2017
● 1-2-2017: About a month and a half ago, I bought an ergonomic fork, one with a very thick handle, for arthritis sufferers. It has made a huge difference in my hand symptoms. The pain is virtually completely gone.
● Today I edited my piece “For the Right to Abortion.” I feel good about it. The editing went well, deftly.
● 1-7-2017: Electing Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency was like a failed suicide “attempt”: not an act rationally calculated to make conditions better, but a flirting with destruction, the American people’s nonrational, desperate cry for help, and/or a message to the liberal elite: “If you don’t make things much better for us, we’ll make things worse for you.”
● 1-8-2017: I keep (occasionally, every few months or so) having a recurring kind of dream wherein I’m losing the battle with myself to abstain from marijuana. In real life, of course, I am abstinent: I haven’t used marijuana, not even once, for about 20 years now.
● 1-10-2017: Late at night, the horizon went light; dark; light; dark. And, far away, the thunder softly twittered. (A poem, such as it is, that I composed in a dream.)
● Sunday, 1-15-2017: Moral philosophy is the new religion: without a belief in God, but with a belief in intrinsic value and in an objective morality (both—all—of which are illusory).
● This morning I woke up to a house in which the electricity was out. I was worried about my computer and the contents of the refrigerator. But the electricity came on within an hour (I don’t know how long it had been out, though it couldn’t have been more than seven hours, because I had used it seven hours before, when I got up during the night). There was apparently no harm to my computer or to the food in the refrigerator—the weather is cold now. Another bullet dodged. I love electricity!
● 1-16-2017: The subject of population ethics is implied by utilitarianism (“the greatest happiness for the greatest number”).
● Desert ride.
● 1-17-2017: My hearing is deteriorating, but my vision is (still) divine.
● Lately, I’ve been asking myself, What do I want?, as a way to explore such philosophical questions as, What do we want?; to what extent and how are we selfish, unselfish?
● 1-19-2017: My piece “Morality” covers largely the same ground as my “Ethics.” The difference is that, as it were, the latter comes to a negative conclusion, or takes a negative attitude; the former, a positive one. “Ethics” is a piece in a minor mode; “Morality,” in major.
● 1-20-2017: I read philosopher Derek Parfit’s obituary in The Guardian, which summarized some of his philosophical projects. My impression is that Parfit puts too fine a point on morality. In my view, there’s no objective morality; moral rules are a matter of individual perception; it’s impossible to precisely specify them, and counterproductive to try.
● 1-21-2017: It has been said that the one hundred wealthiest persons in the world have more wealth than the bottom half of the world’s population combined. I wonder how the wealth of the latter is calculated: is it wealth at one point in time, or on-going wealth over some significant span? I remember my experience when I was poor. I owned very little; if at any certain time I’d been asked to come up with spare money, I could have rounded up maybe ten or twenty bucks. Using this measure (wealth at one time), redistributing the top wealth to the poorest people wouldn’t improve their lot very much; it would give them a trivial few-dollars one-time handout, which would disappear practically instantly. But using the second measure, it might double their weekly pay for the rest of their lives (which would be a substantial increase).
● Sunday, 1-22-2017: Philosophy Club; topic: “Happiness.” I didn’t go, because I have to get up very early tomorrow morning, for a workers’ compensation trial, among other things. It’s only my second workers’ compensation trial, and I can’t afford to be tired for it.
● I’ve just finished a two-week course of medication prescribed by my urologist, to try to shrink my prostate gland enough to enable me to urinate without catheterizing. It didn’t work. It made no difference whatsoever.
● Tuesday, 1-24-2017: Today I ate at Marie Calendar’s Restaurant for the first time in many decades.
● So what do I (we) want?
● Friday, 1-27-2017: Today I attended a staff meeting of the Law Offices of Scott Warmuth. I shared with Scott an idea I had for marketing (which just occurred to me on the spot): a billboard with the photo of one of the firm’s attorneys broadly smiling; and these words: “Why is this lawyer smiling? . . . Because he just won a big case . . . We love to win! . . . Law Offices of Scott Warmuth.” My offering this idea to him had an ulterior motive: It’s been almost 6 months since I proposed to Warmuth my 1-888-ACE-ATTY. In a week or so, I’m going to ask him again whether he’s made a decision on it. I have a feeling he has done, and that he’s decided against it, which is a major disappointment for me. This was a last-ditch effort to change his mind, by making him impressed with my advertising ideas. If he’s impressed with this idea, it may cause him to see 1-888-ACE-ATTY in the same light—namely, as a product of the advertising genius that I am. Also, if he’s impressed with that idea (about the smile), he may want to keep me in his firm, as a source of profitable ideas, and I’m more likely to stay in the firm if we make a deal to use 1-888-ACE-ATTY . . . Alas, however, I’m expecting a “no”; I have the next lawyer to offer it to lined up in my mind: Sef Krell. I’ve already put together a 1-888-ACE-ATTY presentation package for Krell.
● 2-6-2017: For the last two weeks or so, I’ve had an itch on my left forearm—only on the left and only at night during bedtime. I apply anti-itch ointment, several times a night, which helps. But it’s all I can do to keep from scratching it, which would both worsen the itch and damage the skin. I’ll go to the Urgent Care at Kaiser in the morning. I’ve been avoiding going to the doctor, thinking it would resolve on its own; but it hasn’t.
● Tuesday, 2-7-2017: Scott Warmuth, my boss, finally informed me that he had decided against using my 1-888-ACE-ATTY. I had to ask him about it; he didn’t spontaneously tell me. In fact, about six months ago he said he’d decide in a few months’ time. He said he didn’t remember the reasons his advertising people gave for the decision. We agreed to speak again after he found his notes on it.
