2021

● Friday, 1-1-2021:   It’s just after midnight—New Year’s Eve. I’m (obviously?) sitting at the computer keyboard, typing. I’ve discovered a defense to the great loud noise of firecrackers on New Years Eve (and July 4^th): wearing a headset hearing protector and earplugs. The drawback is that, for me, it’s very uncomfortable. Of course, it’s well worth a few hours’ discomfort, to prevent (permanent) hearing loss.

● I’ve begun reediting my Eisner’s Journal, focusing specifically on that problematic final third. I started early this morning, beginning at page 300 (the document runs to 495 pages). I’m now up to page 333, and, so far, all the material is good—I’ve not had to even consider deleting any of it. But I’ll get there: my impression about the fall-off in quality was not mistaken. If I had even 400 pages of solid material, I could live with that.

● Saturday, 1-2-2021:   In editing the Journal, I’m up to page 389. I’ve deleted nothing. And yet there is clearly a fall-off in the material’s quality, or at least in its importance or interest. I suspect the problem is my failure as an editor: psychologically, I somehow can’t bring myself to delete material. Perhaps I think the less interesting stuff is nonetheless important in the “narrative,” in the story of my life. But it’s not an autobiography. In fact, it’s not even a diary. It’s, rather, a selection of entries from a diary—and I must be selective. I should keep only records of events that are either particularly significant for my life, or ones that are interesting in their own right, or that make some kind of point. And perhaps I should strike even that first category—an entry could be significant, but boring. And if it’s boring, it should go, no matter how significant it is. (I would guess that, if I find it boring, others will, too.) An exception might be my thoughts about my writings (to the extent that it’s a diary, it’s a writer’s diary). If and when I become famous, people might be interested to learn all about my life; then they can go through my diaries and read all my everyday thoughts and impressions about every trivial thing, which, were it by or about a non-famous person, they’d find utterly tiresome. But I’m not there yet (and if I proceed here as if I were there, I’ll never get there). If people don’t read my Journal, it will be, not because it’s too short, but because it’s too boring—not sufficiently shorn of the uninteresting bits. I think I must go through it again and steel myself for some hard editing. At least I’ve narrowed the task: next time, I can start the process later in the Journal, perhaps at page 333.

● Sunday, 1-3-2021:   Well, I’ve gone back and reread the Journal, starting at page 333, and I’m now at where I left off yesterday (at about page 389), where I scolded myself for having deleted nothing in the latter part of the piece. This time, I managed to delete some of it, but not much: about two pages worth of material from a range of 55 pages. That’s a start—but only a start.

[Later note (2-14-2021): I’m just finishing another complete read-through of this Journal. Two notes on recent comments about needing to cut more material from the last third. First, I can’t shortcut the editing process by focusing only on the last third—the first two-thirds still required considerable editing. Second, as to the last third, I was still unable to bring myself to delete any (more) entries.]

[Later note (later the same day): After a short break from working on the Journal (I went for a drive), I’ve decided to take another stab at editing the last third. I must find a way to winnow it. Going through it now is very quick. I’m reviewing it for the limited purpose of finding material to delete; many of the entries I know well enough to determine that I’ll keep them, without having to actually reread them.]

[Later note (two days later; 2-16-2021): I’ve completed that read-through of the last third of the Journal; I managed to delete about another two pages worth of material. That’s in improvement, though it still needs further sifting.]

● Monday, 1-4-2021:   I just awoke from a dream: I had two companions, two young men of about my age in the dream (I, too, seemed to be a young man). In one scene, they had pet snakes. We were walking in the city, at night. They got several blocks ahead of me. Then they came back to me and announced that their snakes had killed two other men. Apparently, this (snakes killing people) had become a public crisis in the town. Later, my help was being sought in trying to solve it. I confided (or was considering confiding) that I thought the so-called crisis was fake. And I was rehearsing the reasons for my conclusion, which included these: one, the snakes were too small to kill people (the snakes were supposedly constrictors, non-venomous); two, if, in the incident involving my companions, there had really been a killing and the police had been called to the scene, they (my companions) would have been detained for a far longer time. I was trying to figure out how I should play it: should I take this public concern seriously, and seriously state my case for the fakery, or should I play along, pretending to take the crisis seriously, and not divulge my disbelief? I was leaning to the latter; then I woke up.

● Tuesday, 1-5-2021:   I remember seeing the advice to writers that, in editing their work, they should read it aloud. I didn’t like reading my writing aloud, for various reasons (one perhaps being that it sounded better reading it silently than reading it aloud), and so I dismissed the advice, thinking that I was somehow above it. I got an unpleasant awakening about that yesterday. In a telephone session with a new psychiatrist; to describe my depersonalization / derealization, I read from my written account of it in this Journal. The words sounded stiff and awkward as I recited them. So I guess I’ll have to bite the bullet and go back through all the entries here, and edit them by reading them aloud, and then do it with my essays. Well, better to learn that now than later.

● Thursday, 1-7-2021:   Last night I had a dream in which I was talking to a brilliant philosophy professor I had once, to whom I had shown early drafts of my “Ethics.” In this dream I was explaining to him the composition of the piece, how it worked.

● Friday, 1-8-2021:   Today I started taking a new medication that my new psychiatrist at Kaiser, Dr. Kohm, thought could possibly help with my depersonalization / derealization. The medication is lamotrigene (25 mg); brand name: lamictal.

[Later note (2021): It had no effect.]

● Sunday, 1-10-2021:   I interrupted my work on Eisner’s Journal to reread (most of) On Writing Well, by William Zinsser. I hoped I would find some useful advice on editing the problematic last third of this Journal. I didn’t find that, but other advice in the book was helpful (including the reiteration of the importance of reading one’s work aloud). I’m now, yet again, going through the Journal, from the beginning. Even without reading it aloud, I’m still finding much need for editing. So I’ll put off reading it aloud, which I’ll reserve for the last read-through, when I can find no further need for edits by reading it silently. I’m hoping that, when I again get to the last third of the piece, I’ll somehow find a way to determine which entries to cut, and the courage to do it. My rereading this time is much more leisurely than it has been heretofore; I’ve come to see this editing project as a considerably longer one—not months, but years.

● Monday, 1-11-2021:   I bought new walking shoes (a new pair of the same kind of shoes I’ve been using for many years), at Big Five Sporting Goods, for $30. The alternative was to have the old ones repaired. The last time I had them repaired, it cost $20. Today’s was an unusually fast and efficient transaction: I quickly found the right box on the shelf in the store; I tried them on and they fit perfectly; took them to the cashier, asked for and got a 10 percent discount, paid for them, and left.

● Tuesday, 1-12-2021:   I just awoke from this dream: I had an accident in which I ran into an unsheathed sword (or something like it) and sustained brain damage (or at least brain trauma) from it. I had the prospect of spending time in a hospital where I’d be given heavy sedative drugs. I may have had two different opportunities to do that, one of which involved traveling to Viet Nam with a childhood friend of mine, Kevin Dyer. I was contemplating taking the trip, when I woke up.

● Thursday, 1-14-2021:   Last night I dreamed that I had somehow found a way to live (for free) in one of the rooms of an office building. Someone had discovered what I was doing and put an end to it, and had left a folder full of my writings in a hallway. I was complaining about the loss to whoever would listen, and thinking how fortunate many people were who owned houses, and lamenting that I had never gotten around to owning one. I was planning to go back to a lunch gathering of personal or work acquaintances, including Cuban president Fidel Castro, hoping to make a good impression on him, thinking that perhaps he would give me a place to live.

[Later note (10-11-2023): I interpret that dream as simply reflecting my apprehension about losing the advantage of the relatively cheap rent I’m paying for this apartment.]

● Saturday, 1-16-2021:   I bought a new DVD player, a Sony brand, to replace the one I bought in 2020, an LG brand, which was defective. I bought it at Best Buy, and had their technical service (“Geek Squad”) come here to install it. It seems to work well. The technician who came was a woman, whose name I think was Dymond. Their phone numbers are (805) XXX-XXXX and/or (661) XXX-XXXX.

[Later note (7-16-2022): And today it broke.]

● Severe cramps in right leg in bed.

● Monday, 1-18-2021:   For at least a week, I’ve developed an orthopedic problem with my right index finger. I’ve iced it, and have tried to avoid using it in the ways that seem to aggravate the symptom. I won’t go to the hospital for it; I’m avoiding going there, lest I contract COVID-19. It’s not improving. I’m worried about it.

● Wednesday, 1-20-2021:   How racism started: Many centuries ago, a group of friends were gathered, and one, Joe, said: “We want to be superior to other men. We just need to find in what way we’re superior. And I have a theory about that: we’re superior because we’re the most intelligent.” Another man in the group said, “I don’t think that’s going to work, Joe. Lots of people are much smarter than us.” Joe said, “Okay. We’re superior because we’re the most talented.” One of the others said, “No, I know many people who are much more talented than we are.” Joe said, “All right. We’re superior because we’re the strongest.” Another said, “We’re not the strongest. I know many other men who are far stronger.” Joe said, “Then we’re the most loyal.” Another said, “No, I know men who are much more loyal than us.” Joe thought, then said, “We’re the best because we’re the most passionate.” Another said, “Not that, either: I’ve seen others who are much more passionate than us.” Joe looked pensive. Then at length he said, “I have it: we’re superior because our skin is light-colored.” One of the others said, “That’s true: our skin is light. But how does that make us superior?” Joe said, “Because we need it to—we have to have something. . . .”

● Dreams exoticize their contents.

● Genius is talent with a vengeance.

● Thursday, 1-21-2021:   I just took two teaspoonfuls of codeine cough syrup for a cough. This is the first time I remember ever taking narcotic cough syrup for a cough when I wasn’t sick.

● I just awoke from a dream . . . or I awoke from the dream a few hours ago, but just now decided to write about it: I was alone at the desert. It was near dusk. I had several of my guns with me (.22’s), which I was planning to shoot. There was a ditch, covered with brush. As I looked in it more closely, I saw a huge boa constrictor (a snake), and I decided I’d try to catch it to keep it as a pet (in real life, that would have been very unwise!). Eventually, a large male African lion appeared, and I was frightened of it. I was holding my pistol, and I got behind my motorcycle for greater safety. I also wanted to get my rifle, or one of them, which was on the ground by the ditch. I thought the rifle would be more effective than the pistol against the lion. I eventually succeeded in getting the rifle. Then, suddenly, a man, a rather well-spoken man in formal dress, appeared, and I was relieved that he seemed to take the lion’s place. I was talking with him . . . then I woke up (or, anyway, that dream, or my memory of it, ended).

● Sunday, 1-24-2021:   Philosophy Club meeting (via Zoom). Topic: The right to free expression, or speech. My comment: John Stuart Mill wrote that preventing harm to others’ rights is the sole proper basis on which to prohibit speech (this is known as the “harm principle”). I think that the harm principle is a necessary condition, not a sufficient condition, for prohibiting speech because, presumably, we might want to allow speech whose harm to some persons is outweighed by its benefit to others. In making this judgment, we should remember that free expression itself has value, and that making an exception to it impairs that value.

● Here’s an idea for a movie: one about slavery in the United States, in which film the slaves are played by white actors, and the slave masters by black actors.

● Wednesday, 1-27-2021:   Someone recently posted this message online:

“We have an upcoming trial where our right-handed elderly client fractured his right wrist and had hardware implanted which affects his mobility. When he goes to the restroom, he must now use his left hand to wipe.

“For the last eleven months, he states that a couple times a week he wipes and gets feces on his hand, rear end, and toilet seat. My opinion is that this is something the jury should know and consider in its verdict. It’s embarrassing and degrading, and the defendant should pay for this.

“Is the jury likely to be turned off by this or is this something we should discuss in trial?”

I left this response:

Out of curiosity (and out of my dedication to this Listserv!), I performed the experiment: I did the activity in question with my left hand, instead of my right (I’m right-handed), and I had no problem; in fact, it was easy. If your jurors do that experiment (physically or even by imagination), they might conclude that your client is exaggerating; he’ll lose credibility, and jeopardize his entire case. Consider doing the following: If he uses that activity as an example (of the adverse effects of his injury), don’t make it the centerpiece; don’t go into great detail (instead, say something vague about it, like “it’s awkward”). Or, if he does go into great detail about it, account for the difficulty by more than just his inability to use his right hand.

Richard J. Eisner

● Thursday, 1-28-2021:   This is a follow-on to my note of 12-8-2020. The man in apartment no. 7 came out of his apartment yesterday or the day before just when I came out of mine. Today he did it again, eliminating any possibility of it being a mere coincidence. I was ready! I had my drum and drumstick at hand, and I banged it loudly while he was still close. The hook is in!

● Friday, 1-29-2021:   If everything were funny, nothing would be funny. No: if everything were funny, everything would be funny. Whether we’d be laughing all the time, I don’t know.

● Saturday, 1-30-2021:   Haircut. (Brenda)

● In the thirteen or fourteen years that Brenda has been cutting my hair, this is the first time she’s given me a bad haircut. In profile, it looks bad in the back. And I think it’s because she failed to follow one of my instructions: to “leave it ragged in the back.” I used to give her a printed list of instructions. But I stopped doing so about two years ago, because I thought she no longer needed it, and apparently she didn’t need it . . . until now. I guess she finally forgot that instruction. Next time, I’ll give her the list again, with that one highlighted.

● Last Thursday, 1-28-2021, I found out why I hadn’t been getting my unemployment insurance benefits (payments) for almost two months: I needed to verify my identity, through a website, “ID.me”. I tried to do it but couldn’t. Today I left this message for ID.me’s customer support:

I understand that you have people available to walk users through the process of using your website to verify their identity. I’d be most grateful if you’d have someone do that for me. I made a good faith effort to navigate your site and complete the process myself. But it’s hopeless. I worked with it for two days before it finally dawned on me that your web address is not ID.me.com (the “.me” takes the place of the “.com”). As they say, you learn something every day! Before finally getting to your website, I entered my credentials on several other sites that I thought were yours—I hope that doesn’t cause problems for me. At length, I signed in on your site. I printed out your five pages of instructions and tried to follow them. But I didn’t get far. When I don’t get some sort of error message that kicks me off the site, I get to a shopping page! I feel as if I’m driving to a new destination, and I’m lost. Sometimes you just have to know when to stop and ask for help. For me, here, that time has arrived.

Richard J. Eisner
(818) 343-0123
richard@richardeisner.com

● Friday, 2-5-2021:   With this Journal, I feel as if for decades I’ve planted and tended a crop, and now I’m harvesting it.

● Make hay while the money shines.

● Make money while the hay shines.

● Last night (this morning) I dreamed I was conversing with the President of the United States, a young Black lady, about journeys into space. I had a catalog, or menu, of various destinations, in different galaxies, at farther and farther distances from us. I tentatively picked one and asked her if I might go there. She laughed and explained that I couldn’t reach it within my lifetime, and that such trips would be for our grandchildren, or their children.

● I’d like to write a novel about a website designer called Sebastian (“Seb”) White.

● I had a dream in which I needed a replacement car, and I bought an old (1960s) bright red Ford Mustang, for $600.00. It ran very well, and I was pleased with the deal. When I bought the car, somehow a significant part of the deal was that I was getting a silver dollar, along with the car. I was back at the car dealer for some routine maintenance (on the car); I was walking in that neighborhood, looking at the silver dollar, and discovered that it was broken, and part of it was missing, which defect the dealer had cleverly concealed. I confronted the salesman with my discovery, and he was very nervous about it, and asked me what I wanted. I told him he should refund some of my payment, whereupon he began counting out cash. I told him that wasn’t enough money, that he should give me $100; which he then did.

● Sunday, 2-7-2021:   Desert ride. Pleasant, but not joyful. Though it wasn’t pleasurable enough to have been worth doing for that reason, it was worth doing to get out of the house (apartment), even if just for half a day.

● Monday, 2-8-2021:   Man’s greatest cooperation with his fellow man, comes in the course of great conflict with other men (war). But global human cooperation may soon be required, to fight against the non-man, but man made, threat of worldwide environmental catastrophe.

● I just awoke from a rather striking dream. In it I needed someone to vouch for me in writing, to a court, that I was abstinent from drug abuse. My old English Professor Dr. Lesley Johnstone wrote something for me: a marvelous essay. At one point, I was reading her paper, and she closed it with a musical effect, which I heard: violins playing a sort of tremolo in rising notes ascending through several successive high pitches. I was very impressed with her writing; I looked at the page, and saw the musical note that corresponded to that musical effect: a single note with perpendicular crosshatching the entire length of the note’s stem. I thought to myself that I must remember how to notate that musical effect, for my compositional education. Nonetheless, what she wrote was contested, and she was personally attacked, by various people, for doing it. I was overhearing her telephone conversation with one such critic, and she said: “As Milton said, things have fallen into people’s laps.” By which she meant that the task had fallen to her to do, and she obligingly did it. I felt a twinge of disappointment to know that she vouched for me just out of a sense of duty because I had asked her to do it, rather than out of belief in the truth of what she wrote about me. The dream (or my memory of it) ended with my mentally rehearsing what I would say to the court in my defense, something like: “I might have kept abusing drugs—but I didn’t.”

● Tuesday, 2-9-2021:   I just awoke from a sort of dream counterpoint to last night’s dream. I was driving at night on a long trip back home, to my old house in West Hills (where I was living with my parents). I stopped in a small town, or at least a series of stores within a little mall. Very hungry, I surveyed all the food for sale, and decided to order a certain very appetizing chocolate dessert. It was small and expensive, but it looked delicious, and I was thinking that, at only $3 apiece, I could afford to get three. [Wait: I thought I said they were expensive . . . more dream logic.] Then, before I got the dessert, I found myself with another merchant who was selling crack cocaine. I was very tempted to buy some, but decided against it. He was trying to sell it to me. At first, he put in my hand a cocaine rock and some money (currency). I couldn’t understand why he would do that (or the currency part of the gesture). Now we were outside, on the street. At length, I demanded that he give me a price. He was inconsistent in giving a price. At some point I lost the battle with myself and decided to buy some. I got him to give me a lower price, one that he had quoted earlier, $200.00. Somehow, I had sampled the cocaine, and it took effect very strongly. I walked to the corner. It was all I could do to restrain myself from moving too quickly. I felt preternaturally energized. I walked back to this merchant, and bought the drug, and that’s where the dream, or my memory of it, ends.

● Thursday, 2-11-2021:   Parody on a question typically asked in workers’ compensation depositions and in applications for government disability benefits: “Aside from your loss of both arms and legs and blindness in both eyes, is there any reason you couldn’t get full-time employment?”

● Friday, 2-12-2021:   Early this morning, at about 6:15, when I stepped out of my apartment to take my daily exercise-walk, a neighbor in apartment no. 7 again came out of his unit right as I came out of mine. For the second time, I ducked back inside and hit the drum! They’ll learn!

● Sunday, 2-14-2021:   Early this morning, at about 2:00, when I got up from bed, as soon as I sat down at the computer, I heard a door slam outside. I don’t know for sure, but I suspect it was the neighbors in no. 7, retaliating against me. It was hard to sleep after that. I could feel my heart pounding. But my best response is no response: to not acknowledge it; better to let them think I didn’t hear it, or didn’t notice it, or didn’t recognize its significance, or at least that I didn’t think it warranted a reply.

● I just finished yet another read-through, for editing, of this Journal. The amount of editing I do on successive readings is not diminishing. It’s as if the editing I do just exposes the need for more edits. But the changes I make are not arbitrary; they’re definite improvements. So I’ll continue to go through it until I can find no further ways to improve it. And, when I reach that point, I’ll go through it once more, reading it aloud, which I haven’t done yet.

● Monday, 2-15-2021:   I rail against my hostile neighbors, and not without justification. But, in a larger sense, we’re all victims of the real culprits: those who built, or designed, these buildings with practically no soundproofing between apartments.

[Later note (1-23-2022): That’s too charitable. It’s not that one is blameworthy and the other isn’t—they both are, in different ways.]

● Saturday, 2-20-2021:   Philosophy Club meeting tomorrow (Sunday, 2-21-2021). Topic: “meritocracy.”

● Brian, here are two comments I’ve written (the two paragraphs below) inspired by the readings on meritocracy. The first is on meritocracy itself. The second is a response to John Stuart Mill’s proposal (discussed in the Wikipedia article) to give better-educated people greater voting power:

Meritocracy is good in the broadest sense that certain important jobs should be done by those most qualified to do them. For example, only highly educated and highly skilled physicians should be allowed to perform brain surgery. But meritocracy is bad to the extent to which it’s a mechanism of great wealth disparity. Everyone should be given the means to have a reasonably comfortable life, with enough leisure time and energy to do what he enjoys and to actualize his potential. He shouldn’t be deprived of this advantage just because, for one reason or another, he happened not to get into a position in a so-called meritocracy that’s handsomely rewarded. This doesn’t mean that we should slavishly adhere to equal distribution of all resources. Those with unusual talents should be given heightened education to develop their heightened talents. And those who contribute more to society should be given recognition for it and perhaps a bit greater material reward. But the wealth disparity should be relatively narrow. We might call this a reformed meritocracy. It might even benefit the meritocrats, in allowing them to ease off on their “success” treadmill, on which they now feel compelled to work to exhaustion and to the exclusion of all other pursuits, like relaxation, enjoyment, or avocation.

John Stuart Mill advocates the elite (the meritocracy) having greater voting power than everyone else (say, two or three votes apiece, versus just one, for the rest), on the grounds that the elite—more intelligent and better educated—will make better voting decisions. I disagree, for this reason: In general, a vote reflects, not rationality, but interest. It’s not as if we all agree on the goal, and it’s just a matter (in voting) of determining how best to achieve it. That would be an objective matter (some means are actually better suited than others for bringing about the goal). Rather, we vote on goals: on what we want, a subjective matter. And the needs and wants of the poor and the less well educated should count as much as those of the elite. In practice, we tend to vote to further our own interest. Greater voting power for the elite simply enables them to perpetuate the wealth and privilege disparity in their favor . . . which (as Mill, of all philosophers, should appreciate) is counter-utilitarian.

On Monday, 2-22-2021, I got this email from Brian Gould:

Hey Richard! I didn’t see your email before the meeting, else I’d have included it along with the meeting notes. In your first paragraph, I think you came to a similar conclusion that Markovits did in The Meritocracy Trap. So, you’re in quite good company. Though, I still worry that, if we actually implemented a system such as the two of you suggest (not that there’s much chance of that in the U.S.), we as a country could potentially lose our competitive edge with respect to other societies. It’s an arguable point. And, as one person in the meeting argued, that would be a good trade-off.

In your second paragraph, I think you bring up a very strong point. In fact, I wish you’d read off that paragraph during the meeting! I had something vaguely similar in mind, but I like the way you put it, voting reflects interests not rationality. Nicely said, and succinct. Though, as I think about it further, it seems that voting reflects both interests and rationality. (But that point could get us into a very long conversation.) Some goals are more or less rational, whichever your given interests are. Some people apprehend their interests more or less accurately or rationally. Some candidates are not rational choices for the vast majority of interests held by Americans (I won’t name names). Still, I think your concluding point stands: the interests and wants of the less well off (economically or educationally) should count as much as those of the privileged. And your last sentence is a fair rebuke to Mill, on his own grounds.

BTW, you say that we tend “to vote to further our own interests.” I’ve noticed there’s an active debate on that point. Many pollsters and pundits claim that, nowadays (and perhaps it has always been this way), people “vote their identity, not their interests,” as the slogan goes. (But, that slogan construes “interests” narrowly, to be one’s direct economic and social advantage. You may have had a broader sense of “interests” that would include a person’s perception of his/her identity.)

