goal in life is to write a novel with a main character named Bish Lamar.
● In the last month or so I’ve developed a routine for editing “Morality.” I read it on a designated day (Monday) once every fortnight. That seems to be the minimum interval necessary for having a fresh view of the piece each time (otherwise, I’d attempt to speed up the process by reviewing it more often). Similarly, the revising can now be confined to selected days; I’m no longer rewriting paragraphs, but merely changing a word or two, or a punctuation mark, here and there.
● 4-2-2011: Let my rage against the dying of the light be the writing I’ve done.
● 4-4-2011 / 2:00 p.m. I’ve reached a milestone just now. I’ve once again read through my work “Morality” (which I do periodically for editing), and, for the first time ever, have found nothing to change! Of course, I’ll continue to reread it (my usual rule is to allow a certain minimum span in which I try unsuccessfully to find further revisions of a work, before posting it). But this is a good sign. I’ve been waiting for this for a long time!
● 2:20 p.m. Well, I made another change. But this was the first time I read the piece through without thinking of a new revision before getting to the end!
● 4-5-2011: I read it again. No further changes, yet. (Ten hours later, the same day, I thought of another amendment, but the next morning I changed it back.)
● Saturday, 4-9-2011: Today, my father, Jerome Eisner moved in with me (his girlfriend, Florence McKenna, moved away to Colorado, to be taken care of by her family).
● Sunday, 4-17-2011: Saturday morning I took my father to the hospital because of chest pain. They kept him there for a day and a half for observation; to my relief, the symptom turned out to be muscle pain, not a heart attack.
● 4-18-2011: I read “Morality” again. No changes.
● 5-7-2011: Wisdom requires intelligence.
● The sum of necessary conditions is sufficient condition (to say that this is not sufficient means that something more is needed; and to say that this is “all that’s needed” is to say that it’s enough).
● 5-10-2011: “Thesaurus” has no synonyms!
● 5-16-2011: I read through “Morality” again on 13 May 2011, and again found nothing to change. I think, after ten years, the work is finally finished. In fact, this has been a productive month. Around last week I also completed a further revision of my set of eleven essays about drugs and of “Thoughts on the Big Bang Theory.”
● 5-22-2011: Yesterday (21 May 2011) was the day predicted by many religionists as the end of the world. I guess they were wrong. On second thought, maybe they were right. Maybe yesterday was Judgment Day, but God concluded that most of us were already getting pretty much what we deserve, and decided that no further action was needed.
● When I posted the foregoing comment, another person responded by saying something to the effect (I can’t find the email message now) that those people were, not members of a religion, but instead crazy cultists. I thought of posting this response to his comment: “Now, there’s an interesting idea—one religion calling another religion irrational.” I ultimately thought better of it, lest my further comment expose my feeling about religion, and alienate many persons.
[Later note (2020): I have the same decision to make now about posting this Journal on the Web. I know that much of the material is provocative—probably an understatement. But much of it (including much of what’s provocative) is also good. What’s the risk?—that someone who takes offense at something I say here won’t give me a lucrative job, who otherwise would give me a lucrative job? As they say these days: Yeah, right! And that assumes that many people will read this . . . again: Yeah, right! And in the unlikely event that this is widely read, I probably have more to gain by it than to lose. So I’ll risk it.]
● 5-24-2011: Following my dental cleaning yesterday, I’ve decided to stop using sugar in my coffee and tea, and to brush my teeth twice a day instead of just once. I considered that I drink tea or coffee only about three times a day, and I drink it, not for the taste, but for the caffeine stimulation. In short, taste is worse, health is better.
● 5-27-2011: This is a red-letter day. I posted on the Internet my piece “Morality.” It’s finally finished! (Coincidentally, I got my 1-888-DEBT-END.com website up, in revised form; and I’m very pleased with it.)
● Beneficence is more genuine if not religiously based: helping others is more genuinely motivated when you do it, not because you think God wants you to do it, but because you want to do it.
● 6-11-2011: Yesterday my senile father said, “Boobs make the woman.” I nearly fell on the floor laughing.
[Later note (2021): Is that ambiguous? What I nearly did was falling on the floor; the laughing was complete. No, I suppose that was understood.]
● 6-12-2011: Philosophy Club meeting tonight, the first one in a long time that I attended. The topic is: “The Epistemology of Testimony.” My own (initial) thoughts are as follows. [No—I’m omitting it, because the final thoughts are posted as an essay on my other website RichardEisner.com.]
● 6-14-2011: Desire and emotion are the very juice of life; without them, living is purposeless and meaningless, and we would be like cold computers or calculators, reaching correct conclusions, perhaps, but not caring.
● 6-17-2011: Their eyes were watching God . . . God had been a bad boy lately, and they decided that they needed to keep an eye on him.