● Sunday, 2-12-2017: Philosophy Club. Topic: “Interpreting the constitution.”
● 2-15-2017: I’m self-contained.
● In his essay “The Meanings of Life” Roy F. Baumeister distinguishes between happiness and a sense of meaning. I see the distinction a bit differently. I dichotomize between feeling (or experience), on one hand, and accomplishment, on the other. Insofar as my experience is concerned, I want happiness. But essential to my happiness is my estimation of my accomplishment (though I value accomplishment in its own right, not as a means to my happiness. In fact, I not only value my accomplishment over my happiness, but, strictly speaking, I don’t value my happiness—rather, I desire it).
● 2-18-2017: Haircut.
● That itch that I wrote about in the 1-6-2017 note, above, has finally gone away. I didn’t see a doctor for it; I just rode it out.
● Sunday, 2-19-2017: Pedicure.
● Monday, 2-27-2017: I met with Sef Krell today about my 1-800-SUE-THEM.
● Saturday, 3-4-2017: Today I tried for the first time a bagel with a topping called “everything,” a combination of many different kinds of seeds: poppy, sesame, rye, etc. It was pretty good. I don’t know whether I’ll get another one; but it was pretty good.
● Here’s another first for me. Tomorrow I’ll meet with my tax accountant, Fred Greenspan, CPA. It will be the first time that I’ll have tallied all the tax-deductible expenses myself. Fred is quite old now, and I don’t think he’s up to it. Last year he asked me to do it next time.
● If Trump is not successfully impeached before his first term is up, and if he runs for a second term, I hope that, on 4 November 2020, I read a newspaper headline like this: TRUMP: YOU’RE FIRED!
● Friday, 3-10-2017: When Mozart was in high school, his guidance counselor administered to him an exhaustive battery of tests to determine his aptitudes for various lines of work. The result: his counselor advised Mozart to become a piano tuner.
● 3-13-2017: I eat a balanced diet: I eat good food in the morning and balance it with bad food in the evening. Joking. Actually, I have a pretty good diet.
● 3-15-2017: Yesterday I dropped off a package regarding 1-877-THE-ATTY at Attorney David Berns’s office for him.
● A car’s electrical system is analogous to our nervous system.
● When a hot dish in a restaurant is served not hot enough, or cold, it’s the waiter’s fault, not the cook’s. The cook’s job ends when he finishes cooking the food and places it for the waiter to pick up, at which time, presumably, the food is piping hot; and if the waiter brought it to the customer right away, it would still be hot. On second thought, this perhaps oversimplifies the situation. The foregoing is true when there’s just one dish in the meal. But it’s not so clear when there are multiple dishes. I suppose it’s possible that the cook is instructed not to put a meal out for pickup until all dishes in the meal are ready; and the cook ill times the preparation so that some dishes sit, getting cold, while other of the dishes are still cooking. When all dishes are finally done, some are cold, however efficient the waiter is. Or perhaps it’s the fault of the restaurant’s system.
When I order two dishes at a restaurant, and one is supposed to be served hot; I worry if the waiter brings both to my table at the same time. It’s unlikely that both would be finished being made at the same time; so one of them probably sat while the other dish was finishing. If the one that sat was a hot dish, it’s going to get to me colder than it should be, and much colder than it was when the cook finished cooking it.
● 3-16-2017: Today at Scott Warmuth’s office (I was there for a deposition) I had a freak accident: I tripped over my own electric cord, and fell and hurt my right knee.
● I feel as if I’ve dodged a bullet in that regard. This afternoon the knee was painful; but I applied ice to it, and now, this evening, it’s almost completely pain-free.
● Sunday, 3-26-2017: Philosophy Club. Topic: “What would be the significance of our discovering intelligent life on other planets?” [I didn’t go, but I wrote a short piece on the topic.]
● Sunday, 4-2-2017: For the first time in perhaps six months, I’m foregoing retaliation against my next-door neighbor in apartment 1, Eric V. Last week his attacks against me virtually stopped.
● 4-5-2017: I have some notable deficits in my makeup. I like to think, though, that I also have some remarkable abilities. It’s as if nature, when it gives a creature extraordinary gifts, makes them from stuff in other parts of the creature, leaving some extraordinary gaps elsewhere in him.
● Saturday, 4-8-2017: Apparently, I didn’t completely dodge the bullet to my knees. Last Thursday, 4-6-2017, both knees started to hurt slightly. I’m again applying ice to them.
● 4-10-2017: I’ve noticed what seems to be an inconsistency in my attitudes. I’m for equality among all people, in material goods—but not in personal abilities. I’d vote for a system to equalize wealth, even if I personally would become poorer. But I’d resist giving up any degree of talent to less talented people (or to anyone). I’d even resist making others more talented, as by genetic enhancement of posterity, if that would make me less talented relatively. I guess I’m unselfish in some ways, but selfish in other ways. I’m not an unalloyedly good person.
● Saturday, 4-15-2017: Today for the first time ever, I tried a bialy at my local bagel shop. It was pretty good. It strikes me as amazing that I’d never tried one before, in my whole life, even just out of curiosity. They cost only a dollar, the same price as a bagel.
● 4-16-2017: I dreamt I was 15 years old. Then I realized I was actually 95; then I realized I was 70 (I’m now “only” nearly 66). I mourned the loss of my youth, and complained that by this late age I should be more accomplished. Specifically, I was playing the violin, and I thought my playing should by now be much better, much smoother.