Cheers,
Brian

I sent this reply to Brian:

Brian, you perceptively observe that I oversimplified some points. I’ve tweaked the paragraph to (try to) correct that. One of the sentences, I’ve changed to: “A vote reflects, not only rationality, but also interest.” (Less succinct, but more accurate.) You point out as well that it’s not so clear that everyone votes in his economic interest. True. But the wealthy do. In fact, at least now in this country, that’s one reason why the wealthy maintain their political power: they always vote, and they vote in their economic interest. Whereas, poor and (blue-collar) working people either don’t vote, or, like God, they vote in mysterious ways. Perhaps this goes with their being less well educated. . . .

By the way, you not only spotted my overgeneralizations, but, in a way, you’re also responsible for my basic idea, which comes from your criticism of my initial comments on the November 2008 Philosophy Club topic, Practical Reason. Here’s my journal entry about it:

● Philosophy Club meeting; topic: “Practical reasoning/rationality.”

Practical reason is defined as the mental processes involved in determining what one is to do. But actions are not objectively right or wrong, or true or false. And because no outcome is inherently preferable to another (intrinsic value is unreal), the choice between them is ultimately arbitrary. Therefore, because the conclusion (action) cannot be (objectively) incorrect, the process generating it cannot be (objectively) irrational. Practical deliberation is nonrational; it can meaningfully be characterized as “rational” or “irrational” only informally.

That’s wrong. (I thank Brian Gould, the Philosophy Club’s facilitator, and an attendee named Carl—surname unknown—for correcting me.) The proposed definition of practical rationality is “an action that effectively and efficiently brings about the goal.” Which concerns the selection, not of ends, but of means—in relation to given (even arbitrarily chosen) ends. My position was, perhaps, like a denial that a rifleman can be considered a bad shot, on the grounds that the targets he misses are not worthwhile targets. My argument missed the mark.

Still, I hit an adjacent, if more modest, target, in the form of the related topic: Is practical rationality about ultimate ends, or only means? (My answer: Because no end is intrinsically preferable to another, our election thereof is finally arbitrary. And since an arbitrary election cannot technically be irrational, practical rationality cannot involve the choice of ultimate ends.)

Richard

I rewrote the Mill paragraph this way:

John Stuart Mill advocates the elite (the meritocracy) having greater voting power than everyone else (say, two or three votes apiece, versus just one, for the rest), on the grounds that the elite—more intelligent and better educated—will make better voting decisions. I disagree, for this reason: A vote reflects, not only rationality, but also (mainly) interest. It’s not as if we all agree on the goal, and it’s just a matter (in voting) of determining how best to achieve it. That would be an objective matter (some means are actually better suited than others for bringing about the goal). Rather, we also (mainly) vote on goals: on what we want, a subjective matter. And the needs and wants of the poor and the less well educated should count as much as those of the elite. In practice, we tend to vote to further our own interest (surely, the elite do). Greater voting power for the elite simply enables them to perpetuate the wealth and privilege disparity in their favor . . . which (as Mill, of all philosophers, should appreciate) is counter-utilitarian.

● Sunday, 2-21-2021:   If I ever have my writings collected in a book, I’ll arrange to have a very attractive book cover for it, and these words, on the cover:

“You can’t judge a book by its cover” . . . so this cover may be better than the book.
                                                                                                                 — Richard J. Eisner

● On one of my business cards, I have my name, title, and Web address on one side, and on the other side, this:

“Never leave one side of a business card blank.”
                                                 — Richard J. Eisner

● Yesterday, my left knee was very painful, and I was even limping. Today the knee feels fine, but I skipped my daily walk as a precaution.

● I’m starting to feel a backache (lower back).

● Monday, 2-22-2021:   This is a significant backache. I wonder if it wasn’t brought on by Saturday’s knee problem, and the limping. Anyway, I’ll suspend my daily walks until it resolves.

● In the evening now, I forewent my walk this morning, and I doubled up on my daily stretching exercises, which I do for my lower back; the symptoms are definitely improving. I’m proud of myself: I forewent taking any pain medication, narcotic or non-narcotic, for it.

● Wednesday, 2-24-2021:   I just awoke from a dream in which I was a budding graphic artist. I was learning my craft, and I could feel my artistic power growing. But I felt a countervailing force restraining my artistic growth, and that force was my advanced age (I’m now almost 70, and that seems to be about the age I felt myself to be in the dream).

● The backache is mostly, but not completely, gone. I thought it was time to resume walking, so I did. I noticed no adverse effect.

● Thursday, 2-25-2021:   The backache is pretty much completely resolved. This was a mild one.

● Origin of pandemic: The word originated in China, in the mid nineteenth century. The Chinese knew that many widespread human diseases come from animals. They called the substance in animals that causes human disease, the memic. In one particularly bad outbreak, they did some tests to determine what animal it had come from. They narrowed it down to three animals: pandas, bats, and monkeys. At first, they thought it was the panda, and so they described the disease as the panda-memic. One Chinese government official thought the word was too awkward, and he decreed that it be shortened to pandemic. Eventually, they determined that the culprit was actually the bat memic. But by then, everyone was calling it the pandemic . . . the name stuck, and to this day we call a widespread human disease a pandemic.

● Saturday, 2-27-2021:   Another observation on my constant war with my neighbors in no. 3. In general, or potentially, they both like and dislike my retaliation. They like it in that it’s proof that their hostility the day before was effective in hurting me. They dislike it in that, well, it’s an attack on them. More specifically, they like it overall (they like it more than they dislike it) (and correspondingly it’s bad for me) if it’s a bad retaliation on my part: a retaliation for something they tried to trick me into retaliating for, a form of their hostility that they’re trying to forge as a weapon against me, and which effort I abet by outwardly reacting to it. Whereas, they dislike my retaliation overall (and it’s good for me) if it’s a righteous retaliation, with no such advantage for them and disadvantage for me. Their behavioral dynamic here seems very strange; it’s as if their need to hurt me is greater than their desire to avoid being attacked, as if they hate my non-retaliation even more than my retaliation: when I decline to retaliate for their more subtle forms of hostility, they inevitably resort to the more overt forms, ones for which I can retaliate unproblematically. If they knew the truth: that their more subtle attacks actually bother me even more than their more overt attacks, they’d use the subtler forms exclusively. But apparently my strategy works. I’m able successfully to conceal my inward reaction, and they assume that my non-retaliation means that they’re not hurting me. I consistently outwit them.

● Well, talking about war with neighbors: another bout with the people in no. 7 (it’s a middle-aged couple, a man and a woman): this morning, around 6:15, when I left for my daily walk, someone there (audibly) opened or closed the door to their apartment just as I stepped outside and closed my own door. A short time and distance later, I happened to see their car (or one of their cars) going down the street. As I returned from my walk, their car just happened to return to where they park it. So I hurried to my apartment, went inside, and stood by the door, with just the outer screen door closed. A few moments later, the woman arrived at their apartment. As she was going inside, with her door still open, I lightly banged the drum (lightly, to avoid waking any [other] neighbors—it was just 6:45 a.m.). That’ll teach ‘em to mess with me!

● I got my first (of two) COVID-19 vaccinations today—the Pfizer vaccine.

● Sunday, 2-28-2021:   Political science . . . I didn’t know politics was a science.

● Monday, 3-1-2021:   A new comment on drugs (or an old one in different words). The happiness paradox, universally true, is that you can’t attain happiness by striving for it directly. It’s a byproduct of doing other things. To try to achieve happiness directly by using mood-altering drugs is to try to circumvent that law of nature. And contravening a law of nature doesn’t work—not for long—and usually backfires.

● Tuesday, 3-2-2021:   Enhancement of pleasure is a luxury; alleviation of pain is a necessity.

● Wednesday, 3-3-2021:   Last week, or the week before, a website developer, trying to solicit my business, called me and referenced my richardeisner.com website, and in fact referred to one of my essays, “Nine Comments on Plato and Aristotle,” and even more particularly my comment on Plato’s cave allegory. I didn’t remember it, so, after the conversation, out of curiosity, I reread it, and I happened to find a need for an edit there. I figured that, if I find a need for editing in one place picked at random, I’d probably find it in many other places, too. So, Monday (3-1-2021) I reread the whole work (all nine comments) and made many changes. The edits were all rather small. But in one of the comments, the penultimate one, I found a new piece of reasoning that vitiated my entire existing argument. Instead of replacing it with the new argument, I simply appended the new argument at the end as a postscript. In a few weeks’ time, when I’m sure it’s the final version, for now anyway, I’ll give the newly edited piece to the website people to post on the website. And when I get a chance, I’ll reread all those essays, and edit the whole set.

● If you got stabbed and therefore had pain in that part of your body, would the pain be described as “a stabbing pain”?

● It just occurred to me that I can’t recall my father ever laughing.

● Thursday, 3-4-2021:   One of my pet peeves is (public radio) newscasters referring to argument as belief. For example, “The Democrats are calling for greater economic equality. But Republicans believe that the wealthy earned their wealth, so they’re entitled to it.” The newscaster thus goes beyond what’s known (that a certain argument is being made) and indulges an unwarranted presumption that the arguers are speaking in good faith. We don’t know whether the arguers actually believe it. People sometimes believe what they argue for. But other times not. Why do those reporters do that? Two possible reasons occur to me: One, the arguments thus reported are often ridiculous, but the policies they support are destructive. If you actually believe the argument you’re advancing, you’re stupid. If you don’t believe it, you’re evil. If the reporters characterized the arguments just as arguments, it might intimate that those advancing the arguments are evil. To imply that those proponents believe their arguments, is vaguely euphemistic, positing stupidity rather than evil. And these namby-pamby reporters, loathe to even hint at offending anyone, always go for the euphemistic. Two, characterizing such arguments as beliefs instead of merely as arguments relieves the reporters of the burden of pointing out flaws in the arguments, or of suggesting rebuttals, a task they’re not up to . . . or they’re just lazy . . . or both . . . or all three.

● Sunday, 3-7-2021:   I hate handling depositions, which is my mainstay. They consist in two parts: first, an hour preparing the client for the deposition; second, the actual deposition (typically, one to three hours). The preparation is very stressful, finding a way to stretch the procedure to fill up an hour if it’s going quickly, or a way to finish within a reasonable time if it’s going slowly—especially the former. And I find the deposition itself extremely tedious; I struggle to keep my eyes open.

[Later note (9-11-2023): Because of the problematic need to fill an hour preparing the client, I prefer clients who require an interpreter (typically English-Spanish), because it essentially doubles the amount of time involved (everything is said twice: once in English, and once in Spanish). With an English-speaking client, it’s a great struggle (usually a losing one) to try to fill an hour.]

● What exactly is the benefit of the COVID-19 vaccine—does it reduce your chances of getting sick at all, or merely make it less severe if you do get sick, or both, or what?

[Later note (4-25-2022): My understanding now is that the vaccine merely reduces the severity of the illness if you get it, but doesn’t necessarily prevent your getting sick. Wearing a facemask is designed to prevent your getting sick. Since I started wearing facemasks, at least two years ago, I haven’t gotten sick at all, with COVID or anything else. And I attribute that, not to being vaccinated, but to wearing a facemask.]

● About my neighbors in no. 3: If you don’t have a fulfilling life, the next best thing is to attack someone who does (me). Or, if you’re not particularly talented, the next best thing is to attack someone who is (me).

● Wednesday, 3-10-2021:   I had this dream last night. I was in a sort of therapeutic camp. Certain groups of members had certain assigned chores or activities. I was part of a group who had to change or install gas canisters, some of the canisters containing carbon monoxide. In the process, we had to breathe some of the gas. I heard or read, from an outside source, that doing so was unhealthy. So, for that reason, I objected to doing it, and I determined to stop doing it. In another scene, or scenes, I was resisting the idea of being there at all, and I decided to leave. But then I had occasion to talk to one of the counselors, and she told me that I was timid, or fearful, generally. She said something like, “In fact, you’re a scared little girl.” And I said, “That’s probably true.” It was a big revelation to me. And I decided that I would stay at the camp, to help myself become a better person. I would add that, though I’m very shy, I don’t consider myself scared or timid generally.

● When I talk about “knowing” certain propositions, I use “knowing” loosely, informally . . . unless I’m speaking about it strictly.

● What’s the difference between a contradiction and a paradox? A contradiction is two statements, as to which it must be that one of them is true and the other false, and we know it (though we may not know which is which). A paradox is two statements that are both true, and we know it, but which somehow seem at odds, but we can’t quite discern how they’re to be reconciled. One paradox of sorts that I’ve noticed is that emotion, or feeling, is the engine of our lives, the great wellspring of our motivation. And yet, when the head and the heart conflict, the head should control. . . . Perhaps we can resolve the paradox this way: consider a man as a man riding a horse. The locomotion is due to the power of the horse (the heart). But the man (the head) chooses where they go. On second thought, that doesn’t work, because it’s the heart that motivates us, including the motivation to go one way or another. . . . The paradox remains. . . . which suggests a modification of the definition of paradox: it’s two statements that we believe are true, but which somehow seem at odds; we resolve the conflict by finding either that both statements are true, and how to harmonize them, or that one or both are false. Our puzzlement may lead to a new insight. . . . About the head and the heart, perhaps it’s a mistake to think of them separately. Perhaps, rather, they’re an organic unity, inseparable and fused: both are necessary, neither is sufficient.

● Thursday, 3-11-2021:   Don’t educate your enemy about yourself, if you can avoid it.

● Man works in mysterious ways.

● Friday, 3-12-2021:   If, when I’m very old, someone were to comment “how old” I look, I’d reply: “I’ll look even worse when I’m dead.”

● Saturday, 3-13-2021:   Sometimes my dreams repeat themes or elements from previous dreams, or so it seems. One such repeated element is place. Last night, for example, I dreamed that I was in a certain edifice that I remembered from an earlier dream. I knew how to find my way around in it because I’d been there before. Whether, in this dream, I was thinking about a previous dream, or whether every sensation, including the feeling of familiarity, was a unique product of this dream—or just what the relationship is between dreams—I don’t know.

● I’m exquisitely temperature-sensitive, especially in bed at night. I might be too cold with the electric blanket turned off. But when I turn it on (the new one), even on the lowest setting, I’m too warm. I prefer very cold nights, because then I can get to a comfortable temperature with the electric blanket on (on a low setting).

[Later note (2-6-2024): The blanket is designed badly: the lowest heat setting is too high.]

● Tuesday, 3-16-2021:   I got a call, out of the blue, from an old acquaintance, Bob Rentzer, an attorney I knew, and worked for, and who represented me on my drug (codeine) possession case. His cell phone number is (818) XXX-XXXX.

● Thursday, 3-18-2021:   I just reread my essay “Purpose in War: a Rebuttal” and made significant edits. I wrote a new little argument for it, but decided not to use it in the essay. So I’ll put it here:

If a policeman kills a person from an ulterior motive, we don’t think: well, the killing was not done for a legal reason, but the one who was killed was bad, so it was justified. Why should it be different when it’s a mass killing (war)?

[Later note (19 July 2021): It should not be different. Perhaps part of the reason why it is different is that, within a nation, we have many laws that regulate how civilians and policemen are supposed to act, and we have courts to interpret those laws and agencies to enforce them; whereas, we have many fewer laws regulating conduct between nations, and very few courts to interpret those laws or means to enforce them—a state of affairs we should strive to change (so as to have more such laws governing nations).]

I’ve now, just recently, reread the first two essays in my online set of sixty-five, and I’ve made significant edits in both. I’m afraid that means all of them probably need significant editing. I’ll go through the rest of them when I have a chance.

● Friday, 3-19-2021:   I just awoke from a long dream sequence. In one dream, or part of it, I was somehow involved with, or observing, or contemplating, works of Bob Dylan. But these were, not his songs, but little postcards, or notes, or greeting cards that he wrote to various people. They were an art form unto themselves. I admired (and envied) his artistry. I considered them inimitable works of genius. In a later dream, I was driving or riding a motorcycle, following some acquaintances who were riding in two cars. They stopped at a traffic light, and I stopped there, too, but I skidded slightly past the intersection limit line. I continued to ride. It was at night, and I was going to a formal gathering, a series of formal dinners. This was a vacation time for me, and I had a week or so of free time. I got to the destination, and I was thinking of what to do that night and over the next week or so. I thought I should plan out my schedule, what activities to do when. For that night, I decided to go back home and get high on marijuana. At the end of the dream, still at this formal gathering, I was the father of a young teenage boy, who was there with his class from school. They all wanted me to put on some kind of a show. I had mild stage fright. I didn’t want to do it, and I kept insisting that I had no show prepared. But they kept insisting that I perform, and finally I relented. I was a Highway Patrolman, and, for my show, I was going to give a narration of a typical day of reporting from my patrol car. I began by saying something like, “Well, here I am on the 4 freeway, and I see a fire up ahead . . .” Then I woke up.

● I like movies based on real events. But I dislike the film maker showing, at the end, pictures of the real people on whose lives the movie is based. It hurts the movie’s effect, because I liked to think of those people as the actors who played them. And the actors are always better-looking than the real people.

● Saturday, 3-20-2021:   Lawyers often argue that evidence favors their case by saying that the evidence is “consistent” with it. But evidence being “consistent” with a certain contention does not necessarily mean that the evidence supports it. Evidence may be consistent with both of two opposing positions. Thus, my having drunk tea at 10:15 this morning is consistent with my finding a million dollars tomorrow. Unfortunately . . ..

● I feel another backache starting. I hope I’m wrong. . . . No, I was right. Hint to myself: try to keep my back straight when cleaning the catheters in the sink.

● I got my second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine today.

● Sunday, 3-21-2021:   I’m suspending my daily walk this morning because of the backache. I don’t know whether the walk would make it worse. But the decision seems simple: I have more to lose by the back getting worse than I have to gain by walking (even if it doesn’t hurt the back). . . . and I think the likelihood of the two outcomes is about even (50/50). . . . Now, several hours later, my back feels considerably better. I’m going to risk the walk.

● When, today, I got my second COVID vaccination, I was told that I might feel sick for a day or two. But, aside from a slightly sore arm (at the injection site), I’ve had no symptoms whatsoever. . . . On second thought, perhaps I do have symptoms, but they’re very mild. I have chills and body aches. Perhaps the backache last evening and through the night, was part of it. . . . I can’t sleep, so I’m going to take 1 mg of Ativan (for sleep), and a tablet of Clemastine Fumerate (for nasal congestion).

● Monday, 3-22-2021:   By this morning, all the symptoms of last night were gone, except the backache, which exists independent of the flu-like body aches. But even the backache is much improved.

● About three weeks ago, I edited my essay “Nine Comments on Plato and Aristotle.” In the last two or three days, I’ve started going through my online essays, starting from the beginning, to again edit them. I’ve now reread the first four (including the “Nine Comments,” which is the second essay). The first three needed considerable editing. I was unable to improve the fourth. The review is going pretty quickly.

● Wednesday, 3-24-2021:   It strikes me as particularly unfair when a neighbor retaliates for an accidental act on my part. Unless it’s a kind of accident that happens often (which arguably would be culpably careless, even reasonably interpreted as having been done on purpose), a deliberate harm is an inappropriate response to an accidental one. But I have a remedy—I retaliate against him for it.

[Later note (4-30-2021): I may be indulging in a double standard here: I interpret every possibly hostile noise he makes as a deliberate attack on me—never as an accident (yet probably at least some of them are just accidents). Isn’t he entitled to make the same assumption about me? And how is he to know that what sounds like an attack by me is merely accidental? And how do I know that my own mistake was purely accidental?; maybe there was a subconscious element of hostility, which slipped out despite my conscious mind. Plus, even if he thinks it might be accidental on my part, how else is he to communicate to me, in effect, “That disturbs me: if it was deliberate, stop it; if it was accidental, be more careful”? In my experience (which I suspect is typical), that’s the language of neighbors. Rarely do they actually speak verbally, directly, about such things. Perhaps I should be a little more forgiving.]

● Friday, 3-26-2021:   This Sunday, 3-28-2021, is the next meeting of the Philosophy Club. Topic: “The definition of death.” My initial response: You’re dead when you lose consciousness, and you won’t regain it unless and until you’re reincarnated. Having now read a few pages of the “assigned” reference material on this topic, I see that a simpler way to put it is this: Death is the irreversible loss of consciousness. But I would supplement the statement thus: The essence of a person is his consciousness. His death is his irreversible loss of consciousness. . . . And now having read the entire article, had I not already written that initial response, I wouldn’t have written it, because that idea was expressed in the piece.

[Later note (22 April 2021): But I do have this possibly original supplemental comment: The foregoing conclusion might be different if an unconscious person could still contribute to others, as in doing great writing. But, while an artist can be deaf or blind, he can’t be unconscious. An unconscious person is of no use to himself or to anyone else.]

● Sunday, 3-28-2021:   If you discovered that you had just one day to live, you could rejoice in knowing that, without spending another dime at stores, you have a lifetime supply of all your household goods.

● I was unable to attend the Philosophy Club meeting today; it was online, but my Internet service was out.

● Monday, 3-29-2021:   I have another backache starting. In the first half of the sleep cycle (from which I’ve just awoken), I had a flare-up of my carpel tunnel syndrome (numbness in the right hand). I still have no access to the Internet. Now, later in the morning, the backache is gone.

● Tuesday, 3-30-2021:   I’m gippish on America!

● I’m continuing to edit my online essays. I’ve just finished editing the last few of the first nine, and one further on. Some require very little editing, or, if they require more editing, it’s just changing a word or phrase here and there, and some punctuation marks, and the editing goes very quickly. Other pieces I have to radically rewrite and come up with completely new content for whole sections, even whole paragraphs. That was the case with “Why are We Here?” and “Does the Universe have a Purpose?” It took me four or five days to edit those. Before I send them out to be posted on the website, richardeisner.com, (and this is the final step,) I read them aloud. I drive my car a few blocks away, park, and then read them. I do that because I have no privacy here in the apartment. The walls are thin and the neighbors can hear practically everything. That’s very inconvenient. I’ll try to find a way to read aloud in the apartment. Overall, though, the process is going much faster than I expected.

● I sent three revised essays to Keri Ritenauer, my webmaster. I got this email from her today: “Hi Richard, I have updated essays #7 and #44, but the document for essay #6 didn’t contain any content. Can you resend it?”

I replied with this: “Hi Keri, I figured that I’m such a good writer now that I don’t actually have to say anything for it to be brilliant. On second thought, maybe I’m not quite that good yet. So here’s some content for essay #6.”

● Wednesday, 3-31-2021:   Warmer weather has hit. It’s going to be hell until next Fall.

● Thursday, 4-1-2021:   Well, I’m conquering my fear of reading my work aloud in my apartment. I’ve done it for several essays now. Some little tricks I use—to make it easier for me psychologically—are these: I’ll sometimes do the reading at times when I usually prepare clients for their Zoom depositions, which involves my speaking aloud. That way, the reading of my work tends to blend into other speaking on my part. Or (and this I can do at any time) I’ll start by reading aloud a paragraph by another author. I figure that, if the neighbors are listening to my recital, and can hear it, this procedure disguises my work, or makes it unintelligible. At least (what’s important), it seems that way to me.

● Friday, 4-2-2021:   I’m very pleased with my progress in editing my online essays. I started at the beginning—I’m taking them in the order in which they appear on the website (which is more or less the order in which I wrote them). I’ve been able to significantly improve all but one of them, and some of them I’ve improved radically. And it’s going very quickly. I suppose I could just as easily be distressed by the flaws I find as gratified by the improvements I make. But, somehow, I’m delighted. I’m soaring!

● Sunday, 4-4-2021:   I have a dream: that one okey-dokey doggy-doodle dandy day I’ll walk arm in arm with the Gippergoose and the Gabinkabish.