● 6-22-2011: Handel is to Bach as Hayden is to Mozart (second to the greatest masters of the genre).
● Acts of charity are commendable. And yet, charity is what we do in the absence of justice—a just society wherein wealth is evenly enough distributed so that no one would be impoverished or homeless, and so there would be no need of charity.
● 7-3-2011: My senile father (94) does not so much forgive and forget; rather, in effect, he has no choice but to forgive, because he forgets—either what provoked the anger or the anger itself. And I find it easy to forgive him, out of understanding of and pity for him because of his condition.
● Tuesday, 7-5-2011: Started new job, full-time work for Atty David C. Berns!
● Tuesday, 7-12-2011: Developed pain in left hip or buttock, probably from sitting in chair at work. First noticed it when got home from work the evening of 7-12-2011, when had to take medication (Vicodin, 5 mg); when got home in evening on 7-13-2011, I had the same symptom, but worse; took two Aleve tablets, but got no relief, so took 4-5 mg of Vicodin, which relieved the pain in about an hour’s time. But when I got up during the night, at about 4:00 a.m., on 7-14- 2011, I had the pain; on returning to bed, too much pain to sleep, so took 2 Aleve tablets; the pain worsened, so took 5 mg Vicodin.
● 7-16-2011: Good excuses for poor performance are a poor substitute for good performance.
● 8-8-2011: Did God create the universe? No. Since the universe encompasses everything that exists, including God (if He exists), this would imply that God created himself, which is impossible. (It’s impossible because God’s creating Himself implies that, before He was created, He didn’t exist. And before He existed, there was no God to have created anything, including Himself.) To put it another way, God’s creating the universe implies that, at some time, God existed but the universe did not. But this is impossible, because the universe, by definition, contains—is—everything that exists, including God (if He exists); and so, if there’s no universe, there’s no God.
● It’s not true that improvised music is superior to written music. Were it so, composers would simply improvise, then write down their best improvisations.
● 8-9-2011: Appointment today with Dr. Reyblatt, M.D., in urology at Kaiser for a urodynamics test. The test showed that my problem urinating is not, as previously diagnosed, a distended bladder, but instead tight pelvic floor muscles (almost the opposite problem).
● 8-24-2011: Met with David C. Berns, Esq., my boss, regarding 1-800-SUE-THEM.com.
● 8-28-2011: I’m not for peace, per se; I’m for justice.
[Later note (2020): That’s a little simplistic. An injustice may be too small to warrant attempting to rectify it by conflict. And an unjust and unpeaceful state of affairs might be improved by making it more peaceful, even if not more just. I suppose it would be more accurate to say that I’m for justice and peace.]
● 9-11-2011: Several thoughts prompted by the media coverage of the tenth anniversary commemorations of the “9-11” New York terror attacks:
○ That terrorists couch their justifications for their acts of terror in Islamic religious language, does not mean that the impetus for their bad acts is Islam. Any religious person who feels he’s being attacked or oppressed is likely to express his opposition in religious terms. American colonists may well have declared that God wants us to oppose the British oppressors. But their revolutionary fervor was caused by perceived injustices on the part of England, not by Christianity. That the terrorists attacked with guns painted yellow, does not mean that yellowness was to blame.
○ That the conclusions of the official commission investigating the attack were flawed does not necessarily mean that your alternative theory is right. The official investigation concludes (implicitly) that the man in the moon was not responsible for the attack (it was rather the fault of whomever the report found culpable). That the investigation was flawed does not support the conclusion that the man in the moon was responsible for it.
● 9-12-2011: In the last week or so my father’s condition seems to have deteriorated significantly. I’m afraid he may be dying. I have a number of feelings. One is fear, for my financial survival in the absence of his monthly pension and social security stipends. The other is guilt, over the way I’ve treated him while he’s been living with me since April of this year. I’ve been impatient, critical, harsh, at times downright mean, and overall very selfish. I hope I get a chance to apologize. . . . I did. Now I must act, to protect myself, and to treat my father better, in what may be his very last days.
● Saturday, 9-17-2011: Meeting with David Park and Maria (about the business handling consumer bankruptcies).
● Monday, 9-26-2011: Today I told Attorney David C. Berns (my boss) I’m quitting.
● 10-2-2011: It’s a bad time for workers. Many have no work; and those who do have work, are overworked and underpaid.
● 10-18-2011: The difficulty of explaining or giving reasons for a negative (as why a certain event did not happen, or why you did not take a certain action) is akin to the difficulty of proving a negative.
● 10-23-2011: When God invented time, he thought, “This is grand! I should have done it sooner!”