● 4-17-2017: I dreamt that I was a mental patient in an institution. I recovered my mental health and wanted to leave the hospital. Though I hadn’t yet left the hospital, just having recovered made me feel liberated, wonderful. Oh, while I was mentally ill, I developed a romantic affection toward a pretty young woman patient there; when I got well, I still felt the affection for her.
● Sunday, 4-23-2017: Philosophy Club; topic: “The Ethics of Voting.” I didn’t go.
I recently saw the question posed, “Do we have a moral obligation to vote?” The answer is: Yes, but only when there’s an election. Seriously, though, the question gives me occasion to catalog the reasons for the nonexistence of moral obligations. First, most basically, a moral obligation is subjective. That is, a moral obligation is the feeling of obligation. We have an obligation if and only if we feel we have one. Second, moral precepts are not true or false. Third, and finally, there’s no moral obligation because intrinsic value is impossible. (Lack of intrinsic value does not strictly negate moral obligation; it has that effect only informally, as it were.) So “I have a moral obligation to vote” is elliptical for “I feel morally obligated to vote.”
● Thursday, 4-27-2017: Yesterday, with the help of Attorney Nikki Semanchick, of the For Purpose Law Group, I finished a draft of a licensing agreement with Sef Krell to license my 1-800-SUE-THEM to him. And today I gave Sef a copy of it. I await his response.
● Saturday, 4-29-2017: I got good news yesterday. I won yet another workers’ compensation trial. This is my 4th or 5th trial in half a year, and I’ve won them all. Plus, I finally wrote the argument on voting, and early this morning added another argument on the subject. It’s been a good week.
● Monday, 5-1-2017: Desert ride. I ate breakfast at Tom’s #25, in West Palmdale.
● Wednesday, 5-3-2017: I had a very hostile, though successful, interaction with a nasty old woman in a McDonald’s restaurant today, when she tried to get me to move up in the queue.
● I just awoke from a very pleasant dream. In it, I somehow awoke in a new place. I was in some way involved with the college or university there, as either a student or a professor. It seems to me it was the morning after a great national cataclysm, like an election. Which was the occasion for my being in a different place. I at first thought it was Brazil, but it turned out it was in a city in Massachusetts, with a compound, three-syllable name I can’t quite recall, like Port Huron. Anyway, it was a university, or a university town, and I had the option of staying permanently. I was flirting with the possibility of staying. I liked that it would be a new start for me, where no one knew me. People were very friendly and welcoming. At night I looked out my window at the traffic below, and I saw that cars were traveling without headlights on. I commented next morning to someone, to the effect, “A city that bans the use of headlights at night must be a good place.” I was leaning toward staying.
● Sunday, 5-7-2017: Concerning the argument denigrating Muslims by noting that, though not all Muslims are terrorists, all terrorists are Muslims; first of all, it’s not true (there have been innumerable white, self-described Christian terrorists as well); more important, perhaps, you could make the same observation about humanity as a whole: all terrorists are humans; does that mean humans are bad?
● Friday, 5-12-2017: I just called Sef Krell to follow up on the 1-800-SUE-THEM licensing, and he declined it.
[Later note (2020): Shortly before I gave the copy of the proposed licensing contract to Sef, Atty Nikki Semanchick, the attorney who helped me draft the contract, offered to call Sef and negotiate a licensing deal between me and Sef. I turned her down. In retrospect, I wish I had taken her up on that offer to call Sef and negotiate a deal. As I’ve said, I have (or had) a great hand of cards, but I’m a terrible card player.]
● 5-14-2017: I just awoke from a bad dream, or a dream with one bad element: the idea that we lawyers had to pass the bar exam repeatedly.
● 5-19-2017: Today, a bank teller gave me $200.00 extra cash by mistake, when I cashed a check ($4,000 instead of $3,800). I immediately informed her of the error, and gave her back the $200.00. She was grateful for my honesty, and I felt good about it. Of course, had the bank accidentally given me, not two hundred dollars, but two million . . ..
● Sunday, 5-21-2017: Happy Birthday, Richard! Also, Philosophy Club meeting (topic: “Cultural Appropriation”). (I didn’t go.)
● 6-10-2017: Here’s a letter I sent in response to a questionnaire:
If you want me to intelligently respond to this inquiry, you’ll need to give me some facts to refresh my memory about the visit (for example, what was the complaint for which I sought treatment). I’ve seen several doctors at Kaiser this year, and the date of the visit and the doctor’s name is insufficient information to make me recall what was involved. After all, this was two months ago. If you’d sent me this letter two days, or even two weeks, after the visit, I might have remembered the details.
But I can tell you this. The complaints were not the result of an accident for which anyone else was responsible—just me. Perhaps I should sue myself.
Richard Eisner
6/10/2017
● 6-18-2017: I’m listening to a radio program that implicitly raises this issue; here’s my impromptu answer: Life is worth living when it’s meaningful or happy. Meaningful means doing (what you think is) important work; happy means enjoying life. If you’re neither doing important work nor enjoying life, you’re better off dead—or, at least, as well off dead as alive. If you’re doing important work, it’s worth continuing to live, unless you’re in pain, in which case you have to weigh the value of the work against the pain, a subjective weighing. If you’re not doing important work, but you’re enjoying yourself, then, as far as you alone are concerned, your life is worth living. There might be other relevant considerations, like the effect on the world: are you causing pain to others, or using up considerable valuable resources? I’m at least, perhaps only, speaking for myself here.