● Monday, 4-5-2021:   I just awoke from a dream in which I thought it would be funny, and I was planning to devise, a movie or television screen showing and playing a singer singing a serious song, but also showing, at the same time, in the lower left corner of the screen, the (silent, moving) image of a face laughing hysterically.

● I continue to read my work aloud in my apartment. When I feel the neighbors’ presence close on the other side of the (common) wall, I find it especially difficult. It’s painful, but I force myself to do it. I’m suffering for my art.

● Tuesday, 4-6-2021:   Yesterday I bought a desk lamp. It seems to work very well for me. Until now I used instead a floor lamp that burns a 500-watt halogen bulb. I got the desk lamp in order to save electricity. It’s very energy-efficient, whereas I suspect that the halogen bulb uses a massive amount of electricity. It’s probably why my electric bills are so high.

● Wednesday, 4-7-2021:   As a means to change the world, violence cannot be blanketly renounced. For example, it may be warranted in self-defense, an example of which on a grand scale was the use of military force to fight the Nazis in World War II. So, at minimum, you have to indicate what distinguishes the situation at hand from that one—like, say, the first use of violence is wrong.

● Thursday, 4-8-2021:   One difference, I think, between the Republican party and informal racist groups like Proud Boys and Oath-Keepers is that Republicans don’t actually believe their arguments and propaganda, whereas members of those other groups do believe it. In other words, the Republicans are evil; the others are stupid and/or naive.

● Yesterday, in the course of reviewing my online essays, and editing most of them, from slightly to radically, I came across my essay “Nietzsche’s Eternal Recurrence” (in my series of 65, it’s number 40). I made just one minuscule change (a “you will” to “you’ll”), and I sent it off to the webmaster. But something nagged at me about it. And today I rewrote a sentence in it. Then, after rereading it several more times, including once aloud, I significantly reworked three paragraphs. I’ve spotted flaws in several essays after reading them aloud. It’s as if, at minimum, reading a piece aloud gives you yet another lens through which to critically view it. This is another piece I thought, and liked to think, was perfect. I’m amazed at the effect the passage of time can have on my perspective. I wonder what other personal sacred cows I’ll end up slaughtering. It’s good that I’m finding flaws in my work. I mean, it would be better if there were no flaws. But not finding any wouldn’t necessarily mean they don’t exist. And if they exist (and they do), it’s better to find them and fix them, than not to find them. So I have mixed feelings about it. I’m saddened to realize that some of the work I was the proudest of is badly flawed, but gratified to see that I’m able to find the flaws (or some of them) and fix them. It’s a testament to the continuing health of my mind.

● Friday, 4-9-2021:   I just awoke from a dream in which my father was driving his car with all the members of my family, except me (I had stayed at home). In the dream I had a huge number of siblings, and they were piled on (yes, on, not in) the car like pieces of luggage. My father was very old and, on this occasion, very tired. He crashed the car on the freeway, killing most of my siblings. He survived the crash.

● Monday, 4-12-2021:   In arguing about public policy, that a person would personally benefit from the policy he advocates, is relevant, but not conclusive—what benefits a person particularly, may also benefit society.

● Tuesday, 4-13-2021:   One of my favorite road-rage tactics is, when the other driver indicates that he wants the two of us to pull over (presumably to engage in a fight), I signal my willingness—indeed, eagerness—to do so, and induce him to pull over, and then I keep going, pass him by, sounding my horn when I get next to him (it’s always a man).

● A month or so ago, my dental hygienist told me she thought I had a cavity (in a tooth) and advised me to see my regular dentist (in another office). I took her advice; today I saw the dentist. He said that what she found was not a cavity and needed no work. I told him: “I’d rather that she say it’s bad and you say it’s good, than the other way around.” He said he liked that. I feel as if I’ve dodged another bullet. The last time that hygienist found a problem, I had to have the tooth extracted (not because she said so, but because she was right).

● I didn’t make my bed, but I have to lie in it.

● Wednesday, 4-14-2021:   In response to President Biden’s announcement that he would withdraw U.S. army troops from Afghanistan by 11 September 2021, a military official said that it would be very irresponsible to withdraw troops without reference to “conditions on the ground there.” That’s a good point. In fact, I think we should send U.S. troops to Canada, because we shouldn’t decide we should have no troops there without first thoroughly considering conditions on the ground.

[Later note (December 2021): I’m not sure that works: you could consider conditions on the ground in Canada without (or before) sending troops . . ..]

[Later note (7-2-2022): Or, think carefully before making a drastic change.]

● Saturday, 4-17-2021:   Philosophy Club meeting tomorrow. Topic: “Time Travel Paradoxes.”

● Time travel (or at least going back in time) is impossible. You might say, imagining doing it, that first you’d get to the recent past, then to the more distant past. In other words, the later it got, the earlier it would get, or the future would be the past, a contradiction. Moreover, if you did go back in time, you couldn’t get past (earlier than) the time you were born, or conceived, because before that you didn’t exist. And if you went back, you might not be conscious, or your consciousness would be incoherent, as it were, just as a recorded piece of music played backward is not coherent music, or music at all, but merely noise. Surely, you wouldn’t have an intelligible thought, because we think in language, and language run in reverse is gibberish. And external events in reverse would be bizarre, if not physically impossible: You would drive your car where you drove before—but backwards. The broken-to-bits teacup would reassemble itself and then levitate up to the table from which it originally fell. And if time, then, at some point, resumed going forward, you would be living your same life in the same time—but it wouldn’t be the same, because now it would be the second time you lived it; whereas the previous time it was the first time you lived it: so, it wouldn’t be in the same time; it would be a subsequent life; and something subsequent is at a later (different) time (another contradiction). Apropos, you would think all the thoughts you had the first time, including, perhaps, “I have free will.”

Postscript: About Philosopher Joel Hunter’s Jennifer story, wherein a girl’s older self goes back in time and speaks with and advises her younger self, that, too, is impossible, as follows. A person’s essence is his consciousness. It’s what makes you the same person this year as you were last year, no matter in how many other ways you change. The old woman and the girl are supposed to be the same person. But they couldn’t be the same person, because there are two consciousnesses: the older one, who sees and hears the younger one, and who imparts the wise advice, and the younger one, who sees and hears the older one, and receives the advice.

● Another thought on time travel: People who believe in it think about it in a provincial way, like people who believe in reincarnation. Reincarnationists imagine coming back, not as an insect or an ameba, but always as a human being; and those who believe in time travel always imagine going back to situations that are relevant to them: killing Hitler, or meeting their younger selves. They never imagine, say, going back a hundred years and ending up somewhere in outer space.

[Later note (10-15-2023): That’s funny . . . but were you ever in outer space before? . . . Probably not . . . but neither did you kill Hitler before . . . or meet your younger self . . ..]

● I’ve made substantial progress in editing my (65) online essays. In just one month, (in addition to doing my part-time job handling depositions via computer,) I’ve edited 59 of the essays, and I think I’m nearly finished with two more. The last five or six may take a bit more time than the others because they’re longer pieces. Now I’m working on “Some Reasons not to Use Drugs.” I made one set of changes, and I thought I was done with it. Then I realized it was (still) seriously flawed, and I made another set of changes, the second set even more substantial than the first. I read it over (silently) just a few hours ago, and I was very pleased with it. The process of editing sometimes feels almost like the process of regurgitating. It’s unpleasant, and so when you do it you think and hope that it’s over. But you still feel queasy, and you end up regurgitating again, and then you’re glad you did because you realize that you needed to, and now you feel better. I interrupted editing my Eisner’s Journal to edit the essays. For the last month, I’ve stayed in the house almost constantly, mostly doing this work. When I finally finish, I think I’ll take one of my long drives, to Mojave, or even to Ridgecrest, to celebrate.

● Tuesday, 4-20-2021:   We got the Derek Chauvin verdict today (he’s the policeman charged with murdering George Floyd): guilty on all counts. I was thrilled with the verdict.

● Saturday, 4-24-2021:   In deciding whether to retaliate against neighbors, I often feel on the horns of a dilemma: to reward an improvement in their conduct, or to punish what hostility there was. Sometimes I retaliate, other times I don’t. That way, it evens out; to retaliate one day, and forgo it the next, is perhaps roughly equivalent to a compromise of sorts: a half-retaliation each day.

● Wednesday, 4-28-2021:   In editing my essays lately, I sometimes revise a paragraph to improve its rhythm; I rewrite sentences to vary their lengths; and in that process, I shorten some of them; I find many unnecessary words and phrases, even unnecessary sentences, which I delete, and thus the paragraph becomes considerably shorter. It makes me wonder how much of the rest of the work might be improved if I were motivated to try to improve it. . . . On further thought, at the risk of oversimplifying, or thinking wishfully, it may be just that bad writing sounds bad, and good writing sounds good. Sounding bad is a guide, pointing to what needs improvement. If the writing sounds good, there’s no, or less, need for improvement.

[Later note (7-19-2021): Well, writing that sounds bad is bad writing (it’s bad at least in that way—in the way it sounds). And writing that sounds good is good (it’s good at least in that way—in the way it sounds). Good-sounding writing may be bad in other ways, and when you fix the other problems, it may then sound bad, and you’ll have to revise it to make it also sound good.]

● Though I’m a little chagrined at many of my essays’ need for improvement, my overriding feeling is gratification at my ability to improve them.

● Thursday, 4-29-2021:   The hot weather has really hit now. Last night was the first night that the heat significantly interfered with my sleep, and the first night I opened the front door to cool the apartment. Summer comes early now.

● Saturday, 5-1-2021:   Of my 65 online essays, I have just two more to edit, “Optimism and Pessimism” and “Morality.” They’re the last ones, because they’re near the end of the series (I’ve gone pretty much in the order in which they appear on the website), and they’re by far the longest ones. I’ve significantly changed both. I think they’re finally finished—at least for now. For the first time since I started editing them a week or so ago, I read them, yesterday, without seeing anything I could improve. As eager as I am to finish the task, I won’t read them aloud (the final step) and send them to my webmaster just yet. Rather, I’m going to let them sit for about a week, to give my mind some distance, some space, some perspective, to be able to do the final read-through with a slightly fresher view.

● Today is Saturday, but it feels like Sunday—probably because (unusually) I had no work (handling depositions) Thursday or Friday.

● Well, I cheated, in a way. I revised two sentences in one of the remaining essays, “Optimism and Pessimism.” But not because I read through it again; rather, I went for a drive (my Camarillo drive), and the idea for the change just came to me. It was a redundancy (within one of the sentences), which I noticed when last I read it, but somehow it only half registered in my awareness, got swept under the psychological rug.

● I’m as liberal as they come. Yet I agree with “conservatives” that trans-gender women should be banned from competing in women’s sports. The reason for that position, I surmise, is that trans-gender women are thought to have an unfair advantage there because, though they’re women psychologically, they’re stronger than non-trans gender women physically. It’s why we wouldn’t let a man compete in a women’s sport: so long as we separate men’s and women’s sports, it would be unfair to women athletes. Notice that no one opposes trans-gender men competing in men’s sports—because they have no physical advantage over other men. (In fact, one solution to the problem might be to let trans-gender women compete in men’s sports.) Notice, too, that when the issue of banning such competition is discussed publicly, the rationale for it is never mentioned, let alone addressed. Those who disagree, simply, accusingly, remark that so-and-so opposes trans-gender girls competing in girls’ sports, as if they expect us to assume (simpletons that we are) that that opposition, like, say, the opposition to trans-gender women using women’s restrooms, comes from prejudice against trans-gender people, and a resultant desire to hurt them at every turn. But whatever the motivation, this issue is different, and the “conservative” stance on it may be sound. . . . Probably either alternative will hurt someone. Trans-gender women being banned from women’s sports hurts them because, while competing in men’s sports may be compatible with their physicality, it’s incompatible with their psychology. If one group must be hurt, however, it’s better to hurt the trans-gender women athletes, because they’re fewer than non-trans gender women athletes. . . . Apropos, if trans-gender women are indeed physically stronger than non-trans gender women, why would the former want to compete in women’s sports . . . knowing that they have an unfair advantage? All of which suggests that perhaps the one and only fair solution is to create an additional sports category: trans-gender women’s. On second thought, perhaps the first step should be to investigate the assumption that trans-gender women are physically stronger than non-trans gender women. If they’re not, case closed.

● Sunday,5-2-2021:   By parallel universes, physicists, I think, mean, not other actually existing universes, but rather logically and physically possible universes. That interpretation makes the most sense; perhaps it’s the only one that makes sense.

● Tuesday, 5-4-2021:   Staring at a televised image of the sun won’t harm your eyes.

● Today I suspended my exercise-walk, because of left knee pain, which started yesterday. Just a month and a half ago I had the same problem (left knee pain).

● The depositions I’ve been doing are now pretty much all getting canceled. Therefore, I’m going to advance my schedule for reviewing and posting to my online essay collection those last two, in preparation for sending lawyers my work-seeking letters. The connection is this: in those letters, I invite the reader to look at my online resume, which prominently mentions, and links to, my online essays. I want the lawyers to see the best possible version of the pieces, in case they actually look at them. I was going to wait till this Friday (5-7-2021) to start the final editing. I may instead start tomorrow (Wednesday, 5-5-2021). On second thought, perhaps I’ll wait till Friday, after all. I don’t want to rush it.

● I’ve just (once again) started going through my Eisner’s Journal from the beginning; I’ve gone through the first three pages of it, and made numerous (further) edits. Amazing! I suppose editing the essays had a good effect on me in this regard: I’m now even bolder and more perceptive in editing my work.

● That was wise to suspend my exercise walk this morning: now (at 11:00 p.m.) my knee pain seems to have completely resolved. Well, the pain has resolved; whether the underlying pathology that caused the pain has resolved, I don’t know. Presumably, it has at least improved.

● Friday, 5-7-2021:   The poor are more vulnerable to drug abuse than the affluent, for several reasons. One, they have fewer non-drug activities and accomplishments to give them satisfaction. And we all need satisfaction. Two, obversely, the lack of non-drug activities and accomplishments causes them psychic pain, and drug use may be attractive as a way to escape that pain. Three, drug abuse harms non-drug activities and self-actualization. Lacking those advantages, the poor have less to lose in that regard. Considering this, it seems especially inappropriate to punish the poor for using drugs: they use drugs because their lives are bad, and we try to keep them from using drugs by making their lives even worse.

● Well, I had planned that today through tomorrow and the next day (the weekend), I would do the final reviewing and editing of the last two of my online essays to be edited (“Morality” and “Optimism and Pessimism”). I took the first step today, reading them silently. I made just a few very minor changes to each piece. Tomorrow or the next day, I’ll take what I hope will be the last step: reading them aloud. If I still find no significant need for editing, I’ll send them to my webmaster for posting. All that will remain will be to decide how to celebrate this project’s completion!

● Saturday, 5-8-2021:   Why do those who design religions posit that heaven is in the afterlife rather than in this earthly life? Because that way, it can never be disproved.

● Well, well, well! I’ve just finished reading both of the last two pieces aloud. I found nothing to change in “Optimism and Pessimism” (except for one small typographical error) and made only two very minor changes in “Morality.” It’s done! If I were religious, I’d say “Thank God!” But since I’m an atheist, I’ll say “Thank you, Richard!” It took me just under two months to edit about sixty essays, some of them radically (whilst also doing my part-time job handling depositions). That’s faster than one essay a day, which I think was very fast. In just two months, I’ve significantly improved a major component of my life’s work! And now for the final step: deciding how to celebrate! I think I’ll take my Ridgecrest drive tomorrow. If traffic is heavy, I’ll cut it short and do the Mojave drive instead, or maybe just a Lancaster drive.

● Sunday, 5-9-2021:   I didn’t take the Ridgecrest, or even the Mojave, or the Lancaster, drive. I didn’t feel up to it somehow. I’ll do the shorter Camarillo drive instead. If, when I get back home, I haven’t thought of any changes to either essay, I’ll send them to the webmaster for posting on the website.

● I just got back from my Camarillo ride. No further changes to the essays occurred to me, so I just now sent them to the webmaster. I’m glad I didn’t take my Ridgecrest or Mojave or Lancaster drive. Even on this shorter drive, I was tired of driving, well before I got back home.

● Monday, 5-10-2021:   I just awoke from a very pleasant dream in which my father and I were in business together. The business was my law office, and he was my assistant. We had found an office to rent, and we were pleased because we were getting a good deal on it (the rent was low). To boot, we had a choice of suites as our living quarters, between one in the same building and another in an adjacent building. We were thrilled at the arrangement—whichever apartment we took—for the convenience of living so close to work, which meant we wouldn’t have to commute to or from work (other than to walk a short distance). Toward the end of the dream, there was a third person who was going to work with us in the law office, an attractive young woman. She was deciding where to live, and I suggested that, to save money, she share my apartment. I promised (to someone) that, if she lived in my apartment, I would be a gentleman. We were in the leasing office, getting ready to look at the two apartments, when the dream ended.

● Those last two online essays of mine have both now been posted to the websites. It’s done! A labor of love, but a labor nonetheless. . . . And now I’ve just reached page 100 (of more than 500 pages of the piece) in my latest read-through of Eisner’s Journal. I’m still making significant changes.

● Tuesday, 5-11-2021:   I recently saw a news headline in the form of a question: “Do employers have a right to force employees to be vaccinated?” My initial responsive thought was this: No, but neither do employees have a right to force employers to continue to employ them.

● I took my Camarillo drive again today.

● Thursday, 5-13-2021:   Haircut (Brenda).

● Sunday, 5-16-2021:   Last week, Thursday, 5-13-2021, I saw my regular physician, Dr. Bhat (I had an appointment with him) at Kaiser Hospital, to get a referral to occupational therapy, for my right index finger. It’s the first time I’ve been there in at least 15 months. I’ve studiously avoided it out of fear of getting infected with the COVID-19 virus. I think it’s safer now. At the appointment, the nurse weighed me: 122 pounds, the lowest adult weight I remember having (I’m 5’11” tall). When I was there, I saw a big sign posted, saying: “Spread health: wear a mask.” So tomorrow, even though I have no appointment and no other reason to be there, I’ll go there and wear a mask—to help improve pubic health.

[Later note (3-6-2022): At a recent medical appointment, my height was measured, and it was only 5’10 1⁄2″. So I’ve shrunk . . . or I have less hair . . . or I was wearing shoes when I was measured at 5’11”.]

[Later note (10-12-2023): Apparently, my height now is actually 5’10”.]

● On 3-31-2021 I wrote that warmer weather has come. That statement was premature. We’ve been lucky this year. Aside from a few very hot days, temperate weather has for the most part prevailed until now, mid-May, which is unusually long.

● Monday, 5-17-2021:   Whenever Israel “retaliates” against the Palestinians, they kill about 20 Palestinians to every one Israeli killed. Isn’t that ratio disproportionate? No, it’s exactly proportionate, because a Palestinian is worth only one-twentieth what an Israeli is worth.

● Tuesday, 5-18-2021:   No matter what Israel does to the Palestinians that provokes violence on their part against Israel, and no matter how disproportionate Israel’s violence against the Palestinians, American news media characterize Palestinian action as violent attacks on Israel, and Israeli action as retaliation or self-defense.

● One of my pet peeves (I have a lot of them!) is when someone greets me, “How are you?”; and I respond (usually with “good” or “fine”), and I then ask her (it’s always a woman) how she is, and she doesn’t answer—she just says nothing. I try to make a mental note of it, so that the next time she asks me “How are you?”; I won’t ask her how she is, but instead simply respond, “I’m fine; thank you.”

● Wednesday, 5-19-2021:   I recently watched a documentary film on Maury Terry’s theories about the notorious Son of Sam murders in 1970s New York. In his book, The Ultimate Evil, Terry posits that, contrary to what the police maintained, not all of those killings were perpetrated by David Berkowitz, that some of them were done by others, but all under the influence of a Satanic Cult. Berkowitz himself, in several interviews, supported this thesis; he admitted to committing some of the murders, but denied doing others of them.

While I was watching the film, I had what I thought was an obvious question, which wasn’t so much as asked, let alone answered, in the film, namely this. Before they caught Berkowitz, the police referred to him as the .44 caliber killer, because of the ammunition round, a very unusual one, used in the shootings. When the police finally caught Berkowitz, they found a .44 caliber revolver in his car. The question is, if all the murders were done with the (very unusual) .44 caliber weapon, did the other perpetrators borrow Berkowitz’s gun to commit their murders, or did they all buy .44’s, to make it look as if all the murders were done by the same person? That’s of course possible. But the simplest explanation is that all the murders were indeed committed by the same person (which would be Berkowitz). To the same effect, all the killings had very similar methods and victims: the perpetrator walked up to parked cars and shot into ones occupied by young couples, and they all occurred near Berkowitz’s home. But at least his explanation for the crimes became less insane. Originally, he said a dog ordered him to do it. Now, other people did some of the murders, and a satanic cult made him do the ones he did. Why, in a hundred years or so, he might actually be sane enough to be let out of prison on parole.

● Thursday, 5-20-2021:   For many years I’ve been taking SAM-e (400 mg a day). When I started taking it (for joint health), I thought I noticed also an improvement in my mood. I’ve run out of my current supply and, since it’s rather expensive, and money is in short supply, I’m going to suspend taking it for now. If I notice that my mood is deteriorating, I’ll resume.

● Another of my many pet peeves is radio stations, in soliciting the public for donations, telling listeners that making a donation is “quick and easy,” taking only a brief moment, as in calling the station or making a few clicks on its website. That appeal might make sense for the wealthy. But for the rest of us (and the message is directed at the rest of us), it utterly disregards how long and hard we have to work for that money. Yes, it takes only a few seconds to transfer our money to the radio station, but it took us perhaps an entire day of drudgery to get the money. It’s dismissive and insulting.

● Tomorrow is my birthday. Though a day early, here’s the birthday edition of my semi-annual summation of the high points of the past year. I notice that in the last edition (January) I noted the creation of Eisner’s Journal. What’s new now, is this year’s grand editing of my online essays. I so significantly improved so many of them, that it strikes me as a milestone in my life. Alas, in reading through my diary entries (in editing this Journal), I’ve noticed that, like “red-letter event,” I’ve overused the word milestone to the point of it losing its meaning. Nonetheless, that editing does seem quite significant.

● Yesterday I intended to take my desert drive today, but when today came around, I just didn’t feel like it. Perhaps yesterday’s exuberance had waned. Perhaps I simply no longer have the energy I used to have for long drives. Or perhaps it’s because I now have something (working on Eisner’s Journal) to do at home that gives me some satisfaction. Or perhaps a combination of all three.

● Friday, 21 May 2021:   Richard, Happy Birthday!

● The United States Supreme Court has a procedural rule to the effect that it won’t decide a constitutional issue if the resolution of a more superficial issue will conclusively decide the case in question. That rule seems logical, or at least natural, parallel to how we behave in personal interactions. For example, if you’re both unable and unwilling to grant someone’s request, you say that you’re unable to do it, not that you’re unable and unwilling, or even just that you’re unwilling. Let’s say someone asks you to give him a ride, but you can’t because your car is in the repair shop. You tell him you can’t do it, because you don’t have your car. You don’t add, “And even if I had my car, I wouldn’t give you a ride!”