● 10-24-2011: To a certain cleric and professor of Catholicism, lecturing on television: You come across as liberal and enlightened, and if I rejected your thesis, you would appear to have only compassion for me. But I know that secretly, inwardly, deep down, you would be sneering at me and deriding me as a fool. But I don’t mind. I don’t hold that against you. I understand. And do you know why? Because that’s exactly how I feel about you!
● Friday, 10-28-2011: Today was my last deposition, my last work, for David C. Berns, at least for now.
● Friday, 11-11-2011: This is a red-letter day. For the first time in perhaps 34 years, I’ve taken out my piece “Ethics,” and begun editing it.
● 11-14-2011: Injured my right ring finger fingernail.
● 11-19-2011: In English, seven is the sole non-monosyllabic digit.
● 11-29-2011: Some physicists propose an infinite “multiverse,” containing infinitely many universes like ours. Some of these physicists claim that this would probably mean other universes containing exact duplicate worlds like ours. But I disbelieve that there are other copies of myself somewhere, right down to my awareness. I think if they existed . . . I’d be aware of them. . . .
[Later note (6-5-2022): On the other hand, perhaps they exist at different times. But that would amount to reincarnation, which is unlikely—see my essay “Life after Death.”
What’s the difference between (the ideas of) reincarnation and the afterlife in Heaven and Hell? The former is posited as a natural phenomenon; the latter as a supernatural (or religious) one. And, in reincarnation, just your consciousness is supposed to return (you could come back as another person, or even as a member of another species); in the religious afterlife, you exist as the same person you were in life. The duplicate-worlds idea is a hybrid of the two: reincarnation as the same person—of entire worlds full of people!]
● 12-1-2011: A piece of writing may be called experimental . . . until the world acknowledges that the experiment succeeded, at which time people simply call it literature.
● 12-8-2011: He who has no interests in life other than to “be happy” is lost, and will probably not find much happiness, either.
● 12-11-2011: Philosophy Club meeting. Topic: “Happiness”.
● Concerning subjects where philosophy and psychology intersect, as in morality, motivation, well-being, and happiness; the philosophy is neat and precise, while the psychology is rough and messy. Philosophy navigates the landscape as the crow flies; psychology proceeds as if walking in a maze.
[Later note (6-11-2022): That probably says less about philosophy than about me, about my facility and affinity with philosophy.]
[Later note (11-17-2024): But to the extent that it says something about me, I hope it will also say something about philosophy—about the philosophy I’ve written.]
● 12-23-2011: Clarity is not passive, like the calm surface of a pond reflecting the sky. It’s, rather, a muscular affair, involving exertion of the muscle of the brain, and sometimes comes only with a great mental workout.
● Sunday, 25 December 2011: This (2011) has been, on balance, a very good year. Among the positive highlights are these:
○ I completed and posted on the Internet my great companion work to “Ethics” (the new piece titled “Morality”);
○ I revised “Ethics” itself, as well as the eleven drug essays, to the point where I think they (the drug essays) are ready for publication (in retrospect, I’m not surprised that publishers rejected them before—they, the essays, needed considerable rewriting);
[Later note (8-2-2022): Perhaps the publishers, too, needed some revision.]
○ My father moved in with me (caring for him has been considerably easier than I had feared; his health has remained good, and so we’re in a good position financially, with his monthly pension and Social Security payments);
○ We settled my father’s lawsuit against my sister, whereby she’ll buy his half interest in the house—we should get the money soon;
○ I made an arrangement whereby I can start a law practice handling consumer bankruptcy (with the money from my father’s sale of his interest in the house, I can advertise to bring in clients, and finally turn my life around); and
○ To end the year on a sweet note, I just last week completed yet another piece of writing, “On Happiness and Well-being”; one of my very best, most important works, of which I’m very proud.
On the negative side, the arthritis in my left hand and fingers has gotten significantly worse, and it’s starting to spread to my right hand; also, my great physician at Kaiser (Robert Clements, M.D.) has retired.
[Later note (2021): That’s a funny way to put it; the arthritis in one hand did not spread to the other hand; rather, it (independently) developed in the other hand, too.]
● 12-30-2011: A good philosopher adheres to the principle, akin to intellectual honesty, of intellectual charity, whereby, in attacking another man’s argument, you address the strongest, or best, possible interpretation of it, rather than the weakest, or worst.
● 12-31-2011: I received three veritable gifts from the universe this month. Two pieces of writing, each of which I thought would take me weeks or even months to complete, I finished (each) in just one day (the revision of my 1-888-Debt-End.com website and the reply to Ron regarding my “For the Right to Abortion”). The third, the new work on happiness and well-being, I finished in only a week and a half.
● I think I have a mild case of face-blindness. I must see a person on very many occasions before I’m able to recognize him as someone I’ve seen before, let alone to place him.