● Sunday, 6-25-2017: Philosophy Club: I’m not going; I’m spending all my available time preparing for trial in the GTS case, scheduled for 7-13-2017. I’m going to write a trial brief. I haven’t written a trial or arbitration brief for at least 25 years.
● I just now saw a very sad event. On returning from the bagel shop, where I got a bagel for breakfast, I saw an opossum with perhaps 10 or so baby opossums on its back walking in the alley where my parking garage is. Perhaps because of me, it was hurrying, and one of the babies fell off. The mother eventually stopped and turned around to look back at the baby, but, again perhaps in fear of me, she didn’t go back for it, but resumed her travel forward, disappearing from my view. The baby crawled up a wall but then came back down. I went over to it to take a closer look. It came toward me and in fact climbed on my shoe, and started to crawl up my pant leg. I discouraged it, and got it back onto the ground. I almost cried.
● Tuesday, July 4th, 2017: I’ve just today finished the trial brief in a big workers’ compensation case that I’m defending, for the Law Offices of Scott Warmuth. The case is Blancarte v. GTS Tax & Insurance LLC. The defendant owner of GTS was uninsured for workers’ compensation and the worker, Lilliana Blancarte, was very seriously injured in a car crash, which she’s alleging was work-related. It’s an excellent brief; I’m proud of it.
● Two days each year are particularly uncomfortable for me: July 4th and New Year’s Eve. People in the neighborhood explode firecrackers nearby for many hours; every year it seems to get louder. It severely disrupts my sleep, and I worry about further hearing damage from it.
[Later note (8-6-2022): Another negative effect is air pollution. For the rest of the morning, the air is so bad that I must keep my door closed (in July I usually keep it open at night) and I can’t take my exercise-walk that morning.]
● Friday, 7-21-2017: I had a colonoscopy today. Preparation was an ordeal. But it went well. Only minor, fixable problems were found, like a polyp, which was excised. They send it to the lab for biopsy. So no news about it will be good news.
● Sunday, 7-23-2017: If I’m right, but you disagree with me, it means that you don’t understand me.
● Philosophy Club meeting. Topic: “Marxism.” I didn’t go, not because I’m not interested in the topic (I am interested), but because it’s not worth losing sleep for—I must get up early in the morning tomorrow for work. These days, that (attending philosophy club meetings) just feels too hard on me.
● I’ve started to keep a record on the computer (but not in this file), which I had been keeping only on paper, of the current problems with the neighbor in apartment 1. Here are today’s entries:
● Friday, 7-28-2017: In the early morning when I left the house, angry sound as I touched the doorknob to make sure the door was locked.
● Friday, 7-28-2017, 8:00 p.m., or so: He made the angry-noise, loudly, as I was simply standing in the kitchen.
The question for some time has been whether to retaliate for the neighbor’s “angry noise.” An angry noise is a certain sound that a person tries to establish in his neighbor’s mind as a sound associated with his anger toward the neighbor, so that, once established as such in the neighbor’s mind, the angry person can use that sound as a weapon, just by making the sound, not dependent on context or situation, to attack the neighbor and make him feel bad. On one hand, I want to avoid retaliating when he uses the noise just as a noise, with no other context involved, because my retaliating in those circumstances would establish the noise as a context-independent offensive sound; it would give it power; it would forge it as a weapon. On the other hand, if I make a sound, and he (my neighbor) immediately makes a loud noise in response, that’s a fair subject of retaliation, and there’s no danger of establishing the specific sound as a weapon, because it was the coincidence, the situation, that made his noise offensive. The key is to keep the two straight, or separate: don’t recognize the noise as an offense, don’t retaliate for it, when he tries to use it just as a pure noise, without a context to make it offensive. But if he uses a noise that he’s trying to establish as a pure-noise angry-sound in a context wherein any noise he makes would be legitimately offensive, then I can safely retaliate for that incident, without the risk of establishing the sound as a pure-noise weapon. The problem is that lately, by using attacks that are hard to categorize, he’s trying to trick me into responding to a pure-noise offense (by causing me to interpret it as a contextual offense). And if I respond, he’s won. I think this may be the resolution: there’s no rule that says I must retaliate for every legitimate offense. A good boxer sometimes lets his opponent hit him repeatedly, without feeling the need to retaliate in kind. It may be to my strategic advantage to refrain from retaliation, to avoid establishing a pure-noise weapon, if there’s any danger of that happening (including just where I have a significant doubt about it), even if there’s an element of contextual, genuine offense involved. So I think I’ll refrain from my accustomed Sunday afternoon retaliation this time, since all his attacks this week involved the angry-noise, and his efforts to establish it as a context-independent weapon. Frustrating his longer-term effort in that regard may cause him more immediate-pain than anything else I could do. And then, in future, the angry-noise, far from signifying his anger toward me, will come to signify my triumph, and his defeat; and cause me pleasure, and him pain. Sometimes the best offense is a good defense.
● I’ve used the foregoing to formulate this rule of thumb: When you have simultaneously a clear cause for retaliation and a reason to withhold retaliation, the withholding takes precedence; that is, don’t retaliate. (And remember: no rule says you must retaliate for every offense. Don’t confuse that with a bad, or mistaken, retaliation, which is wrong—there is a “rule” against that. A corollary is that, if in doubt whether to retaliate, don’t. A carried-out bad retaliation is worse than a missed good retaliation.)