● Saturday, 5-22-2021:   Last Thursday, 5-20-2021, I had an interesting (and, as usual, negative) experience with the neighbors in no. 3. I was sitting at my desk (which is right on the other side of our common wall, and close to their front door) and I heard a group of them walking outside, returning to their apartment. I was about to get up from the desk and go into the kitchen to get ready for dinner, and I took the occasion to do it before they arrived. Were I still sitting at the desk when they came in, I couldn’t get up just then; in fact, I would have had to wait for five or ten minutes before doing it, to avoid giving the impression that I was moving because of their arrival (which would have been inconsiderate, even hostile). So I figured I’d get up while the getting was good, so to speak. But therein I violated (but also vindicated) one of my cardinal rules in dealing with them: always assume that at least one of them is present and hearing pretty much everything I do. And apparently one of them was present, and told the others I moved when I heard them coming. They were especially hostile toward me the rest of that day and all the next day. Which was inappropriate of them, because, unlike their actions toward me, my action was not meant as an attack on them. Rather, it was simply a convenience for me, which they would never have known about . . . had that bastard who was at home at the time (unbeknownst to me) not reported it to them.

Here’s a fact about living with hostile neighbors that I haven’t mentioned before: I conceal my mood. For example, I never audibly listen to music, let alone whistle or hum, in my apartment. That way, they can’t know my mood; and can’t gauge their effect on it, and so they can’t learn how to hurt it, which they would surely try to do. They can’t know when I’m feeling joyous or celebratory, and therefore be able to target me for attack then, and so systematically dash my good mood. And, again, I always act as if they hear me; I suspect they sometimes lurk there, hoping to catch me acting differently when I think they’re away. I studiously give them nothing. I have additional behavioral defense mechanisms, which I daren’t reveal, lest this eventually be published, and these or future neighbors read it (I’ve probably already said too much). Just as assiduously as I probe an argument for flaws, these people probe me for vulnerabilities to exploit. It’s a constant war. But, as I’ve also said, I can’t simply choose not to engage in it. Whatever I do or don’t do, they’ll continue to attack me. And the next best thing to not being attacked is to frustrate the attacks, and to retaliate when it’s feasible. I’m exquisitely well defended. I’m practically impervious to their attacks. Both my defense and offense are superb.

● Sunday, 5-23-2021:   As smoke means fire, so, too, in a written work, bad rhythm almost surely means verbosity.

● Philosophy Club meeting (by Zoom); topic: “private property rights.”

● The concept of private property rights is largely a rationalization and a mechanism used by the wealthy to amass and keep their wealth. I believe in private property—within limits. In my utopia, if I were king, I would say to Jeff Bezos, for example, “We’re going to collectivize most of your wealth; but we’re not greedy or vindictive: we’re going to let you keep, as your private property, one million dollars’ worth of goods, of your choice. So start pickin’!”

● If I’m not mistaken . . . I’m right. If I am mistaken, I’m wrong.

● Monday, 5-24-2021:   The neighbor in no. 7 this morning again came out of his apartment just as I was going into mine (after my morning exercise-walk). I sounded my (snare) drum. I’ve discovered that I don’t need a drumstick to strike the drum; I can just flick it with my finger, which helps because that way I can get to it quicker than if I had to first get the drumstick.

● Tuesday, 5-25-2021:   I had again planned to take my desert ride today. It was to be a sort of slightly belated celebration of the completing of my grand essays-editing project and my birthday. But when the morning came, I somehow no longer felt like it. I’ll try for next Sunday.

● I’ve just finished the latest read-through (for editing) of Eisner’s Journal. It took almost exactly three weeks, a very short time. I have no (paid) work tomorrow, and so I think I’ll now take that long-overdue celebration, by going on my desert ride tomorrow, perhaps even the Ridgecrest ride . . . if I still feel up to it tomorrow morning.

● Wednesday, 5-26-2021:   Well, the morning has come, and, no, I don’t still feel up to it . . . or I don’t feel like it. That is, it’s not necessarily that I lack the energy for it, but rather that my energy wants to apply itself to something else: specifically, my Journal. I have the sense that I rushed the work on the last quarter or so of it, because I wanted to finish it. So I’m now going to review that portion of it again.

● I don’t know if it was just a coincidence, or if my perception was accurate that my latest review of the last quarter or so of the Journal was cursory, but I started going through it again today at page 400 (it now runs to 515 pages), and it’s a very fertile ground for editing, a “target rich environment”: I’m rewriting many entries.

● Friday, 5-28-2021:   The situation with the neighbors in no. 3 continually, if slowly, evolves. And now it has reached a new variation (their hostility toward me has taken a new form). A few weeks ago, they again landmined me at the dinner table. I once again dealt with it by stopping in my tracks, to embarrass them. Apparently it worked, and they appear to have stopped landmining me. But just like another time when that happened, they’ve found an alternative means of attack, one that’s more difficult for me to retaliate for. Specifically, they wait by their front door, which is very close to where I sit at my desk, and they wait for me to make even a slight sound, like pressing a key on the computer keyboard, and then they close the door. I can’t retaliate for that, because they use the front door often; if I retaliate for that, it forges their mere closing of their front door as a pure-noise weapon. The only way I’ve tried to deal with it is just to sit silently when I sense they’re poised at the door, ready to close it, to deprive them of the opportunity. But it seems they’ve found a way around that. I feel very frustrated. But I have no choice. I must just bear it, and not overtly react, to at least deprive them of the satisfaction of getting a response from me and so knowing that it affects me.

● I’m considering suspending retaliation against the neighbor in no. 1 tomorrow (Saturday is my [weekly] retaliation day with him, and I’ve done it [retaliated] every week for many months now). To break the tit for tat pattern, one of us, on at least one occasion, must be magnanimous; why shouldn’t it be me?

● Saturday, 5-29-2021:   That’s how I felt, and that was my plan . . . until he attacked me again last night. The retaliation is back on for this afternoon. . . . No, back to the earlier plan: I’ll forgo the retaliation today.

● I’ve just finished rereading (for editing) the last one hundred fifteen pages of my Journal. The editing (as usual) was very productive. Now this latest review of the Journal really is finished. I feel very good about it. I plan to take my ride to the desert or perhaps even to Ridgecrest tomorrow, to celebrate that, as well as the completion of the grand re-editing of my essays, and my seventieth birthday. We’ll see if tomorrow I still feel like it. I hope I do.

● This month (May), I’ve handled very few depositions. By now, my deposition work has pretty much stopped. I don’t know why, though I have my suspicion, which I won’t reveal here. Perhaps I’m motivated by sour grapes or rationalization, but it occurs to me that this may be a good thing: I’m planning to solicit work from many attorneys beginning in a few weeks, around mid-June, perhaps the end of the pandemic, or at least the beginning of the reopening of the economy. So the end of this work gives me a few weeks’ well-deserved, and needed, vacation.

● Sunday, 30 May 2021:   Well, I’m not going for the desert ride today. But I have a good writer’s-reason why not: late last night I had occasion to work on a paragraph. I couldn’t get the rhythm right; after innumerable variations, nothing seemed to work. I can’t do both, and my desire to work on that paragraph exceeds my desire to go for the drive. Perhaps tomorrow.

● It’s now only 9:30 a.m. I’ve finished, for now, revising that paragraph. Which leaves me with a good five and a half hours’ time to fill. One thing I can do is to take my daily exercise-walk again, so I can skip it tomorrow, and so get an earlier start on the ride.

● Monday, 31 May 2021:   I just got back from my desert ride! It was pleasant. The first half of the trip was much better than the second half: largely, I think, because traffic was much lighter going than it was returning. But the big drawback was the heat. When I was at my usual stopping place at about the midpoint of the trip, the Four Oaks, an ambulance and a fire engine came and asked me if someone called for help. I replied, “Not me. And I don’t see anyone else.” I think they took a wrong turn. On the way, I ate at Tom’s #30 in Lancaster. In all the years I’ve eaten there (at Tom’s), I finally ate something different than the patty melt: a hot dog (the “polish dog”). It was pretty bad: cold. In retrospect, I should have asked for a replacement. In any event, I prefer the patty melt, which is a bit of a relief, since a hot dog is probably even unhealthier. Today was the first time in well over a year that I ate in a restaurant (as opposed to taking the food to my car and eating it there). Doing it that way was a good choice, because the hot dog was very messy, and it would have made a mess of my car . . . a good choice—as long as I don’t get sick!

● Tuesday, 6-1-2021:   The last educational video course I viewed was called Great Thinkers, Great Theorems, a lecture series on mathematics. I stopped viewing it about halfway through, several months ago, because it was so difficult (my knowledge of mathematics is rudimentary, at best). I’m going to resume viewing it today. That was a long enough break, and, with no paid work, I feel I have no excuse now not to finish it, or at least to resume it.

To probably oversimplify procrastination, one formula about it might be this: you’ll break your procrastination when the pain of the guilt of not doing the action you’re avoiding exceeds the pain of doing it. Again, like regurgitation, it’s unpleasant, but you feel better afterward. And writing this note is probably a way to procrastinate resuming tackling that lecture. . . . I finished viewing the lecture (Lecture 11) of the mathematics course. I understood little of it, but I’ve decided it’s not worth my time to struggle with it further. So I’ll go on to Lecture 12, perhaps tomorrow. And yet, even when I don’t understand something exactly or completely, per se, I usually learn something from it that I can somehow fruitfully apply to my writing. One advantage of doing what you’ve procrastinated on is that, afterward, other activities feel easy. So now I’m going to begin yet an additional read-through of Eisner’s Journal. Which is not so much difficult, as tedious.

● It seems that now, after three and a half years, the neighbors in no. 3 have finally learned how to avoid my retaliating against them. It’s not resolution, let alone peace, but stalemate: they still attack me, but they can’t do it in ways that I retaliate for. I can’t retaliate, but I have the satisfaction of knowing (or at least thinking) that they’re frustrated in not getting a reaction from me, and in feeling that their attacks are ineffectual. Just as they take some satisfaction in my retaliation, in knowing they’ve successfully hurt me, I must take some satisfaction in their continued hostility, knowing that my mere presence is causing them continued pain (or that they’re in pain, whatever the cause). I have the additional pleasure of knowing that their hostility probably comes from their resentment of their inferiority to me, both occupationally and intellectually. I might even say, as President Franklin Roosevelt said of some of his opponents, “I welcome their hatred.” I have a theory that, if and when they stop fighting with me, they’ll turn on one another. [Later note (6-3-2021): I see signs that that may be starting to happen—which I find gratifying.]

● Amazing! I’ve begun once again going through Eisner’s Journal for editing. And, on the very first page, I’ve made many changes (all improvements). I suspect this fresh ability to edit the work was a result of having, just shortly before, grappled with that mathematics lecture. As I said, doing something hard makes other tasks feel easy, by contrast. . . . On second thought, perhaps it had little to do with viewing the lecture. So far, every time I’ve read through the Journal, I’ve made many significant changes. This may be a better explanation: In a task involving a series of items to be dealt with, we sometimes describe easier items as low-hanging fruits, those that are easier to pick. Think of the Journal as a fruit-tree orchard, and the parts of the material that could be improved, as fruits on the trees. I go through the orchard and pick the lowest-hanging fruits (I make the most obvious edits). I go through it again, and I still pick the lowest-hanging fruits, but this time the lowest fruits are a little higher up in the trees. I’ll continue going through the orchard until the remaining fruits are so sparse or hard to get to that it’s no longer worth doing. . . . On third thought, the problem with that analogy is that it conceives of needs for change as more or less preexisting, like fruits on trees: you might not see them, but they’re there, and you could theoretically pick them all. That would be true if the potential edits in my Journal were merely typographical errors, like misspelled words. But many of the changes I make are creative: restructuring an entry, adding an argument, a further thought. Instead of a determinate set of existing fruits, new ones continually grow. So harvesting them could be never-ending. We’ll see. . . . Now, about a week later (6-8-2021), I’ve gotten, in this latest read-through of the Journal, about a third of the way through it, and I’m doing no less editing than I’ve done on any of the previous read-throughs. It seems less like harvesting fruits in an orchard than mowing a lawn. You may mow it once a week, but each time you do it, there’s no less material to cut than there was the last time. There is one difference: With a lawn, if you don’t cut it, it keeps growing; whereas, with the Journal, if I leave it alone, it stays as it was the last time I edited it. Yet, as many times as I’ve gone through it, there’s no end in sight. One reason for the proliferation of edits is this: Certain themes repeat. In going over the piece(s) many times, I eventually discover a significant related thought, or clarification, or qualification, which I add to the entry I’m then reading, or have just read. When I get to other entries expressing the same idea, I supplement them, too. In the process, I’m actually learning a lot. An additional reason for the profusion of edits has to do with my revision process: in general, I have trouble spotting further needs for change on a page that’s heavily marked up with hand-written notes. I have to incorporate the changes I’ve made and print out a fresh page. Only then can I go through it once more and spot what else needs to be changed. But I have mixed feelings about this continual editing. On one hand, it’s a little frustrating to be faced with a seemingly endless task. On the other hand, the work started out good. And the editing is making it even better.

● Wednesday, 6-2-2021:   I don’t remember mentioning this before: since my late teens, or so, I’ve had a high-frequency hearing loss in my right ear, probably caused by firing guns during my teenage years. And for many decades I’ve had tinnitus, worse in the right ear.

● Saturday, 6-5-2021:   Donkey come seven go red-nine costs. I woke up from a dream half-singing this to myself, perhaps (though I don’t remember) some residual material from the dream.

● Tuesday, 6-8-2021:   I wonder if the observer effect is not a little like the phenomenon that explaining a joke ruins the joke.

● Saturday, 6-12-2021:   This latest read-through of the Journal seems to be going more slowly than previous ones. I don’t know why. But I’m doing considerable editing and rewriting. Perhaps, having read through it so many times, it’s becoming less fun, starting to feel a bit tedious, so I’m spending less time (less time per day) on it.

● Sunday, 6-13-2021:   I took my Camarillo drive today. It was very refreshing.

● Well, well, well! There’s been an interesting (good for me, bad for them) development in the saga of my relations with the neighbors in no. 3. Of all of them, probably the most hostile ones (which is saying a lot!) have been the teenage boy and the (“adult”) woman. A tactic that they’d been using lately was to wait till I made a certain sound in my kitchen (which is at the other end of my apartment from our common wall, and their front door), and then slam the front door loudly (I’m sure they were poised at the door, lying in wait, ready to spring the trap). As open and flagrant as that attack was, I couldn’t retaliate for it, because that would have established it (the door slamming) as a pure-noise angry sound for them. So I just don’t retaliate for any attack involving their front door. About a week ago, they slammed the door upon my making a certain sound in my kitchen, the crinkling of a cellophane wrapper. Instinctively, as a defensive move, I continued to make the noise I had been making, crinkling the wrapper, so as to attenuate the sound and make the coinciding of the two sounds less obvious, to dilute or blunt the effect, as it were. But an accidental, and quite ironic, byproduct of that action on my part, was to somehow establish that sound (the crinkling of the cellophane) as a new angry sound of my own (against those two of them, anyway)! A very similar sound of mine that they were attacking the same way was the sound of the disposable plastic gloves that I use many times a day. Because that sound is very similar to the wrapper-crinkling sound, both sounds have become angry sounds of mine. (And I think that, once an angry sound has been established, the effect is permanent, like a fisherman’s hook set in a caught fish’s mouth.) This is all rather subtle, and I’m not sure how I came to notice it. But I did. All of which seems to have completely transformed the situation with these neighbors. Suddenly, I’ve gone from feeling attacked and being unable to retaliate, to, now, in effect, attacking them (or at least the most hostile ones of them) many times a day—and totally free, undercover, without it being seen as an aggressive, or even a knowing, act on my part. Their attacks on me are becoming more openly aggressive. But those attacks now cause in me, not pain or anger, but glee, seeing them as a reaction to great pain that I’m suddenly causing them. The tables have turned—we both deserve it!

● Monday, 6-14-2021:   I just had an interesting experience. I’ve had a microwave oven for over ten years, and I use it every day. For several weeks, the button that opens the door has been sticking, and it’s been very hard to open the door. I found that it wasn’t worth having it repaired, so I bought a new microwave oven, and I just brought it home and set it on the counter in place of the old one. I was planning to bring the old one to a recycling center, to dispose of it. Ever since I bought the old one, I’d left the thin plastic film on the door-opening button, to protect it (which made no sense). I figured that, now, since I’m getting rid of it, I might as well remove that plastic film, which I did. I pressed the door-opening button, and, for some reason, it worked perfectly! I don’t know if removing that protective film had anything to do with it, or if the improvement is just temporary. So now I must decide whether to return the new one (and keep using the old one). . . . Having thought about it for a few minutes, I think I’ll keep the new one. I’ll try the door-opening button tomorrow and over the next few days. If it continues to work well, I’ll keep the old oven as a spare. If the door starts to stick again, I’ll get rid of it, as first planned.

● Tuesday, 6-15-2021:   Well, I tried opening the door of the old microwave oven again today, and it still works perfectly. But I also tried the new oven, and it works beautifully. It’s much easier to use and much quieter than the old one. I’m going to keep it. I’ll retain the old one as a spare.

● Wednesday, 6-16-2021:   Is the rule of law related to democracy?; and, if so, how? My tentative answer is yes, in this way: The opposite of democracy is autocracy. One way in which—in a democracy—the people’s political will is manifested is in laws. The more the leaders are able to disregard the laws and instead do what they want, the more the people’s will (democracy) can be undermined, and the closer we get to autocracy.

● Saturday, 6-19-2021:   Philosophy Club tomorrow. Topic: “Is belief voluntary?”

● An issue in philosophy is whether belief is voluntary. This issue, in turn, is divided into two parts: direct voluntary control and indirect voluntary control. In his article “Doxastic Voluntarism” philosopher Rico Vitz gives this hypothetical example in support of indirect voluntary control of belief: You walk into a dark room that has a light-switch on the wall. When you first enter the room, you believe the proposition, the light in the room is off. But you realize that you could change your belief about that by flipping the light switch, and you flip it. The light comes on, and then you believe the proposition, the light in the room is on. Which is supposed to show that you have voluntarily changed your belief (from that the light is off, to that the light is on). I think not. That example shows this instead: When you first come into the (dark) room, you believe two propositions: one, that the light is off, and, two, that when you flip the switch, the light will go on. When you flip the switch and the light comes on, you continue to believe the first proposition, that the light was off, and you confirm your second belief, that if you flipped the switch the light would come on. Had the switch been broken, and when you flipped it, the light did not come on, you would have a belief (that the light-switch, or the light, is inoperable) opposite to what you had expected. In either case, your belief follows, not your decision to believe, but the evidence.

Here’s a better example: An atheist wants to believe in God, and so he goes to live in a monastery. After living there for five years, he believes in God. His change of belief resulted at least in part from the action he took for that purpose.

The other issue—direct voluntary control of our beliefs—is more contentious. At the highest theoretical level, we have no control over our beliefs, because, lacking free will, we have no control over anything. Coming down one level of abstractness, as it were, it is possible that we have direct control of our beliefs. A powerful demon could control our mind and cause us to take up a belief, or change it, as soon as we had an inclination to do so. It’s far-fetched, but possible.

The real question, though, is not whether, at some level, it’s possible, but whether it actually happens. To think that it doesn’t, is probably to be too sanguine about human rationality and self-awareness. In most sane men, rationality erects a sort of firewall or barrier between actual belief and wishful thinking. Sometimes, however, the firewall develops imperceptible cracks, and we come to believe what we’d like to believe. Or consider this example (it’s hypothetical, but it probably not infrequently happens): You’re convicted of a crime. You feel regret, but only about being caught, not about committing the crime. You go before the judge for sentencing, and you start crying and telling the judge how sorry you are—for committing the crime. You think, or feel, guilty for lying about having remorse, and you wish you really were remorseful. The judge gives you a more lenient sentence than you expected, and, by the time you leave the courtroom, you do feel remorse. And there’s the cliche about telling a lie so many times that you come to believe it. Directly voluntarily controlling belief is not something everyone can do regarding any belief at any time; perhaps no one could do that. And yet something that fits that description probably sometimes happens.

On second thought, what I said in the last paragraph is wrong. My hypothetical example and all my other statements pertain to coming to belief through subconscious forces; whereas, changing or adopting a belief voluntarily, means doing so consciously. If we could do that, we’d be so deluded and deranged that civilization would collapse. It would happen only in a science fiction movie—one that film critics would probably deprecate as too unrealistic. You might be able to directly voluntarily change or form beliefs if you’re psychotic, under hypnosis, under the influence of psychedelic drugs, or in a fantastical dream. But to imagine it happening in a sane, sober, awake adult human, is nonsensical.

● Sunday, 6-20-2021:   In the Philosophy Club meeting this evening, someone asserted that atheists are religious, in taking a strong position on God’s existence. I said that that’s like saying communists are capitalists because they (communists) have a strong opinion about capitalism.

● At the Philosophy Club meeting, Brian Gould quoted Ronald Dworkin to the effect that religious people are atheists about all religions but their own. I disagree. I think that all, or most, religions agree on the central concept, God. They just have different names for it, like “God,” or “Allah,” and so forth.

● Tuesday, 6-22-2021:   Once upon a time, there was a great mathematician, who was renowned for having proven many mathematical theorems. But he lived in a land whose inhabitants had a strange and unique ability: to form beliefs at will. One night the mathematician was at a party; he got a little intoxicated, and it occurred to him that it would be amusing if he changed his belief that twice two is four, to twice two is three. And so he did. He spent the rest of his career trying to prove (unsuccessfully, it turns out) that twice two is three. He couldn’t figure out why he was having so much trouble.

● Wednesday, 6-23-2021:   I saw a man on the street following another man; the first man (the follower) was reaching into a bowl and throwing on the other man what looked something like confetti. I got closer to them and saw that on the bowl was written Aspersions.

● Thursday, 6-24-2021:   I got my first social security retirement payment yesterday. It’s not much, but these days neither is my other income, so, given that, it’s significant.

● Saturday, 6-25-2021:   In a dream last night, I made a series of arguments for the improbability of life after death. This is the only one I remember: So far, every time you’ve woken up, it’s to this life. Why should that be any different when you die? That was the argument. Which of course is utterly nonsensical. What’s even funnier is that, in the dream, I thought that that one was the best of the lot! (Toward the end of the dream, in a sort of half-sleep, I was thinking that these were important arguments, and I should pick the best one to write down on waking, because I’d probably remember only one.)

● All else being equal, advice that’s easier to take (to implement) is better than advice that’s harder to take.

● For perhaps twenty years or so, I’ve used disposable plastic gloves many times a day. I use them to handle the urinary catheters I use; to wash the catheters; to brush my teeth twice a day; to handle some food; and to handle dirty things, etc. I used to use new gloves every time. But in the last few weeks, no doubt prompted by my need lately to save money, I’ve started to reuse them. They seem to last a long time. I can re-use them many times without their disintegrating or causing any adverse effects. I’ve thus drastically reduced my consumption of these gloves, an improvement for both the environment and my pocketbook.

[Later note (9-12-2023): Of course, I don’t reuse the ones I use for very dirty jobs, like cleaning the toilet. But I economize even there, by using cheaper gloves for that.]

● I heard a radio story about a man who, by way of protesting the incessant honking of car horns in his neighborhood, developed a poetry form he called honku (a haiku on that subject). So I thought I’d try my hand at it:

Honk, honk, honk, honk, honk.
I hate it, and I wish you’d
Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop!

● Sunday, 6-27-2021:   What a miserable night. It was hot, and so I kept my front door open. But then cigarette smoke (or something) came into my apartment and made sleeping impossible. I long for cool weather.

● Monday, 6-28-2021:   Well, I just finished my latest read-through of my Eisner’s Journal. I had noted here the date I started it: June 1st, less than a month ago. Which surprised me—it seemed much longer, perhaps two months. I’ll go for a little drive tomorrow to celebrate. I’ve wondered—it feels almost like a forbidden thought—whether my Journal isn’t better than my essays. It surely contains much more humor. Perhaps the center of gravity of my writing is shifting toward the Journal because I’m adding all my new material here.