[Later note (2021): I’m acutely aware of the phenomenon of the angry-noise, and I know well how to defend against it, because I use it myself as a (retaliatory) weapon with neighbors. I know how to establish it, and I’m very good at doing so. But an important lesson I’ve learned about it, is that the angry-sound should be a unique sound, not one you routinely make throughout the day. If you make a routine sound the angry-sound, you’ll be attacking the neighbor even when you don’t intend or want to; you’ll have to be very careful about making the sound, but you’ll inevitably make it, which will perpetuate hostilities. I made that mistake with the neighbor in No. 1. On the other hand, I did not make that mistake with the neighbors in No. 3, and they’ve been severely, unremittingly hostile since the day they moved in, over three years ago.]
● A related note: “Land-mining” is my term to describe an attack by a neighbor whereby he anticipates your movement (involving your making certain sounds), and he closely precedes your movement with a noise of his own, so that, if you continue with the movement you were going to make, it will seem as if you are attacking the neighbor, by making a noise immediately following (in response to) his noise. But of course it was his attack, because he set it up, and it’s even more pernicious than the typical, simpler attack, because you are made to look like the one at fault; and at minimum you’re at fault for being clumsy enough not to have avoided the trap, as by momentarily stopping your movement, and keeping from making the coinciding noise. That’s the apartment no. 3 neighbors’ favorite kind of attack against me. I’ve gotten good at evading it. But I still retaliate for it when they use it, even if their attempt is “unsuccessful,” by analogy with attempted murder, which is a crime even if the attempt fails.
● Sunday, 8-13-2017: Several times in the last month or so, I’ve felt slightly ill: headaches, mild body aches; even chills at night. I’ve discovered the cause: consumption of sugar. In eating a special diet to prepare for my colonoscopy a few weeks ago, I reverted to eating ice cream. And I’ve started eating candy fairly regularly—many nights I eat both. When I stopped that consumption, my symptoms immediately and completely vanished. Amazing!
. . . On second thought, it’s now 8-26-2017, and I’ve eaten ice cream and candy several times since that previous entry, with no apparent adverse consequences. So I guess it’s still a mystery. [Later note (2020): No, it’s not a mystery: there’s a significant difference between doing it occasionally versus doing it ever day . . ..]
● I recently learned that the philosophy club website, where I’ve posted so many of my works over the last 12 years or so, is defunct. So I’ve begun the long process of posting the pieces on one of my own websites: specifically, RichardEisner.com. Today I worked on editing the second essay (“Egoism: a Rebuttal”) that I’ll post there. I had the interesting experience of finding in it many needs for revision. Of the four paragraphs, I radically revised the middle two. I have mixed feelings about that. The negative feeling is disappointment with my work: finding that a piece I liked to think was perfect, so badly needed editing. The positive feeling was a renewed confidence in my mind, which, even at my (present) age of 66, is still able to find flaws in my previous work, and to fix them.
● 8-17-2017: I’m being selective in posting essays to RichardEisner.com. I’ll post just the better and more significant pieces. One that I’m passing up is a piece titled “The Value of a World View” (2-13-2005). I read it this afternoon and I found the logic questionable (if you write an argument that you don’t understand, what are the chances that it will be sound?—not very good, I think) and the overall quality poor. If the quality were (otherwise) excellent, it might be worth revising, to fix the logic; but it’s not worth further effort. I’ll leave it as a rough draft, an unfinished piece, a failed experiment.
● 8-27-2017: As I see it, philosophy is the application of abstract thought to the concrete, the concrete being human life.
● Even the healthiest person in the world will eventually die.
● Monday, 8-28-2017: I had a very pleasant dream last night (or early this morning). I dreamed that a beautiful woman (a Christine Balderas), the prettiest girl in my elementary school and middle school classes, asked me to marry her, and I said yes. In the dream she was still young and beautiful. In the same dream, or one soon thereafter, Brian Gould, the facilitator of the Los Angeles Philosophy Club, asked me to be his law partner, and I was pleased to say yes to that proposal, too.
● 9-2-2017: Haircut.
● Tuesday, 9-5-2017: Today I got the biggest single paycheck I’ve ever gotten ($6,304.00). It was all the bigger, considering it was for a pay-period of just 15 days. My financial situation is the best it’s ever been, by far, because my income is higher and my expenses (I’m on Medicare) are lower than ever before.
● Thursday, 9-7-2017: Today, we finally resolved the case in chief of Rito’s GTS Tax and Insurance, in which we were defending that uninsured employer in a big workers’ compensation case. We settled the case for exactly $540,777.77 (the sevens had a religious significance for the Applicant—the injured worker). We’d worked on it for months, and I did a magnificent job with it. I wrote a fine brief that brought the injured worker’s settlement demand from “millions” to less than a million. It was a good experience for me. I gained increased respect for my own ability as a lawyer. I’m almost as brilliant a lawyer as I am a writer/philosopher. [Later note (2020): No, that couldn’t be true—or I’d be a rich man.] Of course, being a great writer or philosopher is much rarer and more important than being a great lawyer. Nonetheless, the lawyer capability enhances my self-image. I’m becoming a very effective trial lawyer. I’d like to retire, but I probably won’t do so anytime soon, because I’m just starting to make decent money, of which I don’t have much now. And I still have all those trademarked lawyer-advertising assets. If I could get one or two of those to start bringing in (passive) income, then maybe I’d think about retiring.
● Saturday, 9-9-2017: History is what’s in the rear-view mirror; the present and future is what you see through the front windshield.
● I have a cold. Mercifully, it skipped the sore throat phase, and went right to the coughing phase. That is, the presence of the cough is bad, but I find the sore throat the most unpleasant symptom of all the symptoms of a common cold. And I’m assuming that the omission of one phase will shorten the illness’ overall course. I notice that it has been about nine months since I was ill. That’s a pretty good sickness-free span. And these are fairly mild illnesses.
● Tuesday, 9-12-2017: Yesterday, at the Pomona WCAB (Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board), I overcame a long-standing psychological barrier: using the restroom there, which I had feared using because I considered it too dirty. Circumstances finally forced me to do it. And I feel good about having overcome my fear (not that I had much choice about it).
● Right now, the cold symptoms of the last few days are pretty much gone, even the cough. That’s amazing: a 4-day cold! That’s almost unheard of, for me.
● Friday, 9-15-2017: My declaration, above, of the end of the cold, was premature! Wishful thinking.
● Wednesday, 9-20-2017: A difference between the time before you were born and the time after you die is that in the former, you will come to be; in the latter, you will never (again) come to be (though the odds of it happening are the same in both).
● I got a bit of good news today: I got the trademark on 1-888-A-GENIUS.
● Tuesday, 9-26-17: Marx says: “[T]he philosophers have only interpreted the world, the point is to change it”—thesis 11 in his Theses on Feuerbach. But what constitutes a change in the world? What constitutes the world? I suspect that Marx’s conception of it is too narrow. I think that an important dimension of the world is the intellectual/cultural sphere: music, literature, philosophy (which is also a form of literature) . . . just as a writer’s writing is an important part of his life—indeed, the most important part. . . . [this note added 3-13-2018:] Indeed, what makes us human, and the pinnacle of animal species, is our minds. So, for human beings, to change the world most significantly is to change our understanding of the world. And yet, I must acknowledge the overwhelming validity of Marx’s point. So much human misery is caused by the problems in our material world: misallocation of resources and oppressive relationships. We could improve the world for the great majority of men by ending war, the inequality of wealth, and the destruction of the physical environment. And a necessary preliminary to solving those problems is to identify or diagnose them, as Marx does.
● Thursday, 9-28-2017: Interesting development: last Sunday, 9-24-2017, the woman and her two kids moved out of apartment no. 3, my next-door neighbors to the east, leaving the man, whom I always considered the most hostile of that group. But since the wife and kids left, it’s been quiet and peaceful. Perhaps, if he was the main aggressor, the group psychology was such that he felt he needed to make a show of aggression against me to impress them. I don’t know. I’m just glad for the change.
● Saturday, 10-21-2017: Pedicure today, at Nails by Hien. She raised her price from $13 to $15. In a way, I’m glad she did, because I always felt a bit guilty about how little I was paying her for the good service she does.
● 10-24-2017: A comment on the last paragraph of my essay “Eternal Recurrence”: If we put forth maximum effort every day, we’d be exhausted. And yet, there’s a lot of space between our usual, habitual time-wasting ways every day, on one hand, and maximum effort, on the other.
● That is how I’m going to handle the mother#%@&er, just keep on typing, to let him think that I don’t register his coinciding-noise attack.
● Friday, 10-27-2017: Around last Monday, I stopped taking Melatonin; I had been taking 3 mg of the substance every night before bed, as a sleep aid. I recently heard an interview with a sleep expert, who said that Melatonin is a mere placebo, with practically no effect, that it’s useful just for a situation not relevant to me. So I stopped taking it. It doesn’t work as a placebo if you know it’s a placebo. It seems to me I’ve actually slept better since I stopped. In the last few days, I’ve slept through the (albeit shorter) night, which almost never happened before.
● 10-28-2017: Last night I thought I was sick. I had pronounced generalized body aches, and a loss of appetite for food. But this morning I’m all right.
● 10-29-2017: I’ve implied, or perhaps actually declared, that a person’s life is worthwhile just to the extent that he contributes to others’ lives, or to civilization. But that proposition is logically problematic (an infinite regress, or something like it). If a person’s life is worthless because he contributes nothing to others, then your enhancement of his life can’t matter, either, for you can’t rightly be said to truly enhance an ultimately worthless life. Of course, this is to put too fine a point on it. My conclusion that intrinsic value is impossible is the all-encompassing, controlling truth in all such matters; it means that nothing—no life, no pursuit, no civilization, not anything—is intrinsically worthwhile. When I say that just making a contribution to others is worthwhile, I mean this: What I value, what I take pride in, is just creating work that will be valued by posterity. It’s like saying, “Intrinsic value is impossible, but I like strawberry ice cream.”
● 10-30-2017: My hostile next-door neighbors in Apartment 3 have all moved out. Hooray!
● 10-31-2017: Until they get a new resident in Apartment 3, it’s empty. It’s lovely; I have quiet, and privacy, at least at the east end of my apartment. It’s like being on vacation. (As of the morning of 11-2-2017, judging by the noises coming from that apartment yesterday evening, I suspect that the bastard sneaked back into the apartment then, to test and torment me. But I gave him nothing: I acted just the way I did when he was—officially—living there.) As of 11-3-2017, another, I think more likely, explanation occurs to me for what I heard: that, while they lived there, a small portion of the hostile noise, or what I took to be hostile noise, came from the apartment above me (I think it’s no. 9), but I mistakenly attributed it to the residents in no. 3. What I heard on 11/2/2017 was probably the small bit of (possibly hostile) noise still coming from no. 9, whose source, with the vacating of no. 3, I can now pinpoint.
(I’m now inserting this further [out-of-chronological-order] note on 11-27-2017: there may be a far simpler explanation for the hostile noises I detected in Apartment 3: a new [likewise, if more mildly, hostile] tenant. I know she was there at least as early as two weeks ago. Perhaps she was there much earlier. The noises I heard, or at least thought I heard, in early November, are consistent with the noises I’ve come to know more recently from this new tenant.)