● Tuesday, 6-29-2021:   I went for my Camarillo drive, but I cut it short because my portable radio/CD player broke. When, a month or two ago, parts began falling out of it (first a ball bearing, then a little spring) I wondered how much longer it would last. Listening to music is essential to my enjoyment of pleasure drives.

● Hmm. I had intended to take a break of at least a few days before starting my next read-through of the Journal. But now (the day after finishing my last review), I’m starting it again. Interesting. . . . Well, I’ve just begun the new review; I’ve read the first three pages, and made just one change, a tiny one. On the last review, I made many changes to those pages. Very encouraging!

● Sometimes I think a piece of writing is good enough to publish (or to post on a website). But then I read through it. When I find a needed edit, even a minor one, I think: I’m glad I didn’t post it—I’d hate to have it go out that way.

● Wednesday 6-30-2021:   Another of my many pet peeves is classical-music radio stations playing just single movements of multi-movement compositions.

● I’ve gotten twenty pages into my latest read-through of the Journal; the material in the last seventeen pages was not as clean as that in the first three. I’m (again) doing considerable editing.

● Thursday, 7-1-2021:   A prominent story in the news these days is entertainer Britney Spears’s legal struggle to end the conservatorship of her estate, worth about $60 million. Just today we heard that the judge denied the request. It occurred to me that a workable compromise might be to keep half of the funds under conservatorship and give Britney the other half to manage as she pleases. Then, in five years or so, the court could review the matter, and, depending on how well Britney had managed the portion under her control, decide whether (or how much of) the other portion should be given to her as well.

● Friday, 7-2-2021:   Last night (early this morning) when I opened the front door to let cool air in, the smell of smoke, or of something, came in and made sleep for the last two hours almost impossible.

● Sunday, 7-4-2021:   I worry about the proliferation of newly established holidays. If the trend continues, eventually every day will be a holiday, and we’ll never work. One way to deal with it would be to double up on them, as we consolidate Washington’s and Lincoln’s birthdays in one holiday (Presidents’ Day).

● Monday, 7-5-2021:   I just now had a funny experience. Right before I went for my daily exercise-walk, I went to take my sunglasses. I wore them at various times during my walk, when the sun was more directly in my eyes. I thought it made the image blurrier than I’d remembered, and I thought: I’ll have to clean the lenses when I get back home. Then, about halfway through the walk, almost a mile, I was holding them at my side, in my hand, and I thought to myself, by feel, that the arms of the sunglasses were much thinner than I’d remembered. So I looked at them. To my surprise, I found that they were not my sunglasses, but my reading glasses (with clear lenses)!

● Tuesday, 6 July 2021:   If a man, whose last name was Smith, had a musical group of which his three children were members, he could call the group “Mr. Smith and the three Smithereens.”

● Well, good news. I just had my annual (in this case about a year and a half) hearing test: The ear doctor says there’s no change in my hearing. I’d feared it had worsened.

● In the examination room (where I saw the ear doctor) was a sign reminding medical personnel to discard items in the proper containers. It read: “Right items, right bin”; and I thought, Do the left items go in the left bin? And where do the wrong items go?—in the wrong bin?

● Anais Nin wrote, “We see things, not as they are, but as we are.” That’s half, but only half, true. What we see is at least partly a function of ourselves (especially our peculiar brain and eyes). But it’s also partly a function of the things themselves. For example, if I see a cat, and then someone takes the cat away and puts a potted plant in its place; I see something different, not because I’ve changed, but because what I’m looking at has changed.

● Saturday, 7-10-2021:   Another night (or early morning) with the smell of cigarette smoke drifting into my apartment. I had great trouble sleeping because of it.

● They say you shouldn’t speak ill of the dead. But might you not do it out of kindness, holding a criticism of him till after he dies, to spare him that pain?

● I just heard a radio host ask a guest what euphoria feels like to him, and the guest said, “It feels like walking on air.” But that answer makes no sense: if you had a severe headache and you walked on air, you might be in overall pain (the pain of the headache might outweigh the pleasure of walking on air).

[Later note (3-6-2022): Besides, how does he know walking on air would be pleasurable?—has he ever done it? Have we ever done it?]

● Two developments this week, one positive; the other, negative. A few days ago, one of the attorneys, of the handful to whom I recently sent work-solicitation letters, called me to hire me to handle workers’ compensation depositions for him (my specialty). He said he wants me to do two next week. Initially, he asked what I charge, and I quoted a fee that I feared might be too high, but he accepted it. That’s the good development. The bad development is that twice this week, I did some minor cosmetic damage to my car by scraping it on the side of the garage when I drove the car in. That had never happened before. Was it an aberration, or is my advancing age hurting my driving? In these two developments, the good seems to outweigh the bad (at least assuming that the driving mishaps don’t continue).

● Sunday, 7-11-2021:   I drove my car this morning, and (on returning) put it in the garage without a problem; I just had to be more careful.

● The hostile family next door consists of two parents and their three young children (one is a young teenager). I sometimes (to myself) call them the big stupids and the little idiots.

● In editing my Eisner’s Journal, I go through it again and again, from beginning to end. In the process, I’ve become pretty familiar with its contents. I think it’s interesting that, for many humorous items or jokes, even if they consist in a long paragraph in which the punch line is at the end, as soon as I get to it and see what it is, without even reading it, I start to laugh heartily—and just as heartily every time. In fact, I sometimes find parts of it funny that theretofore didn’t strike me as funny (maybe that’s not good). Generally, though, I suppose it’s good that I find my jokes funny. (Otherwise, I suppose, I’d have to delete them.)

● Monday, 7-12-2021:   I’m having an interesting—and worrying—experience: just after 10:00 this morning (about two hours ago now), my lower back, on the right side, started to hurt, just after I took off my jeans (I do that standing up, which involves standing on one leg and then on the other to take off the opposite-side pant leg). At first the pain was mild, but within a minute or so, it became very intense, to the point where I could hardly walk. I got to my bed and laid down for about an hour. The pain was better when I was lying down, but when I got out of bed the pain was still intense. I called Kaiser hospital for advice, and they gave me a telephone appointment with a doctor for five o’clock this evening. I was relieved that the person on the phone didn’t think it was serious enough to advise me to call an ambulance or even to drive myself to the hospital. I just took a #3 codeine tablet (30 mg of codeine). I usually take only half a tablet, but this pain warrants a whole one. I can’t remember ever having back pain even close to this severe. This feels like a bullet coming my way. I hope I’ll dodge it. . . . It’s now about 5:00 p.m. I took a second codeine tablet at 3:30 p.m. For whatever reason, the pain has significantly diminished. I can walk now, though slowly and carefully. The diminishment of the pain suggests to me that it’s just a backache, albeit a very severe one. I worried that it might be something more serious, perhaps a kidney stone. Bullet dodged.

● One common edit in my Eisner’s Journal is replacing one of two adjoining words when the first one ends with the same sound as begins the second, because it’s awkward to say them. For example, in “rather rapidly” I changed “rather” to “somewhat.” Then I changed them again to “rather swiftly” because I thought “rather” was much better than “somewhat.” Sometimes I don’t fix the problem because I sense that it would take more time than it’s worth.

● I always found the expression “Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms” inapt. The element that’s out of place is Brahms: Bach and Beethoven are two of the very greatest composers of all time. Brahms is not. Obviously, he’s included merely for the alliteration.

● Tuesday, 7-13-2021:   A backache is nature’s way of telling you . . . you have a backache.

● It’s now 11:00 a.m. on Tuesday, about 24 hours after that terrible backache started. The backache is all but gone. Some of the pain persists, but it’s changed from excruciating, disabling pain, to (now) mild discomfort, which needs no treatment or even drugs. The big discomfort right now is the hangover from the medication (Ativan) I took last night for sleep, and the codeine I took for pain (I’m a wreck!). But that’s trivial, compared to the relief in being over the disabling pain, and the worry that it might signify a more serious condition. . . . Now, at about noon, the back pain is getting a little more acute, though nowhere near as bad as yesterday. I think perhaps I still had some of the codeine in my bloodstream from last night’s and this morning’s doses, which is now wearing off.

● Up from bed at night, standing in the hallway, in the dark, looking over at my desk and the computer and modem and monitor, their lights, some continuously on, others brightening and dimming, still others flickering, reminded me of a little city in a valley at night viewed from the top of a mountain.

● Wednesday, 7-14-2021:   I think that yesterday I inadvertently aggravated my backache by doing stretching exercises.

● Yesterday, 7-13-2021, I felt extremely tired during the day. I think that was largely due to the sleep medicine (Ativan) I took the night before. But today, I have the same problem—tiredness—though less intense than yesterday’s. I can’t blame today’s problem on sleep medication. When the backache started, on Monday, I laid down on the bed for about an hour’s time. I wonder if that didn’t, as it were, reset my daytime nap psychology, and now I’ll have to go through my same struggle, by forcing myself to stay awake during the day, to newly overcome it.

● Thursday, 7-15-2021:   Today, I handled my first deposition for Attorney Raphael H. It was not only my first deposition for him, but my first one directly for a lawyer who needed the service, as opposed to doing it through a lawyer-appearance agency (Greg Polster). My fee was much higher! But it was an in-person deposition, and I was in a room with the unvaccinated and unmasked client for about four hours. The room was fairly large, and I wore a mask, but I’m slightly concerned. I’ll feel relieved if I don’t get sick.

● Friday, 7-16-2021:   My apartment is a mess. But I know more or less where things are. If I had to find something, I’d know generally where to look. If I had someone (someone else) straighten up the apartment or unclutter it, I might not be able to find anything. And I’m certainly not going to do it myself!

● The backache is completely gone—not a trace of it remains. But since yesterday, I’ve had pain in my left ankle.

● Saturday 7-17-2021:   In bed last night (or this morning) I had a headache (which the NSAID didn’t remove); mild body aches, and a slight cough. I feared it was COVID-19, perhaps from exposure to the unvaccinated, unmasked client at Thursday’s deposition. But the condition has been improving since I got up, so it’s probably not COVID-19. I talked to a medical doctor by phone, and he seemed to agree. I’m very relieved. Part of the distress was thinking that, if I contracted the sickness, all my diligence for the past year and a half would have been for naught, because of one moment of carelessness.

● Sunday, 7-18-2021:   Last night I slept comfortably through the night. The headache (the worst symptom yesterday) was gone. It’s still gone; I feel much better today. So, whatever it was, it wasn’t COVID-19. It wasn’t even a cold; it was one of those 36-hour maladies. I even did all my exercises this morning, including the walk (the only remaining symptom is loss of appetite). Yesterday was uncomfortable in another way as well. The no. 3 neighbors were extremely hostile throughout the day. Their hostility is always worse on weekends, especially Friday evenings and Saturdays. Which I think is because those people’s relatives visit then, with whom no doubt they’ve poisoned the well against me. The relatives are even more flagrantly hostile toward me.

● Nothing prompts a criminal’s remorse for his crime like getting caught.

● Monday, 7-19-2021:   I’ve just finished the latest read-through of my Eisner’s Journal. I’m still finding many new edits. I feel good—positively celebratory—about it. But my good feeling is, not in thinking that I’m close to finishing the task (experience has taught me that optimism about that is folly), but in seeing that the work is continuing to improve. Of course, though, however close to (or far from) being finished it is, it’s closer. This read-through took just 3 weeks. That feels like a short time, but it coincided with a time when I had very little paid work. I must find a way to celebrate.

● A lawyers Listserv (I can’t find the original item on the Listserv) notified members that recently a judge had ruled that information discussed on the Listserv and leaked to an opposing attorney was not protected as confidential, because, with 3,000 members on the Listserv, you couldn’t expect that no one would leak it. In response, I briefly wrote the following notes, but didn’t publish them on the Listserv:

○ How few lawyers would have to be on the Listserv to make communication confidential?

○ If there were just three persons on the Listserv, would this breach not be actionable?

○ If, in twenty years’ time, and with 3,000 members of the Listserv, not even once had the organization’s confidentiality been breached, would there not then be a reasonable expectation of confidentiality? And what if this breach were that one?

○ If you have contracts with one hundred merchants, and one of them breached his contract, would he be able to defend a lawsuit for the breach, on the basis that, when you have contracts with that many people, it’s doubtful that all of them would honor the agreement?

○ Would a convicted murderer be entitled to avoid penalty for the crime on the basis that, in a city of ten million people, you couldn’t expect all of them never to commit murder?

● Wednesday, 7-21-2021:   For the past two months or so, I’ve been doing home exercises prescribed by the occupational therapist for my right index finger. The exercises involve pressing down on a joint of the finger, for which I use my left thumb (to press on the finger). Ironically, the finger problem seems to have resolved—but the thumb, from repeatedly pressing with it, now itself hurts! I’ve stopped doing those exercises, and I’m hoping that that will be sufficient to heal the thumb. If not, I’ll have to go back to the occupational therapist to get therapy for the thumb.

● Because of Republican opposition, a certain United States legislative bill, promoted by the Democrats, is languishing in committee (out of which it must pass in order to come to the senate as a whole for a final up or down vote). I heard that one Democratic senator criticized the Republican committee members’ intransigence, on the grounds that their committee vote was, not to pass the bill, but merely to allow the bill to be voted on. Much as I would like the Democrat, in a quarrel with a Republican, to be right, that criticism is illogical. Voting on whether to kill the bill in committee or to pass it out of committee, is voting on the bill, in that it decides the likelihood of the bill’s being enacted. Let’s say that the bill has a 40 percent chance of being enacted if the whole senate votes on it. So the decision whether to kill the bill in committee or to pass it out of committee, is the decision whether the likelihood of the bill’s enactment should be 40 percent, or nil. If you’re utterly convinced that the prospective bill is bad and should not be enacted, would you not want to minimize the likelihood of that happening? If you were a senate committeeman deciding whether to pass out a bill that you thought, if enacted, would destroy humanity within ten days’ time, would you not want to kill it as early as possible, even at the cost of depriving some senators of the opportunity to vote on it?

● Here’s the latest development in the finger/thumb situation: the thumb symptom seems to have completely resolved. The finger symptom has not completely resolved (though it’s much better). But I found an alternate way to do the therapy for the finger, a way that doesn’t require pressing with my thumb.

● Thursday, 7-22-2021:   I’ve resumed watching the DVD lectures on mathematics. I understand little of it. But even if I don’t understand it in depth, I learn something from it. For example, the latest lecture was on calculus. I didn’t understand the details, but I thought, “So, that’s what calculus is . . .” I suppose it’s worth watching, just for that much insight.

● I heard an interview with a mathematics professor, who said that, in some contexts, twice two could be three, or five, etc. I then tried to think of a circumstance in which that might happen. Perhaps if there are two rabbits, and two more appear, then a hunter shoots one of them—so, in that case, twice two was three. Or, two of them might mate with each other—then, twice two might be . . . ten. Which is quite possible, because those animals breed . . . like rabbits.

● I’ve started another read-through of Eisner’s Journal. I couldn’t stay away from it for longer than—two days, it’s been. . . . I’ve just gone through the first ten pages of it. Much less editing was needed than previously. But I find I have quite a few “Later notes” to add.

● In my journal I have an entry that speculated on the experience of typicn oon ghe computer with the monitor off, to see if you could remember how you started the sentence (I din’t wonder aoubt longer units that sentences. I’m trying that experiment here. Let’s see; I’ve written two short5 sentences. Now let’s try a longer one: When I was a teenager and in my early twenties, I used to hunt, at the desert, mainly with rifles, .22 caliber rifle—more specifically, the round was the .22 long rifle rimfire. I didn’tnThe game was rabbbits, mainly jack rabbits., which are inedible. But I didn’t eat the edible ones, either —cottontails. Well, I guess thatI’ve typed long enough withwith my eyes closed. I’ll tak a look at it now.

[Instead of fixing typos and otherwise editing that little paragraph, I’m going to leave it just as I typed it—it’s funnier that way.]

● I made a fortune last week—without investing any money, or even working. I started with five thousand dollars in my wallet. The first day, I could have spent it. But I saved it. On each of the next seven days the same thing happened. So, by the end of the week, I’d saved $35,000. As they say, a penny saved is a penny earned. I haven’t checked my wallet, but I should now have $35,000.

[Later note (4-24-2022): That’s obviously wrong: it should be $40,000.]

● I’ve almost completely suspended formal retaliation against the neighbors in no. 3, even for offenses I’d have retaliated for as recently as a few months ago. Because, ever since mid-June of this year, I now hurt them badly every day, even without it seeming deliberate or from anger on my part, I figure that my formal retaliation would help them more than hurt them; it would add little, proportionately, to what I’m otherwise dishing out to them, but it would give them some consolation in knowing that the pain I’m causing them is to some extent balanced by pain they’re causing me. So I withhold formal retaliation to deprive them of that satisfaction.

● In decades past, a morning-after abortion or birth control pill was advertised, which the maker called “RU486.” I interpreted that to mean this: 86 is restaurant lingo for getting rid of something. So that pill designation means: Are you (RU) for (4) 86-ing the (potential) pregnancy? I haven’t heard the pill, or at least that name, advertised for several decades now.

● This was a day of laughing (because of what I thought and wrote—they’re one and the same, since, these days, when I have a funny thought, I write it down). I can’t remember another day when I laughed so much.

● Friday, 7-23-2021:   To overplay one’s hand is to use an advantage excessively, to the point where it loses its effectiveness, or even backfires.

● Sunday, 7-25-2021:   Early this morning, at about 4:30, I again awoke to the smell of cigarette smoke. I went to the front door of my apartment, and I didn’t smell smoke. So I figured it probably came from a smoker sitting near the sidewalk near my bedroom window. With the front door and my bedroom door wide open, the smell soon dissipated.

● Philosophy Club. Topic: “Evolutionary Ethics.” I’ve written an essay on it. Because it turned out very well, and it’s a longer piece, I’m going to put it in my online essay collection, not here.

● Last week I took my Camarillo drive, but a truncated version. It shaved about 22 miles off the usual 77 miles.

● Monday, 7-26-2021:   Until a few months ago, I ate salad in the morning and a hot meal in the afternoon (dinner). Then I switched them (eating the hot meal in the morning and the salad in the afternoon). Now I’m going to switch back, because for a week or so, probably since (and because of) that ailment I had briefly on 7-18-2021, my appetite has diminished, and I eat only the salad and the hot meal. When I eat the salad by itself, it stimulates greater urine production for several hours thereafter, which is inconvenient at bedtime.

● Tuesday, 7-27-2021:   I posted the following item online today: I’d very much appreciate any recommendations for a furniture repair person in or near Reseda. (If you can’t recommend one, do you even know of one [as long as you don’t think he’s bad]—I can’t find any.)

○ Someone responded with this: If Holiday Hardware was still there you could buy the materials and do the repair yourself.:)

○ I replied thus: I doubt that I could do this repair myself: it’s to replace a gas spindle (the part that raises and lowers a chair).

○ To which he responded with this: I was just joking. My mother worked for 35 years at Holiday Hardware, which is by you, at the corner of Tampa and Victory. The space is now a Dollar Store or something like that.

○ In response, I said: Then at least I’ll get a laugh while I’m sitting in my too-low chair.

● Wednesday, 7-28-2021: Well, it happened again. Last night (or early this morning), I was lying in bed, and I had what I felt was a wonderful insight, perhaps one of my best, expressed in one sentence (surely, not more than two), and I neglected to get out of bed to write it down, confident that I’d remember it today. But I don’t remember it. Dammit!

● For the last two days, I’ve had much blood in my urine, and an intense feeling of having to urinate, even when the amount of liquid in my bladder would not normally produce that sensation. It’s been miserable. The condition (both the bloody urine and the full-bladder sensation) seems finally to have resolved. What a relief!

● Just now I saw an online discussion about low-carb diets, and whether you must eat a lot of meat with it, etc. I was thinking about replying with this: “A low crab diet would definitely not work for me—I love seafood, especially crab.”

● Were pigs created in God’s image? What about spiders? Why is man the only creature to have been created in God’s image? . . . It’s because we like to flatter ourselves.

[Later note (1-25-2022): I think one motivating reason for the Jesus Christ myth is that it reinforces the flattering idea that we’re God-like: God is so like man that his offspring is a human.]

● Aside from that urinary problem, which was exquisitely uncomfortable, the worst nighttime condition that kills my sleep is the cigarette-smoke smell in my bedroom. It doesn’t seem to happen during the Winter—only in Summer. I think that’s because people go outside to smoke in the Summertime because in the early morning the air temperature is perfect. In the Winter it’s too cold to be outside. . . . Adding this note a week or so later, I was assuming that the smoke was coming from people smoking on the sidewalk near my bedroom window. But now I think the explanation is much simpler. The smoke is coming from inside the apartment complex. My front door communicates with the common area of the complex, and at night I keep the door open in the Summer but closed in the Winter.

● Friday, 7-30-2021:   I’m not entirely out of the woods with that urinary problem. . . . In fact, both symptoms have returned: the blood and the discomfort (but they’re less intense than they were originally). . . . Now, late at night, I feel as if I’m on the mend. It’s a great relief; it takes just one of innumerable body parts or systems to go wrong permanently, to make your life hell.

● Saturday, 7-31-2021:   I just awoke (it’s now 2:45 a.m.) from a dream in which I rode my motorcycle (a motorcycle I used to have) cross-country. I had taken scenic back roads, and I was in Oklahoma. It seems it took me less than a day to get there. It was getting late in the day, and I was asking various people how to get back to California. I just wanted to get back home (in time to get to bed that night!), and I wanted to take the most direct route possible. I felt I couldn’t take back roads, because it was getting dark and I wouldn’t be able to navigate them by sight (and, in any event, it would take too long). The dream ended there.

● An assumption we indulge that may be fallacious: that a person we know to be of a certain character, like kind, or mean, will be so at all times and in all situations. A similarly questionable assumption we make is that a person who’s intelligent or able in one field, will be so in all, or in many, other fields as well.

● I started to re-listen to the lecture on Newton’s calculus. I couldn’t sufficiently concentrate on it to get anything out of it. It was like listening to a lecture on Greek grammar . . . in Greek!

● Sunday, 8-1-2021:   Poisoning the well is an informal logical fallacy, a kind of ad hominem appeal, whereby you attack the argument by attacking the arguer. It’s fallacious because the argument should stand or fall on its own merits, which have nothing to do with the person making the argument. It’s the opposite of the appeal-to-authority fallacy, whereby the arguer’s expertise is used to support the argument. But in this connection, there’s an important distinction: between deductive arguments and inductive arguments. Deductive arguments are a matter of conclusive, clear-cut proof, determined by the internal elements of the argument itself. It’s like a mathematical proof, an argument like, “John and George are men; therefore, John is a man.” Whereas, inductive arguments involve, not proof, but merely evidence. Their conclusions are matters of mere probability. For example, “John and George each owned the kind of weapon that killed Robert, but John had a motive to kill him, and George didn’t. Therefore, John killed Robert.” Even if the facts leading to the conclusion are true, and the conclusion is a reasonable inference from the facts, the conclusion may still be false. Those facts don’t rule out the possibility, for example, that Robert was killed instead by James. In everyday life, the arguments we usually engage with are inductive, and they’re made, not to convince us of some abstract truth, but to persuade us to take some certain action (and we must decide on it). Ad hominem appeals are theoretically irrelevant in deductive arguments, but they may be relevant in inductive arguments. In these (inductive) arguments, it’s not unreasonable to consider facts about the speaker, especially where our knowledge and understanding of the subject matter is limited. For example, if a scientist argues that we should use a particular new drug; then, in deciding whether to use that drug, especially if we don’t fully understand the science involved, we certainly should take account of such facts about the scientist as, say, that he works for the maker of the drug in question. In such situations, the rule should be, not simply to reject information about the speaker, on the grounds that it’s fallacious, but rather to determine whether it’s relevant and, if so, how much weight to give it. That determination will vary from person to person. The more you know about the subject, for example, the less you need to rely on other elements, like the speaker’s credibility.