(Further note, of 12-11-2017: the person in Apartment 3 is not a new tenant; it’s a real estate agent or leasing agent, someone who shows the apartment to potential new tenants. I’ve developed a method of dealing with her pathetic hostilities, a sort of strategic defense, of so deftly avoiding her hostile jabs that she’ll feel frustrated and embarrassed.)
● 11-3-2017: In some of my essays, I start with a statement of objective truth on the topic at hand, and then give my own (subjective) opinion, or sentiment, on it. Indeed, I’ve used that pattern as the structural scheme in some of my works.
● Saturday, 11-4-2017: I just woke from a memorable dream: I dreamed I discovered I was terminally ill, and had only a few days to live. I was in a panic to take two actions: one, to move to a smaller, far less expensive apartment (this imperative seems, to my awake self, a bit nonsensical—why would I need a lower monthly rent if I have only a few days to live?), and, two (this makes sense), to find someone, or something, to whom I could leave my works, who would care for them so that they’d find their way to the general culture, and be taken up by posterity. But this is merely a dramatically shortened version of my twin real predicaments: to arrange to have enough money to live on in my old age, after I can no longer work; and to situate my works (my writings) in such a way that they won’t be lost once I die and can no longer be their caretaker.
● Sunday, 11-5-2017: Reluctantly, here’s a note about the composition of my piece “Life After Death”: The first word is “Following”; the last is “finite.” In the context of the piece, “Following” is “Start”; and “finite” is “finish” . . ..
● Saturday, 11-11-2017: Since early this morning, I’ve some kind of painful nerve sensitivity in the outside surface of my left hand, wrist, and forearm. This evening I even took a codeine pain pill for it.
● Sunday, 11-12-2017: The left-hand nerve problem, though not completely gone, is much better today.
● 11-18-2017: United States Congressional Republicans are attempting to institute a massive tax cut for the rich. I hate it when radio persons say of the legislation that “most of its benefits would go to the rich,” because it implies that it would benefit everyone (only the rich more). That’s worse than euphemistic: it’s a gross mischaracterization. Even if the benefits are unequal, you can’t rationally object to something that benefits everyone. Of course, a massive tax cut for the rich, does not merely benefit poor and working people less—it positively hurts them, because any tax savings they may get are more than offset by the consequent reduction in public services they receive. And, obviously, in real, human terms, on balance, the harm (to poor and working people) far outweighs the benefit (to the rich). That’s the correct characterization.
● 11-21-2017: My new motto will perhaps be: “Don’t be so lazy! Get to work!”
● Thursday, 11-23-2017: Desert ride! I haven’t taken this drive for a long time, partly because I’ve been so busy with work (my job).
[Later note (2020): That’s not the only thing I’ve done less of because of the job: going through these diaries unmistakably reveals the pattern: my thinking and writing have all but stopped. The material has become almost as dull as what I was writing when I was on drugs!, in the early 1990s. I’ll have to cut much of it.]
● Saturday, 11-25-2017: Haircut (Brenda).
● Saturday, 12-2-17: I dodged a little bullet. I woke up early this morning with a very slight sore throat, and I was sure it was the start of a week or two of an unpleasant cold. I took ten sustained-release vitamin C tablets. I went back to bed for a few hours; when I got up several hours later, the symptom had completely gone, and I’ve been fine since.
● Sunday, 12-3-2017: No, there’s a slight sore throat; I can feel it at night.
● Tuesday, 12-5-2017: Well, what lessons shall we learn from the coming of “President” Trump? When the Republicans do something horrible, they taunt the people by saying, “Elections have consequences.” That’s true. And perhaps that’s the lesson. But there’s a corollary that may be even more important: Not voting has consequences. In a two-candidate election, the alternative to the lesser evil is not, somehow, something good—rather, it’s the greater evil; and a refusal to vote for the lesser evil is tantamount to a vote for the greater evil. Given the closeness of this election, those who refrained from voting for Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump’s opponent, because they were somehow too good or too pure to dirty themselves by voting for the lesser evil—those people are no less to blame for Trump’s election than are the ones who actually voted for him. Had they (who didn’t vote) voted, Trump would have lost the election. To those people: behold your handiwork.
And yet, Donald Trump’s election was also a condemnation of the Democratic party. Trump’s campaign message was ambiguous. He could have been significantly better than Hillary Clinton (and, for that matter, better than most other modern politicians), or significantly worse; what was certain was that he’d be significantly different. It turns out that his good indications were lies, and he was worse. But many working people were so unhappy with the steady worsening of their living conditions—most recently (if more slowly) under the Democrats—that they voted for a change, even if there was an equal chance that the change would be for the worse. This should be taken as a message to the Democrats: “You were not good enough.” And if they (the Democrats) want to win elections, they must improve.
● 12-8-2017: No one is ugly because of his “race.” Every race has about the same distribution of people of different degrees of physical attractiveness . . . and, for that matter, of every other trait, like altruism, kindness, wisdom, talent.
● Tuesday, 12-19-2017: I just came from my annual hearing test. Good news: my hearing is stable: no significant change in the last year. I’m very relieved and gladdened.
● Thursday, 12-21-2017: I may start using an alternative to “LOL” (which is an initialism for “laugh[ing] out loud”). My new initialism is “SI” (“smile [smiling] inwardly”) . . . as in, “I didn’t quite LOL [laugh out loud], but I SI’d [smiled inwardly].”
● I lately saw this question: If we indisputably discovered that God existed, how would that awareness affect men psychologically? (And of course I had to answer it!)