● When I was much younger, my sister asked my mother, “What’s a dinner jacket?” I volunteered: “A jacket that doesn’t need to be dry-cleaned.”

● Tuesday, 8-3-2021:   Thoughts are like clouds moving across the sky: if you want to write one down, you have to do it immediately, or it will drift by and never be seen again.

● Wednesday, 8-4-2021:   I just had profuse blood in my urine. My first thought is: Here we go again! My second thought is: Let’s see if it continues, and if I get the same uncomfortable symptoms I got last week that were associated with the bloody urine.

● Well, this time both symptoms are even worse. So I went to the Urgent Care at Kaiser. I wrote this summary of the problem:

I’m having a urinary crisis. Last week, Monday, 7-26-2021, through Friday, 7-30-2021, I had blood in my urine accompanied by extreme discomfort (I had a sensation, continuously, as if I had a strong urge to urinate, even when my bladder was relatively empty). Those symptoms were worse in the first few days of that week. By Friday night, the symptoms, both the bloody urine and the discomfort, had gone away.

But today, Wednesday, 8-4-2021, at 11:00 a.m., both symptoms (the bloody urine and the discomfort) have suddenly returned. I’ve had blood in my urine before, but always just once in a while, or at most twice in a row, and never accompanied by discomfort. A decade ago, I would have dealt with the problem by suspending catheterization for a few days or a week. But I can’t do that now, because, for the last few years, I’ve been unable to urinate at all without the catheter, no matter how full my bladder is.

I just urinated again (with the catheter), at 3:30 p.m., four and a half hours after the bloody catheterization of this morning. This one was even worse: I’ve never had such profuse blood in my urine, and the discomfort is intense. I was going to wait till Friday (8-6-2021), when my regular urologist returns. But now I think I’d better not wait; I have no choice but to go to the Urgent Care (which I was reluctant to do because of the COVID-19 risk).

● The preliminary diagnosis is urinary tract infection, to be confirmed or refuted by a urine culture. They prescribed an antibiotic for me. I was relieved to learn that that’s the cause, rather than physical damage to my urethra or urinary bladder from catheterizing.

● Someone online today asked if anyone had information on a Rahul Dixit, M.D. I was tempted to reply: “Is he any relation to Ipse Dixit?” But I didn’t reply.

● Thursday, 8-5-3032:   It’s 1:00 a.m. I just now urinated (with the catheter) and there was just a little blood in the urine. And the discomfort is much less. Last evening, I took one of the antibiotic pills. Perhaps that made the difference. I’ll be greatly relieved if this turns out to be just a UTI, and not physical damage from catheterizing.

● Perhaps a side effect of the UTI or the antibiotic I’m taking for it, this morning I felt, physically and psychologically, bogged down, very tired and sluggish. But after drinking a cup of tea, I feel fine.

● Well, the tea is wearing off, and I’m again feeling bogged down. But I’d much rather have this feeling than the bladder/urethral discomfort I had yesterday! I slept poorly last night; but I often sleep poorly, yet I don’t feel as de-energized as I do now. I hope I’m not getting sick. . . . Well, here’s an interesting development. When I had my second, my afternoon, cup of tea, I again felt energized. I resumed editing my Journal, and I found many items that needed significant revision. I was absorbed in working on the rewriting, and I haven’t again felt that sleepiness I felt earlier today. So, was the sleepiness psychological? Or was the new energy because of the catnap I took shortly before my second cup of tea, briefly nodding off while sitting at my desk? The cause will probably remain a mystery.

● Sunday, 8-8-2021:   My doctor has ordered a further blood test to check my kidney function, which is badly affected by my dehydration. I wonder if eating kidney beans would help my kidneys.

● I found out Friday (8-6-2021) that the urine culture was negative (I did not have a UTI). That’s actually bad news, because it means that my severe urinary symptoms of last week and the week before, could be a sign of a more serious problem (probably physical trauma caused by catheterizing).

● Saturday, 8-14-2021:   It took a pandemic to oust Trump from office. I was tempted to say that it was worth it. But that would be cavalier on my part: I’m not among the multitude who got sick and suffer long-term symptoms; who lost their homes or businesses; or who lost friends or kin.

● Sunday, 8-15-2021:   Well! There’s been a dramatic turn of events in my situation with the neighbor in no. 1, parallel to the same kind of change with my neighbors in no. 3 just two months ago (see the 6-13-2021 entry, above). For many years, the no. 1 neighbor has been shadowing me in the mornings, within his apartment. Just when I get out of bed for the day, he busies himself very audibly in his apartment, bustling around in the kitchen, or letting his cat out, or bringing it in, etc. His purpose has obviously been to harass me; but I couldn’t retaliate for it, because that would have invested his tactic with power over me. Even more pointedly, he frequently picks out a certain sound that I make routinely, and makes a sound immediately before (the landmining maneuver) or immediately after I make my sound. Until a few days ago, I dealt with that by making my sound as softly as possible, or delaying it. But last Thursday morning, I used what I recently learned with the no. 3 neighbors: when he attacked me again in that more pointed way, I responded, not by hiding or softening my sound, but the opposite: accentuating and prolonging it. I thus turned the attack on me into a counterattack. And it not only served my purpose at the moment, but I thus forged my sound as a pure-noise angry-sound, whereby every time I make the sound routinely, for its ostensible purpose, it serves as an attack on him! There have been three mornings since then, and for three days straight, for the first time in many years, he has not clattered about when I get up for the day. I’m going to pay them all back—with interest!

● I’ve discovered a rule for using such a subliminal or sub silentio attack: use it only for its ostensible purpose, never for attack or retaliation. In fact, studiously avoid using it (even for its ostensible purpose) soon after an attack, or even after a significant noise, by the neighbor in question—you must carefully avoid letting him know that you know your noise’s significance in this regard. Then it would not only permanently lose its usefulness as a weapon, but it would backfire.

[Later note (December 2021): A qualification about not using an angry-noise even for its ostensible purpose shortly after an attack by the neighbor(s) in question: if it’s a sound that you routinely make in some certain sequence, don’t suspend it, because then its absence would be conspicuous.]

● The plural of octopus is octopusi.

● Monday, 8-16-2021:   We sometimes ask what the purpose is of a certain biological adaptation, or bodily organ or structure. In that connection, instead of purpose, it’s more accurate to speak of function. For example, the function of the ear is to enable hearing. If, instead, we say that that’s its purpose, we must ask what the purpose of our hearing is. If we answered, to enable us to survive; the correction would be this: our existence has no purpose. Rather, we have our own (individual) purposes for living. And enjoying sound may be among a person’s reasons for living.

● The United States fought a war in Afghanistan for twenty years. In the last few months, the U.S. drew down its military involvement there, and, in the last few weeks, the supposed enemy, the Taliban, completely took over the country. Many have criticized the United States’ withdrawal because of that. But the Taliban’s quick takeover condemns, not our leaving, but our being there. We fought merely to stave off the inevitable, to prop up what would collapse as soon as we stopped propping it up. Who of us benefitted from it? The arms makers. Everyone else lost: the taxpayers, who funded it, and the soldiers, many of whom were killed or maimed. Furthermore, even if the non-Taliban Afghans’ being in power is preferable, how many people—including the supposed enemy—are we justified in killing and injuring in, say, a year’s time, to maintain that situation for (just) that long?

Though our withdrawing was right, the main reason President Biden gave for it—that we shouldn’t fight for the Afghans if they won’t fight for themselves—is disingenuous. Because the Afghans didn’t stop fighting until we withdrew, our decision to withdraw was made before the Afghans stopped fighting, so their not fighting could not have been a reason for our decision. And it’s an unfair criticism of the Afghans. When we were fighting, they fought ably and bravely (so I’ve heard). Their stopping when we stopped may have been reasonable, since, without our help, their fighting may have been in vain.

● Tuesday, 8-17-2021:   Someone wrote this online:

Robert Wilson MD testified at deposition yesterday that “there’s a study that says people who’re involved in litigation tend to have long-term pain complaints and to attribute their pain to the injury event that gave rise to the lawsuit.”

Of course, when I asked him if he’s saying my client’s chronic pain complaint is related to the fact that she’s in litigation, he goes “I’m not making that comment, I’m just saying there’s a study out there.”

Should I bring a MIL to stop him from referencing to this BS “study,” or is there a better strategy that can expose the dirty defense tactic?

My reply:

A better strategy might be to turn his own statement against him, thus: “Of course, the correlation that Dr. Wilson cites (between litigation over injuries and complaints of pain) is true, but the relationship is the opposite of what Dr. Wilson implies: it’s not that people who litigate over their injuries fabricate or exaggerate their pain, but rather that just those people whose pain is significant litigate about it. For those whose pain is mild or transient, it’s not worth litigating over it, and so they don’t. In short, litigation does not cause pain complaints; rather, pain complaints cause litigation.”

Just before I was going to post my reply, someone else made essentially the same point. Though my version is much better articulated, I didn’t bother to post my comment.

● Here’s a little anecdote in connection with my writing my masterpiece, “Ethics.” I seem to remember, I have the impression, that, shortly after I had the great revelation about the impossibility of intrinsic value, and after I had written a preliminary sketch of the argument for it, I thought something to the effect that the argument and the mathematics involved are so complicated that, if I spent the rest of my life studying the subject and working on it, I could never finish it. Then sometime later—I don’t know if it was days or weeks or months—I thought, “No, that’s it: what I have is sufficient.”

● Wednesday, 8-18-2021:   I just awoke from this dream: I was a student in an acting or graphic art school. I was doing very well. The school had a baseball team, and I was playing in my first game there. At one point in the game, one of the well-established players yelled out to the audience a criticism of me, that I had failed to make a certain play in the game. I thought it was unfair, because the problem had been that that player had not thrown the ball to me, and I yelled out my defense equally vociferously. Shortly thereafter, the school owner or head told me I was expelled from the school for that (for publicizing my defense, not for playing poorly). The rest of the dream involved my pleading with him to allow me back into the school. I said to him, what if another driver on the road yells at you, accusing you of being at fault for a certain driving mishap, but it was his fault, not yours. Would you not yell back, defending yourself? Anyway, toward the end, I persuaded him to let me back into the school provisionally; I’d have to pay for all my own art supplies or actor’s wardrobe. I agreed to do it. I was 23; I was torn between staying at the school, with this handicap, or finding another subject to study. I was feeling a little desperate, with few options, having neglected to develop needed skills earlier. The dream may reflect my regret over my lost opportunity to make an arrangement with another lawyer for my 1-800-SUE-THEM, or my worry about the immanent change in the legal profession: of it being opened up to ownership (usurpation) by non-lawyers, like Google and Amazon.

● I had my routine eye exam today. The last one was perhaps three years ago. The optometrist said there was virtually no change in my vision since then.

● Thursday, 8-19-2021:   A follow-on to the 7-21-2021 notes about the therapy exercises for my injured right index finger: the thumb symptom resolved, but yesterday I started having pain in the right middle finger, caused by the therapeutic exercises I did for the index finger. So I’ve stopped doing the exercises. I’ll ask my doctor to refer me to the hand specialist.

● Saturday, 8-21-2021:   A little over a month ago, I sustained an injury to my left foot and ankle. I suspended my daily exercise-walks for several weeks, then resumed them. That made the injury even worse than it was. I’ve suspended my daily walks until this morning, when I walked just around the block, about a third of the usual distance. I’ll see the result.

● In response to a lawyer’s request for advice to help a client whose neighbor damaged his (the client’s) front door with a hammer and threatened to use the hammer on him (the client), someone wrote this:

“What’s the big deal? I once had a girlfriend whose son tried to attack his girlfriend with a hammer. The State Bar did not think that was a big deal. They let him become an attorney. Of course, I’m kidding when I say What’s the big deal. It is a big deal.”

I considered responding to that comment with this (but I didn’t respond): What does “tried to attack his girlfriend with a hammer” mean?: he tried to do it, but didn’t, because he was too drunk to find the hammer? Or, he tried to attack his girlfriend with a hammer, but he failed because his girlfriend wasn’t there at the time?

● Someone posted this comment online:

“Mates:

“Logical Fallacy.

“The argument from ignorance (or argumentum ad ignorantiam and negative proof) is a logical fallacy that claims the truth of a premise is based on the fact that it has not (yet) been proven false, or that a premise is false because it has not (yet) been proven true. This is often phrased as ‘absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.’”

I posted this response:

The argument from ignorance (that lack of disproof constitutes proof) is indeed fallacious: if a proposition could be proved by its lack of disproof; then, likewise, it could be disproved by its lack of proof. Which means that a proposition (if we’ve neither disproved nor proved it) could (thereby) be both proved and disproved, that it could be both true and false, a contradiction.

But “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” . . . is not true: absence of evidence is not proof of absence; but it’s evidence of it (that is, it’s not conclusive, but it’s relevant). For example, if you look for an elephant in your living room, but you don’t see one (assuming you have a normal-sized living room), that’s pretty good evidence that there isn’t one.

● Tuesday, 8-24-2021:   Now, at 10:30 p.m., I have a terrible lower-back ache—probably from walking yesterday, after suspending it for a month. The troubles never end. But that sentiment is short-sighted, in light of the infinitely worse crises I’ve feared, if certain of my injuries had not fully resolved, like the recent urinary symptoms—and that terrible backache last July. Overall, I can’t reasonably complain.

● Wednesday, 8-25-2021:   Today the backache is somewhat improved.

● Friday, 8-27-2021:   Deductive argument involves proof and certainty. Inductive argument involves evidence and probability.

● I’ve often said that my “Ethics” is my masterpiece, that it’s far superior to anything else I’ve ever created. Here’s one reason I think so. The work expresses my most important single idea and argument (the impossibility of intrinsic value). That alone might make it my best work. But that’s not its only asset: In addition, the thesis is embodied in my finest literary composition. In other words, in this work, my finest content and my finest form coincide. It’s a miracle.

● Saturday, 8-28-2021:   Haircut, Brenda. I owe her $2.00. She charges $28; I paid her $26 (not because I was too poor to pay, but because I mis-remembered the price).

● I’ve always (since I was a young child) associated certain numerals and letters with certain colors. For examples:

* 1 – black
* 2 – light yellow
* 3 – green
* 4 – blue
* 5 – orange-red
* 6 – black
* 7 – brown
* 8 – butterscotch yellow
* 9 – red
* 0 – clear (how interesting, appropriate!)

● Tuesday, 8-31-2021:   Today was the first time in about a month and a half that I took my full daily exercise-walk.

● Thursday, 9-2-2021:   I met Attorney Raphael H today, the attorney who, for the last month and a half, has hired me to handle some of his (workers’ compensation) depositions. He offered me a full-time job at his office, handling workers’ compensation cases. I’m going to decline it. I don’t want a full-time job.

● Another inconsistency in my writings is on the question whether life is predominantly happy or unhappy. Which position I take seems to depend on the compositional need of the particular piece. Perhaps this is another conclusion to which perspectivism pertains: it’s a matter of how you look at it. Or perhaps another observation is more appropriate: Just as wishing that something were true doesn’t make it true; so, too, desiring to live does not mean that life is desirable.

● Monday, 9-6-2021:   Last Friday, 9-3-2021, a member of the Philosophy Club, Michael Gardner, who’s also a philosophy professor, sent me an email requesting that I review a paper he’s writing in which he analogizes attempts to do evil deeds to attempts to commit crimes. I agreed to review it and to give him feedback on it. It took me three days’ time, but I’ve finished it. It’s short but incisive. When I send Michael my response, I’ll omit the last section, which I think is too harsh.

On second thought, perhaps I’m not finished with it. In my response to Michael, I opined that the essence of morality is intent (not overt action), and that evidence of intent is irrelevant, morally. I took the opposite positions in my essay “Moral Luck.” I feel I must try to resolve the conflicts . . . or, more simply, to say something true, pertinent, and helpful, but that doesn’t contradict what I’ve written before.

● It’s interesting that the anti-vaxxers will extol (and take) any crazy purported anti-COVID drug that comes along—except the one that works (the vaccine).

● Tuesday, 9-7-2021:   Appointment with Dr. Bhat. Got a flu shot (vaccine).

● Theists apparently believe not only that God exists, but also that it’s good that God exists. I wonder which they’d prefer: God’s existence without man, or man’s existence without God?

● I’m going to resume taking SAM-e (tomorrow), to see if it has any effect on my mood. Lately, I’ve been feeling very tired. I have mixed feelings about it. If it doesn’t improve my mood, I’ll save money. But if it improves my mood, I’ll feel better. I suppose that to have no preference between those alternatives would be silly. It comes down to the question: Would I pay a few dollars a day to generally improve my mood? Not to answer “yes” would be stupid.

[Later note (December 2021): I think it did improve my mood.]

● Saturday, 9-11-2021:   I’ve continued to keep my front door open at night, but I haven’t noticed that cigarette-smoke smell for a month and a half or so. Perhaps the smoker quit smoking, or moved . . . or died.

● I’ve just finished the latest read-through of my Eisner’s Journal. This one took longer than usual, just over a month and a half. The completion of this writing/editing project coincides with another one: my reply to Michael Gardner. We’ll see whether (for now, anyway) I’m actually done with it. I should take a drive (at least the short, truncated Camarillo drive) tomorrow to celebrate.

● On second thought, I feel another version of the Michael reply trying to come.

● Sunday, 9-12-2021:   It came (the fourth version of the Michael reply). It took me a week and a half, and four versions, but I’ve achieved yet another intellectual triumph! Whether it was worth the time and effort, I don’t know. But I won. On further thought, it was important to perfect my response to Michael Gardner’s paper.

● I salvaged a little household radio. I used it daily for many years, until, eventually, the on-off switch wore out, and I couldn’t turn the radio back on. But I kept trying, until finally the radio went on. I got an electric extension cord with an on-off switch and plugged it into the electrical outlet, and I plugged the radio’s electric cord into the extension cord. That was ten years ago. The radio still works perfectly (I turn it on and off with the switch on the extension cord).

● Monday, 9-13-2021:   That urinary problem I had so severely last July—the bloody urine and the intense urination-urge sensation—has returned. I have a new theory about the cause. Until now, I assumed it was caused by traumatic damage to the urethra and/or bladder neck from too-frequent catheterization. Now I think it’s probably caused by almost the opposite: too little catheterization (that is, too infrequent urination—the bladder being too full for too long). Sometimes, I feel a need to urinate, but I postpone it, so that I can empty the bladder at a more advantageous time: say, closer to the start of an event during which I’m loath to be uncomfortable because of a full bladder, or disinclined to interrupt to use the restroom. I did that (postponed urination) yesterday afternoon, and again this morning. And this morning, toward the end of that five-hour urine-holding span, the symptom returned, and when I finally urinated, the urine was bloody. No, wait! I just remembered something that I think changes the conclusion. I’ve always had a suspicion about a correlation between a certain maneuver with the catheter and later bloody urine. That suspected maneuver is this: just after starting to withdraw the catheter, I reinsert it (thinking that so little urine came out that there might be more urine in the bladder that I somehow missed). I try to avoid that movement. What I remembered just now is that I did that last night! (I do it infrequently.) Before this year, the blood was never accompanied by any discomfort, but now it is. So perhaps the problem is, after all, caused by trauma from catheterization.

● I do believe that my reply to Michael Gardner is finished. I’ll let it sit for a week or so (without making any further changes) before sending it to him. After that, my big decision will be whether to put it in my online essay collection, or in my Journal.

● Now, at about seven o’clock in the evening, the urinary problem (at least the discomfort) has subsided considerably. If it resolves, I’ll redouble my efforts to appreciate my good health . . . a promise we tend to make, and break.

● Dealing with an acute medical problem takes precedence over dealing with a chronic or long-term one.

● As the body ages and becomes frailer, you have to be more careful with your health, because the body is less forgiving; there’s less room for error.

● Tuesday, 9-14-2021:   We don’t know yet whether we’ll be getting a booster (a third) shot of the COVID-19 vaccine (the CDC hasn’t decided). But if we need a flu shot once a year, why shouldn’t we also need a COVID-19 shot once a year (or every 18 or 24 months)?

● We’re indignant when someone cuts ahead of us in a queue. Yet we don’t bat an eye when we hear of a billionaire who lives a luxurious life of leisure, when we have to spend all our time toiling at a meaningless, tedious, low-wage job just to survive.

● I’ve begun, very casually, another read-through of my Journal.

● My physician tells me that my potassium level is too high. I suspect it’s from eating too many nuts and dates. I’ll try to eat less of them. I’ve begun experimenting with alternative foods, like sardines or bread. I got a bagel (by itself, not a lox sandwich) this morning, for the first time in almost two years. It was a lousy bagel, which is probably good, since they’re probably unhealthy.

● Wednesday, 9-15-2021:   Those who oppose facemask mandates (to protect the public against the highly contagious COVID-19 virus), do so on the grounds that people should have a choice whether to wear a mask. That position makes as much sense as opposition to smoking bans for indoor public gatherings on the grounds that people should have a choice whether to smoke. We weigh the alternatives’ benefits and harms. And we conclude that nonsmokers’ rights not to smoke outweigh smokers’ rights to smoke wherever and whenever they wish, and (I conclude) that the public’s right to health and safety outweighs a person’s right to go unmasked wherever and whenever he wants.

● Saturday, 9-18-2021:   The urinary dysfunction that resurged last Monday (13 September 2021) had two symptoms: discomfort and bloody urine. The bleeding has gone away. But the discomfort, though much diminished, lingers. The discomfort is an exaggerated feeling of an urge to urinate. Sometimes it’s present when ordinarily I’d have no such feeling at all. And when I would normally feel some bladder fulness, that feeling is more intense. And it’s a different quality of feeling. It’s like the difference, in the opposite direction, between the taste of plain water versus that of sparkling water: an unpleasant zing, or sharpness. I’d considered going for one of my pleasure drives tomorrow. But I won’t. This discomfort would ruin it.

● For as long as I can remember, I’ve been preoccupied with music. I constantly have music, especially that of Mozart and Bach, running through my head. I’m frequently whistling, either outright or under my breath. I take snippets of tunes I know and extend and connect them with my own improvisation. Much of this musical activity is accompanied by following the tune with rough fingering of it as it would be done on the violin (I studied the violin as a teenager). I do that with either hand, typically touching my fingertips to my thumb (of the same hand).

● Sunday, 9-19-2021:   Today the urinary discomfort is much better. I think I’ll go on that pleasure drive: the shortest one, the truncated Camarillo drive.

● Monday, 9-20-2021:   The urinary discomfort seems to be returning, or worsening, from the improvement or suspension yesterday. I may have accidentally moved the catheter in the way that precipitated the recurrence last week (that is, when the catheter was nearly fully inserted, I withdrew it and then reinserted it). Or maybe the symptom is still fluctuating. . . . No, the answer is this: I think I was finally on the mend yesterday, Sunday; then (Sunday night) I did something, with the catheter, that brought the syndrome on again. Now I have to go through another mending cycle from scratch. This is hell.

● Tuesday, 9-21-2021:   Today the urinary discomfort is much improved.

● Thursday, 9-23-2021:   It just occurred to me that horizontal is based on horizon.