Since I believe that God’s existence is not merely untrue, but impossible, I at first felt that to answer the question I’d have to very carefully delineate the characteristics of such a hypothetical God, to be consistent with my thesis about impossibility.
But then it occurred to me that I don’t find the question sufficiently important or interesting to go to that much trouble to answer it. And my belief that God is impossible allows me to discuss the question casually, without high seriousness or great rigor.
With that introduction, here are my impressions. I think that, if I thought there was an extremely intelligent and capable conscious being who had deliberately created the Earth and man so that most of us are miserable while we live, and then soon die; who knows what each of us thinks and feels; who could radically improve us and our circumstances, but doesn’t—I would be deeply angry and resentful. And to know that such a being could not be reasoned with, or overthrown, or killed, or even injured, I would find extremely oppressive.
On the other hand, his showing of aloofness is so convincing—the world behaves perfectly consistently with such a supreme being’s nonexistence—that I could probably suppress my knowledge of his existence, and go on living pretty much as I have done.
● Sunday, 12-24-2017: I just awoke from the most (literally, visually) colorful dream I’ve ever had, or remember having. I was eating at a Chinese restaurant with my father and brother (I actually don’t have a brother). They wanted to talk to the restaurant owner about leaving a tip, but I talked them out of it, since we were leaving a smaller-than-average tip. The restaurant owner gave me two things, which I kept, and when I got home, I realized they were ties. The ties were extremely colorful: bright pink and similar hues. They were brighter than anything I’ve seen in real life. Each looked very good with the clothes I was wearing, and I wanted to ask my father, with whom I was living in the dream, which tie he thought was better, as I was about to go on a date.
● Monday, 12-25-2017: It’s been 2 weeks or so since new residents moved in next-door in apartment 3. They’ve been unrelentingly hostile, constantly attempting to “landmine” me. (Landmining is the reverse of the more straightforward sonic attack of making a noise immediately after, in response to, a sound that you make. In landmining, the neighbor anticipates your imminent sound, and makes a sound immediately before it, so that, if you follow through and make the sound you were indeed going to make, it seems as if you’ve attacked him.) I’ve managed to sidestep almost all the attacks, but I’m starting to get angry about it. It’s like someone shooting at your feet, making you “dance” to avoid getting hit. I like to think that, by avoiding getting shot, I’m causing the shooter frustration, and therefore getting back at him; but the fact is that he’s constantly making me “dance”; it’s an attack, nonetheless. I had intended not to retaliate at all, but I think I’ll have to resort to it if the attacks continue. I figure I’ll give them a one-month grace period in which to settle down, to calm down, to adjust. If the attacks continue that long, no one will be able to say I didn’t give these people a chance.
● I make so much money these days that I sometimes buy a whole baguette just to eat one small piece of it. I can eat only one piece at a meal, and by the time of the next meal, even if I might want to eat another piece, it’s stale. And it doesn’t seem worth the trouble of trying to preserve the remainder of the baguette.
● Wednesday, 12-27-2017: Sometimes I have an overwhelming feeling of well-being, when it occurs to me how extremely fortunate I am, in so many ways.
● It’s that time when I write a summary characterization of the past year, its highlights. As I see it now, 2017 was the year of the GTS case and of RichardEisner.com. GTS was a big workers’ compensation case, in which I defended GTS, an uninsured employer. I spent considerable time interviewing the client, Rito G, and his various witnesses; and I wrote a very fine trial brief, which ultimately led to a favorable settlement (the injured worker’s lawyer initially demanded many millions of dollars; after reading my trial brief, he lowered his demand to just over half a million. We settled the case in chief for $540,777.77). It was a magnificent performance on my part, a highlight of my legal career. I now call myself, among other things, a trial lawyer. RichardEisner.com is one of my websites. For over a decade I had posted philosophical arguments on a philosophy club’s website. In about 2016 that website became defunct. So this year I posted all those essays (mine) on a website of my own (RichardEisner.com). It was an occasion for polishing the essays. And now they’re collected in one, more easily accessible place, over which I have complete control (I can edit them, or delete them, or add new essays, at will). They’re a very impressive set of pieces. I’m very proud of them, very pleased with them.
● When I was about 15 or 16, I lost a series of chess games in a chess tournament (I was eliminated from the competition), and I was emotionally devastated by it. I look back on that experience now with a slightly altered attitude. How can you take so much pride in a performance in which a computer can beat any man?
● The women’s movement used to refer to men who demeaned women as male chauvinists. Well, I’m a human chauvinist: I believe that man is superior to all other animals, at least the ones we know of. I think man is magnificent.
● Donald Trump and the Republicans are accelerating the widening of the wealth gap in this country, transferring wealth from poor and working people to the very rich. This hurts the country as a whole, because far more are hurt than are helped. The harm is all the greater considering that those who are hurt (poor and working people) are truly hurt, since they badly need the money, but those who are supposedly helped (the ultra-rich) aren’t truly helped, because, by and large, they don’t need more money—they already have more than they can even use. Granted, they could buy another yacht, but they already have two or three yachts, and you can sail only one yacht at a time (which they could already do continuously, without ever having to work). In fact, given that byproducts of “helping” the super-rich include exacerbating pollution and climate damage, perhaps the Republicans are hurting everyone, for the environmental devastation hurts all people, including the rich, or at least their progeny, about whom, presumably, they care.
● Friday, 12-29-2017: Right now, I’m again having that feeling of extreme well-being. It comes largely from a wonderful sense of accomplishment. (Of course, making decent money, for the first time in my life, doesn’t hurt.)