● I’ve tentatively decided that my critique of Michael Gardner’s paper on law and morality will go in my Journal, instead of in my online essays. I might have put it in either compilation. The choice was a bit arbitrary. The critique went through four versions. I’ll post only the fourth one. . . . Well, since it’s finished, and I’ve decided to put it here, here it is:

● Michael,

In your paper you try to establish (moral) principles to determine when an (uncompleted) attempt to do an evil act is itself evil, by analogy with legal principles governing criminal guilt for an (uncompleted) attempt to commit a crime. You focus on a legal principle something like this: You are guilty of a criminal attempt if you plan to commit a crime, and you carry out what you believe is a “substantial step” in accordance with your criminal plan.

From which you derive this moral principle: You commit an evil attempt when you plan to do an evil act, and you take a “material step” in the plan: a step that strongly corroborates your continuing intention to do the evil act, or to cause it to be done, or to help someone else do it; that lacks a credible alternative explanation; and is directly connected to the plan’s goal.

Your discussion of the law is, I think, sound. But your thesis is problematic.

It makes sense to precisely define criminal attempts. The rule of law demands that, to punish a person for a crime, we must give him advance notice about what conduct is prohibited, and we must establish his guilt according to objective standards of proof, or evidence, or corroboration. You implicitly attempt to define an evil attempt so as to accomplish those purposes: your “material step” is detailed and centrally involves corroboration. But neither detailed precision nor proof nor punishment pertains to morality. As you yourself say: “Such precision is not required in ethical judgments, where the stakes do not include prison sentences” and “proof and law enforcement are not the concerns of morality.” We don’t necessarily punish people for immorality—if conduct is punishable, it’s covered by the law. And in making moral judgments about people, we don’t need evidence, or even reasons, any more than we need evidence or reasons for liking or disliking people. We reach those opinions or feelings however we wish, through reason, imagination, speculation. Hence, defining evil attempt by analogy with criminal attempt is nonsensical.

● Saturday, 9-25-2021:   The urinary situation seems pretty much to have returned to normal (normal for me, which is what I hoped for).

● An intelligent man can feign stupidity. But a stupid man cannot feign intelligence.

● Sunday, 9-26-2021:   Nosebleed, left nostril.

● Philosophy Club. Topic: “Why did it take humanity so long to invent stuff?” In other words, why did almost all significant human inventions arise relatively recently within the (much longer) existence of modern humans? I think part of the explanation is that the first human invention implanted the idea of invention in people’s minds. Once people had that concept, their minds, consciously and unconsciously, worked to come up with their own inventions. We often hear a person say, “I can do almost anything I set my mind to.” Setting one’s mind to it is a key ingredient in human accomplishment. Before the first invention, few people set their minds to it. But afterward, many people did so; more ambition to invent spawned more invention; and more invention spawned more ambition, in a mutual geometric progression.

● It’s been argued that it would be unjust to punish a man for a murder he commits if he suffers from multiple personality disorder, as his personality that committed the murder is just one of his numerous alternative personalities, of which he may be unaware, and he may not even remember committing the crime. We could deal with the situation this way: wait till the personality that committed the murder comes back around, and execute him then. Of course, that suggestion is facetious. But how much different is that situation from the usual case?: Even in a more normal man, the part of him that commits a serious crime is perhaps just a small, aberrant part; possibly the rest of the time, the rest of him, so to speak, is decent and peaceable.

● I’ve sometimes thought that there should be a service called “personal buyer,” someone who will research and find sources for products his client needs.

[Later note (7-3-2022): There should also be practical tutors, to whom a person could go to be shown how to do certain common, everyday activities that for some reason he doesn’t know how to do, like using various functions of a cell phone or a computer.]

● Wednesday, 9-29-2021:   Perhaps influenced by the gender-neutral language fad, people recently have been using the term “pregnant people” . . . though, I think, the great majority of pregnant people are women.

[Later note (October 2021): I’ve now heard something that seems to explain the phrase “pregnant people”: some trans-gender people, biologically women, but psychologically men, get pregnant, and we should respect their male self-designation. (In other words, not everyone who gets pregnant is a woman.)]

● A man fell gravely ill and needed extensive—and expensive—medical care to have any chance of surviving. The hospital announced a meeting of stakeholders to determine whether heroic medical efforts to save him would be instituted. In the meeting, the first speaker was the man’s wife, who testified that she loved her husband, and that his survival was very important to her, both emotionally and financially. Next to speak was the president of the insurance company insuring the patient for medical care. He said that the man’s care would be extremely expensive, and asked that the care not be ordered. Then the patient’s professional colleague said that the patient was doing very important work that might ultimately benefit society. The fourth speaker was a professional rival of the patient’s who said that he was extremely envious of the patient, and that it would be a great beneficence to him if the patient died. Later, a man who hated the patient talked about how much better his life would be without the patient. Finally, a man spoke who’d placed a bet on the patient’s dying, and said that he’d be ruined if the patient lived. At length, the hospital spokesman held a news conference to announce the hospital’s decision: “Having heard from stakeholders in this matter, we’ve concluded that the cost of the necessary medical care for this patient would not be worth the benefit, and so we’ve decided not to give it.”

● Sunday, 10-3-2021:   Truncated Camarillo drive. It takes about an hour and three-quarters.

● I recently heard someone argue against the COVID-19 vaccine, citing a study that found that those who’ve gotten the disease have greater immunity to it (after having been infected) than those who’ve been vaccinated (but who haven’t been infected). That’s a good point. Which is a good argument against many other sorts of protections we take for granted. Bullet-proof vests, for example. Studies have shown that those who’ve been fatally shot are more impervious to the damaging effects of (subsequent) gunshot wounds than those who wear bullet-proof vests (but who haven’t been fatally shot).

● Tuesday, 10-5-2021:   Two new tires for my car.

● For many years, I’ve had a chronic cough, but it appears only when I eat. The pulmonologist referred me for a swallow test, which I had today. Based on what was explained to me, I surmised that the problem may have been caused by eating too quickly and with insufficient liquid. So today, at dinner, I tried eating more slowly, and drinking more water. I didn’t cough! I’ll experiment further. I’m hoping that that’s the solution.

● When I hear people object to executing the mentally disabled, I think that it’s even more wrong to execute a mentally able person. It’s like a trivial or vacuous truth: yes, it’s true that we shouldn’t execute the mentally disabled, but not for the reason cited: we shouldn’t execute anyone.

● People often say that you shouldn’t give a homeless person money (you should give him food or other necessaries instead), because he may spend the money on drugs (to abuse). That position strikes me as paternalistic, patronizing: Do we not give you money, lest you spend it on unwholesome things? Have you never bought drugs?! How to spend the money is his business—let him decide how to spend it.

The suggestion is also impractical. Once when I stopped for coffee at a McDonald’s restaurant, a young homeless man outside was asking customers for help. People, probably thinking they were somehow enlightened or clever, were giving him bags of (McDonald’s) food. I gave him $5.00. He can put that in his pocket and use it anytime. But after he’s eaten as much as he can eat at the moment, what’s he supposed to do with all that food?! It’s not as if he has a freezer and a microwave oven, and can save it for later. Beyond what he eats now, it’s a total waste.

● Thursday, 10-7-2021:   In 1971, the people of the United States were scandalized by the Pentagon Papers’ revelation that our government had fought a war for decades (in Vietnam) that they knew was unwinnable. Why are we not scandalized now to learn that our government fought the war in Afghanistan for twenty years, though they knew that that war, too, was unwinnable?

● I just made a deal with Attorney Joshua Kohanbash of Accident Defenders, for my fee for depositions: $75 for the first hour, then $50 for each additional hour.

● Friday, 10-8-2021:   I called Attorney Greg Polster to inquire if his office was still in quarantine, because I was worried about cutting him out of the arrangement with Joshua Kohanbash. Polster told me he’s closing his office, because he’s retiring. We had a very pleasant conversation.

● Cooler weather has finally arrived. Hallelujah!

● Saturday, 10-9-2021:   I decided to re-edit my masterpiece, “Ethics.” I read through it, but—to my great, and very pleasant, surprise—found nothing to change! I didn’t read it aloud. I don’t have the patience for that just now. Perhaps another time.

● Sunday, 10-10-2021:   I’ve been watching the Korean television series Squid Game. I think the show’s moral is that, for the average person, because of financial hardships, life is miserable—worse than death—and that capitalism is unfair, and undesirable.

● Well, another time came soon. I read my “Ethics” aloud (to myself, for editing). I made a few very minor changes, mostly in punctuation and the like.

● Monday, 10-11-2021:   My “Ethics” website (where the essay is posted) has been live since 30 March 2018. I recently viewed the mathematics lecture on the battle between Newton and Leibniz for credit for inventing calculus. Newton invented it first, but Leibniz invented it independently, later, but published it first. So they’re both the creators of it. Newton could have gotten (sole) credit for it had he published it when he invented it, but he didn’t publish it, apparently believing that no one else would think of it. I didn’t publish my essay until recently, thinking, like Newton, that probably no one else would come up with it. After seeing that lecture, it occurred to me that it was good that I did publish “Ethics,” even in less-than-ideal form. And that prompted me to ask my webmaster when the website went up.

● Tuesday, 10-12-2021:   Religiosity can be a sort of alternate form of anti-intellectualism. Resentful of their (intellectual) inferiority to intellectuals, anti-intellectuals generally deprecate intellectuals or their views, perhaps a form of sour grapes. Some religious persons, likewise motivated by resentment of their inferiority to intellectuals, reason that God created everything the intellectuals think about, including the physical world, and so their (the religionists’) subject (God) is above the intellectuals’ subjects (including science), and thus they (the religionists) are above, superior to, the intellectuals.

● Yesterday someone posted this online:

○ Being technologically “innocent” (incompetent?!), I’ve kind of left well enough alone as we let AT&T provide our internet and phone service. I don’t know if there’s a way out, but I thought my colleagues might tell me where to look, so we can find a provider that doesn’t have the dubious, sometimes evil connections that the big ones (AT&T!) often do. BTW, I have never been on Facebook! Am I stuck with AT&T because of where I live and work? I hope not!
Thanks!!

I replied thus:

○ There are many providers of Internet service. The number of land-line phone service providers is very limited, and you may be stuck with AT&T for that. But you can have Internet and telephone service with different providers. I just switched my Internet service to Earthlink (from DSL Extreme). Spectrum, too, provides Internet service.

Some issues to consider and ask about are these:

● Have you been an AT&T customer for so long that you’re “grandfathered-in” on a favorable rate for one or the other service? If so, your rate with AT&T may be lower than you’d get elsewhere (and if you switch, you may permanently lose that good rate). If you’re grandfathered-in on the phone rate, but not on the Internet service rate, would switching to another provider for Internet service cause you to lose the favorable rate on the phone service? (If so, be wary about switching.)

● Consider yearly rate increases (don’t compare just current rates). Another provider’s rate may be a promotional rate, which might increase considerably a year from now—and every year. If the current rate is only slightly lower than you’re getting with AT&T, but AT&T’s rates have been fairly stable over time, it might be better to keep what you have.

● If you talk to another service provider, don’t sign up with them right away. Call several times (you’ll talk to a different person every time). Wait till you get consistent information from them on several occasions. When I talked to Spectrum recently, I got a different story from them every time I called. I finally learned that, if I added any service to my existing service (which is for my cable TV), I’d lose my grandfathered-in rate for the TV. Which is why I didn’t switch to Spectrum for my Internet service.

● If you switch Internet providers, and the new provider installs equipment on your premises (like a modem), ask if you can avoid the (monthly) rental fee by buying the equipment, which will save money for you in the long run.

Richard J. Eisner

He then wrote this:

○ Thank you, that’s a lot to consider. Is Earthlink a better “corporate citizen” than AT&T?

And I replied:

○ I don’t know. That didn’t occur to me, probably because, at my financial level, I didn’t have the luxury of considering issues beyond the rate I pay. (And yet, what a corporation charges consumers is at least one element of corporate citizenship. . . . Oh, I just remembered a recent news story that AT&T is funding a right-wing conspiracy network [OAN]. Which act, I believe, bespeaks bad corporate citizenship.)

Richard J. Eisner

● Wednesday, 10-13-2021:   I got my booster COVID-19 vaccination today.

● Thursday, 10-14-2021:   And today I felt the effects: slight body aches and headache. This headache was the first one I’ve had in almost three months! I think that’s the longest headache-free span I’ve had since . . . perhaps ever.

● An effect of replacing my car’s front tires is that the car is effectively higher geared: at the same speeds, the engine revs are a bit lower.

● Sunday, 10-17-2021:   A recent radio program on happiness distinguished between happiness with your life and happiness in your life. I’ve written considerably about that distinction (and now I’m writing about it again). It’s the difference between satisfaction with how your life is going, versus feeling good (being in a good mood). I’ve also described it as the dichotomy of accomplishment and experience. Probably for everyone, but surely for me, the two are interrelated. The better I feel about what I’ve accomplished (my body of writing), the happier I am. (And there’s a certain objective element in my feeling about my work. Or, perhaps more accurately, the feeling is subjective, but it’s not completely arbitrary; I don’t write just one piece of work, a mediocre one, and forever feel marvelous about it. Though my judgment may be biased, it’s not completely unsound.) The reverse, too, happens, if less clearly: greater happiness usually means greater energy, and greater energy conduces to working, including on, or toward, creative projects. Further, your happiness is part of how your life is going. If having a good job, for example, makes your life better, isn’t the job (and hence your life) even better if it’s a job you enjoy?

● I saw an Internet ad with this heading, next to a photograph of the shoes: “NFL star Rob Gronkowski loves these shoes.” I thought to myself, Is the advertiser urging me to buy a pair for Mr. Gronkowski? If not, if they’re urging me to buy a pair for myself, what if Mr. Gronkowski loves them, but I hate them? Should I buy them for myself because Mr. Gronkowski loves them?

[Later note (9-13-2023): The ad is probably supposed to work this way: We surmise that, if Mr. Gronkowski chooses those shoes, they’re probably good shoes, because Mr. Gronkowski could afford to buy any shoe he wanted (since, being a famous football player, he’s probably rich). The trick, or the flaw, is our assumption that Mr. Gronkowski actually wears, or even chose, that shoe. Probably what happened is that the advertiser met with Mr. Gronkowski, took a pair of the shoes out of the box, winked at Mr. Gronkowski, and asked him: “Do you love these shoes?” And he said “Yes.” Then the advertisers handed him the agreed-on $10,000.00 fee. They then thought, “OK, now we can honestly say, ‘Mr. Gronkowski loves these shoes.’”]

● Wednesday, 10-20-2021:   I ration my caffeine consumption to two cups of tea a day (or two half-cups of coffee). On a day in which I have no paid work (like a deposition), I try to drink the first cup at about 10:30 to 11:00 a.m.; the second, at about 1:00 p.m. Typically (if I have no paid work) I get up from bed for the day at about 5:00 a.m.; I do my stretching exercises and take my first exercise-walk around the neighborhood, eat breakfast, take the second exercise-walk, and am ready to start working (usually it’s working on my writing) at about 8:30 a.m. I stop work for the day and eat dinner at about 3:00 p.m. I’m tempted to drink the first cup of tea when I start work (at about 8:30 a.m.). But I resist it. I sense that the two energy-boosts are optimally advantageous when I space them as I do. I figure that my energy will flag more toward the end of my work period than toward the beginning, so my need for the tea is greater later than earlier. I also fear that, if I routinely drink tea at the very beginning of my workday, I won’t notice the energy boost; I’ll just get used to it and sense that that’s just how I feel at the beginning of the day. All I’d notice is a terrible dearth of energy if I don’t drink it. If I have a deposition, I do drink the first dose just when I start (usually 9:00). In that event, I have to spend the first hour preparing the client for the deposition, and that’s the hardest task of the day, so I need all the help I can get for it. If I have a particularly hard task to do (an especially difficult writing problem, say), but I don’t have to do it at a certain time, I’ll instead simply arrange my schedule to work on the very hard problem shortly after I drink either of the two doses of tea.

● I just awoke from a dream of which I remember just a few fragments. But it was wonderful. I was looking—staring—at a man I took to be myself, whom I thought was quite handsome. In another scene, near the end, I had drawn and was somehow explaining a diagram, which I now interpret as the box-and-circle diagram on the penultimate page of my “Ethics.” Then I was contemplating taking a car drive west, and I was very much looking forward to it as an opportunity to be with myself. The upshot of it all was that I was deeply, and very satisfyingly, in love with myself. That’s the best dream I’ve ever had.

● Thursday, 10-21-2021:   I had a lung CT scan today, to try to diagnose my chronic cough.

● My blood boils when I hear journalists describe Senator Joe Manchin as “a moderate.” He’s not moderate—he’s outrageous! In fact, it’s even worse than that. His political positions have nothing to do with politics, moderate, extreme, or any other place on the scale. Rather, his positions are a function of greed, pure and simple. He thwarts President Biden’s proposed legislation to reduce the use of fossil fuels, whose purpose is to try to save the human race from climate calamity, because he (Manchin) owns coal mines. Broadly speaking, he’s corrupt: violating his occupational duty to protect the commonweal, for the sake of his personal profit.

● Sunday, 10-24-2021:   A public radio host described her program as asking the question, “What does it feel like to live at the intersection of being Asian and being American?” That’s a good question, which, of course, I can’t answer. But another question occurred to me that I may have some insight about: What does it feel like to live at the intersection of having brown eyes, being from New York, and having a first name that starts with R? Well, it’s not always easy. But I have a simple approach to it: I get up in the morning, and I do my best.

● Philosophy Club today. The topic: “Critical Race Theory and its Critics.”

● Some critics of critical race theory oppose teaching the theory. My analysis of that issue is simple, asking two questions: One, is the theory true? Two, is the subject important? If the answer to both questions is yes, the theory should be taught. And I think the answer to both questions is yes. To my mind, right-wingers’ vehement opposition to the theory supports both of those yes answers.

● That last sentence is nonsensical: it’s a version of the self-sealing argument fallacy: to declare that opposition to a proposition evidences it’s truth.

● According to one writer on this topic, critical race theory is in part based on the premise that race “is not a natural, biologically grounded feature of physically distinct subgroups of human beings but a socially constructed (culturally invented) category . . ..” Scientists declare that that’s true, and I have no reason to dispute it. But I don’t see why that should be necessary for critical race theory’s critique of social institutions. It’s wrong to discriminate against people based, for example, on their skin color—whether or not people of different skin colors constitute genuine distinct human sub-groups.

● One (right-wing) opponent of critical race theory argues against teaching it in schools, on the grounds that focusing on “privilege” undermines personal agency. But if you were being unfairly disadvantaged by societal forces, wouldn’t that undermine your personal agency?; and wouldn’t you want to know it? One suspects that those who oppose the unfairly disadvantaged discovering their unfair disadvantage are so motivated by fear of losing their own unfair advantage.

● Wednesday, 10-27-2021:   I used to criticize my father for thanking various merchants when he patronized them, after the transaction. I told him that it’s the merchant who should thank you (for patronizing him), not the other way round. I thought his conduct in that regard exhibited something like obsequiousness. But I’ve changed my mind about that, and I now do what my father did. I see that I’m thanking, not the merchant, but his workers, who are paid meager wages, and who, in the class struggle, are on the opposite side from the merchant.

● Thursday, 10-28-2021:   Saw Kaiser psychotherapist Brett Rhodes, about my depersonalization / derealization. He told me there’s no known treatment for it.

● Sunday, 10-31-2021:   For most people, their arms are more important than their legs.

● Sometimes we say what’s true. Other times we say what we’d like to be true (but that’s not true). What internal forces cause either situation, is a mystery. In the first case, do we speak the truth because of simple strength of perception and honesty; or because of pride in our accuracy of perception and in our honesty; or because we lack the ability to convince ourselves of an alternate version, and we think no one else would believe it? In the second case, is it because we feel shame about reality, and can convince ourselves of an alternate reality; or because our perception is not strong enough to overcome our tendency to fantasize; or perhaps because we just don’t care about the truth?

● I just saw this headline: “Why People Think Vaccines Turn People into Vampires.” I wasn’t going to disclose this. But now I feel I must. About twelve hours after I recently got my booster vaccine shot, I actually did turn into a vampire. I was very frightened about it, and I stayed in my apartment for three days and nights—only once did I go out: when I got so hungry that I went out and drank someone’s blood. (That person, too, I think, then turned into a vampire.) I was instinctively afraid of light and so kept the curtains closed. But on the fourth day, one of the curtains fell down; light came in, and I turned back into a non-vampire. I’m reluctant to say it. But it’s the truth.

● Thursday, 11-4-2021:   One reason why editing another man’s writing is difficult is that we don’t know all of his reasons for writing it as he did. For example, just now, when I reread my three-paragraph Journal entry on Kant, I was about to add a phrase to a sentence, thinking the addition would make my argument clearer, tighter. But after a moment’s contemplation, I decided against it, because the additional phrase would be slightly at odds with statements I’ve made elsewhere. I imagine that, if someone else edits that entry and is inclined to add such a phrase, the thought that stayed my hand in doing so, won’t occur to him, and he’ll simply make the edit.

● Friday, 11-5-2021:   Some thoughts on the relationship between the idea of the good life, for a person, and the idea of a good state. The good life for a person would afford him education; the means to achieve and maintain health; and the real opportunity to pursue to the greatest extent possible what he considers a good life for himself, including pleasure and/or self-actualization and/or other desiderata.

The good state is one that affords everyone the greatest possible good life.

The two ideas at once coincide and conflict. They coincide because the good state seeks to maximize people’s good lives. They conflict because the good state involves the distribution of goods in a way that maximizes the commonweal, which limits what an individual can have. Take the simple example of monetary wealth. A given person will be better off being far wealthier than anyone else. But the general well-being is greatest with rough equality.

● Saturday, 11-6-2021:   I just now revised my little essay “A Foolish Consistency” by deleting the (two) addendums. Here are those addendums:

Addendum One: A corollary to the foregoing is that vital to the pursuit of truth, is self- criticism.

Addendum Two: Change your mind, yes. But do it thoughtfully. A philosopher, or any thinking person, is expected to be aware that he’s changed his mind on a significant element of his philosophy, and he owes others both an explanation of the change, and a revision of other elements of his philosophy as needed to bring them all into mutual harmony.

● Monday, 11-8-2021:   That urinary bleeding and acute discomfort has not returned; the condition has fully resolved. I think the problem was caused by my use of the catheters. I’ve learned the following lessons from it about how to avoid a recurrence:

○ When I insert the catheter (and before the tip gets to the bladder), if I get an intense feeling of urination urge, pause the insertion, relax the pelvic floor muscles, and wait for that feeling to subside, before resuming the insertion.
○ If the insertion is uncomfortable (before the tip gets to the bladder) because it seems as if the catheter has gotten to a sensitive spot in the urethra, withdraw the catheter a short distance (and perhaps rotate it a bit), and then resume the insertion.
○ After the tip of the catheter enters the bladder, and some urine passes; and after withdrawing the catheter tip out of the bladder, don’t, on the same occasion, reinsert the catheter back into the bladder (to try to get more urine out).
○ Perhaps try to catheterize less frequently.

● Wednesday, 11-10-2021:   It’s like trying to find a (particular) needle in a large box of (similar) needles. . . .

● Saturday, 11-13-2021:   What’s the relationship between a person and his life? They’re closely related. Of course, there’s no person without his life, because, without his life, he’s dead—nonexistent. Similarly, the identity of your consciousness (the knower) is your self; whereas, the content of your experience (the known) is part of your life. And, again, each requires the other. Moreover, it would be difficult to feel good about yourself, without having a certain life. You may pride yourself on your inherent abilities. But your pride in those abilities involves your thinking that they’re greater than those of others, which requires others. And it takes education, and feedback, from other people, to develop your abilities, and to meaningfully express them. Your creating masterpieces in an otherwise empty universe would be an empty gesture. Also, how you see yourself depends largely on how the world sees you. Just as a lung is meaningless without a certain atmosphere, a man is meaningless without a certain life.

● Sunday, 11-14-2021:   My name is Gip Gippergoose.

● I suspended taking my desert rides for the last half year, because of the heat. The season for it (desert rides) has now come (cool weather), and I hope soon to resume taking those rides.

● How you see yourself depends largely on how the world sees you. . . . That’s a good observation. It explains why we wish to impress others. Or it gives a second reason for it, the first reason being that we wish to impress others just because we want others to be impressed with us. But the second reason is that others’ thinking well of us enables us to think well of ourselves. It confirms for us that what we like to think, what we hope—is actually true.

● Tuesday, 11-16-2021:   In the last few weeks I’ve had this email exchange with my webmaster (Web Strategies) about their posting of my essay “Ethics”:

[to Mark on 11-9-2021:]

Mark,

Bryan Berman from Ntiva suggested I talk to you about this. I’m a long-time (and current) Web Strategies customer. Of all the work your staff has done for me over the years—and there’s been a lot—the one and only project I’ve been dissatisfied with is the posting, in March 2018, of a certain sixteen-page essay of mine. I had two special requirements for the job:

1. That the website be divided into separate pages, with a page-turning function, each page on the website to have exactly the same content and appearance as each manuscript page.

2. A few pages have hand-drawn graphic elements, which should appear just as they do in my manuscript (like a photograph of the manuscript page).

Your staff attempted to meet those two special requirements, but failed. I’m reaching out to you to see if it may now be worth giving it another try. Perhaps you know of someone on your staff who can do it. Or perhaps technology has advanced in the last four years so that there’s now a way to do it.

Richard Eisner

[from Faye Guerra, a few hours later:]

Hi Richard,

Mark forwarded your email as he does not handle this type of work for Web Strategies. I was able to pull up the original ticket and have reviewed with Keri. It appears that this project was last discussed on 9/27/18 with Keri requesting your feedback and you advising you had further edits but no time to provide those details. After no response from you, the project was closed on 2/18/19.

We would be happy to discuss the remaining edits needed for the site with Keri being the person handling that work. Based on the email you sent to Mark and the original work description I would suggest a call to go over exactly what needs to be done to complete the site to your satisfaction.

I have included Keri on this email so that the two of you can coordinate. Please let me know if I can be of further assistance.

Best,

[my response, on 11/16/2021:]

Hi Faye,

In the first paragraph of your email, you say that you (Keri) requested my feedback, but I told you I had no time to provide specific feedback, and that “after no response from [me], the project was closed.” You’re trying to shift the blame for your poor work on this project to me, by implying that I caused the problem by failing to give you feedback. That’s extremely untactful on your part. It’s also untrue. For a time, I gave you much feedback, and many requests for specific edits, some of which were applied, others not. In a 20 August 2018 email, Keri wrote: “I made some adjustments and was able to achieve what you asked for with the exception of page 5. There is still some trailing space, but not with just one word. There is no way to fix this as when I do, it adjusts the other pages.”

More important, the problem with the website is not specific details. I told you from the beginning that I wanted the pages of the website to look exactly like the pages of my manuscript, including the graphic elements (three pages have hand-drawn mathematical symbols and equations; a fourth page has a hand-drawn diagram). But that was not done. Instead of copying my images, you recreated them from scratch, and the images on the site are grotesque. (I suppose you could justifiably change my work if you could improve on it. But how likely is it that I’ll think that an inadvertent change is an improvement?!) My impression was that, like that unfixable page-five problem, those graphic elements could not be “fixed.” The reason I stopped submitting specific edits was that I concluded that doing so would be to throw good money and time after bad—and I’d already spent a considerable amount of both (time and money).

In the second paragraph of your email, you write: “Based on the . . . original work description I would suggest a call to go over exactly what needs to be done to complete the site to your satisfaction.” If by exactly you mean specifically, I think that no amount of specific tinkering with it will make the sow’s ear of that website into the silk purse of my manuscript. What exactly needs to be done is to effectuate my work description—which would require doing it from scratch, using a whole different approach.

I’m certainly willing to arrange a call to discuss possible solutions.

Richard
//

● Some deny that Shakespeare composed the plays and poems usually attributed to him. And some of those deniers propose that the true author was Francis Bacon, the great philosopher and essayist. I’m not familiar with reasons advanced for this belief. But it seems to me that attributing the plays and poems to another luminary is nonsensical, for this reason. I’ve observed that attributing the creation of the world to God, not only fails to explain the world, but actually compounds the explanatory difficulty, because it posits an even more complex configuration (the natural world together with the supernatural), which would be even harder to explain than the natural world alone. Likewise, the Bacon theory only enhances the explanatory difficulty: instead of accounting for just the plays and the poems, you now have to account for the plays, the poems, and Bacon’s essays (and everything else he produced), all done by a single agent, an even more wondrous accomplishment!

● Sunday, 11-21-2021:   Today I’m starting to take Prozac (10 mg capsules), once a day. My current psychiatrist, Dr. Kohm, prescribed it for me, to see if it might help my depersonalization / derealization. I don’t feel any effect yet . . . but it’s been only fifteen minutes.

The ten pages of drug information that came with the medication contained a warning to call your doctor immediately if you have any of these serious side effects, including “unusually grand ideas” or “excessive happiness.” Well, if I get either of those symptoms, I’ll call for an ambulance right away!

● Philosophy Club meeting (by Zoom). Topic: “If God exists, what properties must God possess? Assuming for the sake of argument that a God exists as a single conscious entity, what are the minimum characteristics that entity would need to possess? What kind of being would you accept as God, as being worthy of being God and worthy of being worshiped? What would be the most essential properties it would have, properties that would be consistent with one another?

“For example, must God be Omniscient? Omnipotent? Omnipresent? Perfectly morally good? Maximally intelligent? Immutable? Eternal? Incorporeal? ‘Perfect’ (however you define that)? The creator of the universe? A personal God? Empathetic? Whichever properties you come up with, ask yourself what it is that provides grounding for assigning any characteristic at all to God?

“[Note that there’s no need to believe that any God exists to discuss this question; it’s a thought experiment.]”

My response:

An observation: This is essentially the process by which we actually form our conception of God—at least originally (later, people tend to receive the concept intact from other believers).

An answer: God should be very smart; He should be extremely attractive (because, after all, we’re made in His image!); He should have a good working relationship with Jesus Christ; He should have a good sense of humor. He should have a good command of the English language. He should be very strong (because people sometimes need a good smiting).

A more serious answer: Why would we ever worship a “god”? In one sense, God is the personification of the universe—do we worship the universe? But let’s use a more neutral term: celebrate. Under what circumstances would I celebrate a god-like being? I might celebrate him if I believed that he had created mankind; and if I were happy, and if I believed that all men (or all creatures) were happy. Perhaps more realistically, I’d celebrate, even worship, him (or at least I’d make a showing of it) if I thought it was necessary in order to make things better or to keep things from getting worse.

● God is not bigger than the universe; God is smaller than the universe. By definition, the universe includes everything that is. If God exists, there are more things than God. So the universe includes God and everything else that is.

● “Advaita Vedanta . . . insists that ‘Brahman [ultimate reality] is without parts or attributes . . ..’” How, then, do they account for people? Does ultimate reality not include us?

● According to Advaitins, an Eastern religion, “All that is is one only” and “All is one without distinction.” That idea is inconsistent with consciousness, which is divided into individual units: my consciousness is restricted to me; yours, to you.

● The article Concepts of God in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy refers to the idea of God being “infinitely perfect.” But infinitely perfect is nonsensical. There are no degrees of perfection. Something infinite may be perfect, but not infinitely perfect. It would be like saying of two different sized concentric circles, that the outer one is more perfect that the inner one because it’s bigger. No, both are perfect; the outer one is not more perfect: it’s merely bigger. Nor would the two circles taken together be more perfect than either one alone, because more numerous.

● If God exists, then, to be consistent with what we see in the world, God would be evil or incompetent. He could not be omniscient, omnipotent, and all good. For if He’s omniscient, he knows of the world’s evil; and if He’s omnipotent and all good, He’d remove the evil, so that it wouldn’t exist. But it does. On the other hand, perhaps the condition of the world should not be construed as evidence against an omniscient, omnipotent, and all-good God; perhaps having a miserable life is good for us—but we’re just too ignorant to know it.

● Tuesday, 11-23-2021:   It would seem that one requirement for forgiveness is that the person seeking forgiveness admit his wrongdoing—and specifically. The other person might respond: “Forgive you for what?” Think of the Christian religious context, by analogy: “I don’t think I did anything wrong, but if I did anything that You took to be sinful, I’m sorry for that” would not quality as repentance for your sins.

● Wednesday, 11-24-2021:   It’s said that consciousness is not spatially located. And yet consciousness actually exists; it’s not an abstract entity. So if all space were emptied, wouldn’t all consciousness, too, be removed?

● The city has decreed that only those vaccinated against COVID-19 may dine in restaurants and attend certain other public indoor gatherings. Also, at a deposition recently, someone was wearing his face mask incompletely (covering just his mouth, not his nose—to avoid fogging up his eyeglasses). When I objected, he told me his reason, but assured me that he’d been vaccinated, as if that was supposed to compensate for his improper wearing of the mask. But just how does a person’s having been vaccinated protect me from being infected by him on any given occasion when I’m in his presence? On any occasion, a person is either infected with COVID-19 or not. If he’s not infected, I’m safe, from him, whether or not he’s vaccinated. But if he’s infected, his wearing a face mask will help protect me; but how does his having been vaccinated protect me? Perhaps the thinking is that you’re less likely to be infected if you’re vaccinated?

● Thanksgiving Day: Thursday, 11-25-2021:   Despite inflation, I’m not only not digging into my savings, but I’m actually once again accumulating money. I’m back to working regularly, handling workers’ compensation depositions, freelance. I’ve been doing that for just one attorney, but he has a lot of these depositions. I do so much work for him that the problem is just the opposite of not enough work: not enough time. But I take all the work assignments I can, because a time may come when the paid work will dry up, and I’ll need to survive on my savings.

● I’m planning to take my desert ride today. I haven’t done it for a long time, almost six months. . . . I did take the drive, but truncated: I drove to the IHOP in Lancaster, on West Avenue K, where I ate last Christmas day, at the start of my Christmas Ridgecrest drive. The breakfast wasn’t as good as it was the last time. Then I drove back home. I just somehow didn’t feel like taking the longer drive. I feel as if I’ve lost my taste for long drives. They’ve lost their excitement and pleasure. Perhaps I need a new route. Or perhaps it’s because my experience at home is more pleasant than it used to be; I always have writing to work on. And the situation with the neighbors is less depressing, since I turned the tables on them. It feels like much longer than eleven months since that drive to Ridgecrest last Christmas—perhaps because it’s been an eventful time; I’ve gotten a lot done, come a long way.

● Friday, 11-26-2021:   Eisner’s first law of literature: Any literary rule to which Shakespeare is an exception, is a bad rule.

● I’ve said that my attacks against neighbors are strictly retaliatory. I must modify that statement. In the past, my retaliatory attacks have been on a one-for-one basis, meaning that I’d use it just if and when the neighbor attacked me. But the “sub silentio” angry-noise attacks that I’ve recently developed against my next-door neighbors on both sides of me, I continue to deploy routinely, whether or not the neighbor attacks me. I couldn’t suspend it even if I wanted to, because to suspend it would defeat the tactics’ sub silentio status, by revealing that I don’t have to do it, and that I do it to attack. But I do want to deploy it consistently: These neighbors are constantly attacking me, and my sub silentio attacks act as a sort of mild, constant backpressure, which neutralizes their aggression against me: knowing that I’m hurting them more than they’re hurting me, gives me a certain psychological immunity to their hostility. It’s as if they’re continually emitting noxious gasses that drift my way. My attacks are like a slight breeze in their direction that keeps their poison from reaching me (and sends it back to them!).

● The deterioration of the roads has changed the experience of driving: Instead of looking down the road and at the landscape, a driver must look down at the roadway a short distance in front of him, to avoid the potholes.

● Saturday, 11-27-2021:   “Influencers”: they don’t influence me.

● That new electric blanket is all but useless. Even in very cold weather, with the blanket on the lowest heat setting, it’s too hot (for me). . . . Well, now in mid-December, I’ll clarify that: the weather does occasionally get cold enough to need the electric heating—I simply have to reserve it for occasions when it gets that cold.

[Later note (4-25-2022): For several months now, I seem not to have had that problem. Perhaps the change came because I stopped using the radiant heating in the apartment (which—not using it—makes the rooms colder).]

● Sunday, 11-28-2021:   I used the electric blanket again last night (meaning that I turned it on), and it was all right. The difference was that last night I turned it on only in the last few hours of the sleep cycle, when the outside temperature was at its coldest, and I felt cold. That way, my body cools down in the first seven hours or so of the sleep cycle, to the point where my body has a heat deficit; when I then turn on the heat (the blanket), my body needs the extra heat to regain its proper temperature. Whereas, when I turn on the heat as soon as I initially go to bed in the evening (as I did the night before), the added heat raises my body temperature above its proper level, and it stays elevated throughout the sleep cycle (so I continue to feel too warm).

● I’ve heard that Islam promises (heterosexual male) believers 70 virgins in the afterlife. But what happens when that believer, in the afterlife, has had sex with all 70 virgins? He gets no more virgins?

[Later note (9-19-2023): Why 70? . . . and what does he do with them—what happens to them—once he’s had sex with them? Perhaps the man is in Heaven, but the women (the virgins) are in Hell. When a (heterosexual) woman believer goes to Heaven, does she get 70 male virgins?]

● One of my behavioral defenses against the neighbors is to get out of bed for the day at exactly the same time every morning. The last-resort, ultimate attack by neighbors is to try to wake you from sleep. If I got out of bed when they awaken me, or even if I got up sooner than usual thereafter (and they can plainly hear me getting up), they could tell that they’d succeeded in awakening me, and that would encourage their doing so. My getting up at the same time every day, gives them the impression that I wake up strictly according to my own internal clock, and having nothing to do with them, that their effort to wake me is totally ineffective, and so discourages it.

● Thursday, 12-2-2021:   There’s a good reason to prosecute juveniles as adults for the most serious violent crimes, like mass shootings. I suspect that, for many teenagers, part of their calculation is that their punishment for those crimes will be far lighter as a juvenile than as an adult. In my own case, as a very angry young man (I’m no longer angry . . . or young), I occasionally fantasized about dealing with other teenagers who bullied me at school, and half regretted that I hadn’t shot them when I was young enough to do it with relative impunity. Prosecuting teenagers as adults for those crimes removes that incentive, and so discourages those crimes.

● Friday, 12-3-2021:   When I got up this morning, I was dizzy, for a few minutes. Then I laid back down in bed to do my stretching exercises. Ten minutes later when I sat up, I felt dizzy again. I sat there for 20 or 30 seconds till the dizziness passed. I suppose this is a side effect of the Prozac. I’m still waiting for the grand ideas and excessive happiness.

● Saturday, 12-4-2021:   I was relieved to find that I was not dizzy when I got up this morning. Hopefully, yesterday’s dizziness was an aberration.

● Haircut (Brenda).

● Sunday, 12-5-2021:   A few days ago, I tallied my income for the year so far. I was shocked to find that it was only $35,000. So this year I’ll have made about $40,000. That’s a big drop from several years ago, when I made over $100,000 a year. I’m able to survive on that, and even accumulate money, because my expenses are so low. I prefer this situation: I’d rather have the time than the money.

● I have a theological theory about the pandemic: God created the disease and the vaccine . . . to eliminate stupid people.

● Thursday, 12-9-2021:   Even if you have a set-point, a certain natural prevailing level, of happiness, that doesn’t mean that you can’t become happier. This is because your happiness is also affected by your life circumstances. If, having had a lousy job and hostile neighbors, you then get a good job and move to a more comfortable home, you’ll of course be happier. You gravitate toward your set-point happiness within the situation.

● Saturday, 12-11-2021:   Here’s another possible inconsistency in myself. I denigrate superstition, but praise the placebo effect, and even hope that I might be beneficially subject to it. But aren’t the two phenomena essentially the same?

● Sometimes hearing about disasters befalling other people makes me feel better: it makes me appreciate my estate all the more, by contrast.

● Sunday, 12-12-2021:   I’ve discovered another advantage of face masks: they help keep you warm in cold weather. Of course, that’s not helpful in warm weather (and I wear them year-round).

● Yesterday, I doubled my daily Prozac dose.

● I’ve just completed the latest read-through of Eisner’s Journal. This one I think took longer than any previous one: three months. It took longer because I did it casually, and because I had less time available for it: I had more paid work (depositions), and several unrelated writing projects intervened. The last part of every read-through of Eisner’s Journal is adding to it the latest entries in my Diary-Journal. So with each editing, Eisners Journal becomes both more refined and longer. It now runs to 564 pages!

[Later note (10-14-2023): I hope the next read-through will be an exception. I’ll try, finally, to cut much of the less interesting (the boring) material. So I hope that the next read-through will make the Journal more refined, but shorter.]

I’m going to take a break before the next read-through of the Journal, by re-editing my Drug Essays. It’s been exactly ten years since I last edited them. The set comprises eleven essays. That includes “Some Reasons not to Use Drugs”; which I edited this year. So now I’ll edit the other ten.

● Thursday, 12-16-2021:   I used to say, to myself, “I’m the Mozart of philosophy.”

● Saturday, 12-18-2021:   The process of editing my Journal and my other work has made it more self-consistent and promoted it building on itself, enhancing its coherence.

● Sunday, 12-19-2021:   For the last few days, I’ve had the worst neck ache I’ve ever had. I think it was caused by wearing my thick muffler when I reclined in the car last week, before a deposition.

● Philosophy Club meeting. Topic: “Toleration (Why should we be tolerant?)” My own initial thoughts are these.

● The subject of toleration is closely related to that of liberty.

● We tolerate others’ behavior for, one reason, simple utility. We all behave in ways in which others find, or might find, objectionable. That behavior’s not being tolerated would suppress it in everyone. But the suppression of it in us would be more unpleasant for us than tolerating it in others. The limit of toleration is the point at which that balance shifts, when our detriment in allowing the conduct would exceed our loss in its repression. For example, I want vulgar, angry verbal utterances allowed, because my own need to use them (on rare occasion) is greater than my harm in their being used against me; whereas, I want murder not to be tolerated, because my wish to avoid being murdered is greater than my wish to be able to commit murder with legal impunity.

● In many cases racism springs from a very common human desire: the desire to be superior to as many other men as possible. If, in one stroke, you can make all men of some other group automatically inferior to you, you’ve considerably raised your status within the human race. While the impulse is common, the strategy is irrational and unjust.

● Monday, 12-20-2021:   We live until we die.

● Tuesday, 12-21-2021:   I think the neighbors in no. 3 are moving. They’ve been here for almost exactly four years (since December 2017). I’m sorry to see them go. Much as I hate them, they’ll soon be replaced by new tenants. And I’m not so naive as to hope that new ones won’t be hostile—they always are. And now, just when I’ve finally mastered these people, turned the tables, won the war—now they leave (perhaps that’s why). But I’ve learned from the experience; I’m a better warrior now.

● On second thought, their leaving was all but inevitable, considering what I’ve been dishing out to them for the last six months. They probably would have left sooner if they didn’t have a lease (which probably held them till the end of the year). I got six good months of revenge.

● Wednesday, 12-22-2021:   Perhaps they’re not moving. They’re still here. I’ve been fooled before. I thought they were moving another time, too, but they weren’t. Perhaps, yesterday, they were just moving some things to storage to unclutter their home. We’ll see.

● Thursday, 12-23-2021:   Well, they’re gone, gone, gone!

● I’ve just finished editing my other ten drug essays. So it took about a week. I thought it would take longer. I didn’t bother to read them aloud. I’m not publishing them now. And I consider them less-important works.

● I just awoke from a nightmare. I was unemployed and trying to find a job. My father was supporting me, but he was very old. I was fighting with my complacency, constantly procrastinating the determined work of looking for employment. I relied on my father’s continued support for my survival, but knowing I was in peril: if he died now, I’d perish, with insufficient time to find work to support myself. For many years I lived that nightmare.

● Friday, 12-24-2021:   A new pet peeve of mine is people wearing facemasks improperly: covering their mouths, but not their noses.

● Saturday, 12-25-2021:   I went for a desert drive today, but I cut it short, just to Lancaster (the roundtrip was about 125 miles, instead of 200). I had planned to eat out, at IHOP Restaurant. After my disappointing experience with the IHOP on West Avenue K on Thanksgiving Day, I went to the one a few miles north, on West Avenue I. But it (the IHOP) was no longer there. When I turned around to go back, I saw a Denny’s Restaurant on the opposite corner of the intersection, so I went there. That experience was even worse: I ordered a meal to go, to eat in my car (to avoid the COVID-19 risk). I waited for about 30 or 40 minutes (that’s a very rough estimate; it probably seemed longer than it was, because of the unpleasantness of waiting there). I finally asked the cashier why it was taking so long. She checked the meals put out by the cooks, and found it. I figured that it had been sitting there for a long time, and was therefore cold. When she brought it to me, I reached my hand into the bag and felt the toast on the top—sure enough, it was completely cold (room temperature). I told her it was cold, and asked for (and got) my money back. I then ate at McDonald’s, the last resort, since few restaurants were open today, Christmas. That food was mediocre, to put it charitably. The Denny’s encounter was an unnecessary risk (of COVID exposure) and an utter waste of time (except that I got this little story out of it).

● It’s been a fortnight since I finished the last read-through of the Journal. I said I’d take a break from it by re-editing my Drug Essays. Having done that, I guess I’ll start the next read-through of the Journal.

● Sunday, 12-26-2021:   I’ve now gotten about 30 pages into this latest read-through of my Journal. I’m finding significantly fewer needs for editing. And the edits I make are smaller: slight, subtle changes—deleting an unnecessary word or two, for example.

● Tuesday, 12-28-2021:   I increased my daily dose of Prozac to 30 mg.

● I had a letter to mail, and I thought I’d act efficiently, by taking out some trash on the same occasion. I went to the trash cans and accidently threw the letter out with the trash. I realized what I’d done and fished the letter out. I learned from the experience that, if I combine those tasks, I should go to the mailboxes first, because I’m less likely to accidently put the trash in the mailbox than (if I go to the trash cans first) to put the letter in the trash.

● Life is not something we think should be created, ab initio, where it doesn’t exist; rather, it’s merely something that living things, finding themselves alive and with certain desires, wish to arrange so as to satisfy their desires.

● In this read-through of the Journal, I’m doing significant editing, but significantly less editing than in previous read-throughs.

● Thursday, 12-30-2021:   This has been the year of:

○ The coming and going of the right index finger injury.
○ The coming and going of the acute urinary bleeding and discomfort.
○ The great reversal (in my favor) of the situation with both sets of next-door neighbors.
○ The going of the nasty neighbors in no. 3.
○ The start of getting social security payments.
○ The first full year (since my teenage years) of no daytime naps.
○ The resumption of better-paid (deposition) work.
○ Reusing the disposable gloves.
○ The great re-editing of my online essays and my drug essays.

When I count my blessings, many spring to mind. In a dramatic reversal of my suffering during the great majority of my life until now, the bad now seems vastly outweighed by the good.

[Later note (9-13-2023): That last sentence is problematic, in failing to separate experience and accomplishment. The good work I’ve done is not diminished by any bad work I’ve done. An artist’s oeuvre consists just of his worthwhile work. So, with respect to my accomplishment, the good has always outweighed the bad. Even considering my accomplishment together with my experience, the good (of my accomplishment) has always outweighed the bad (of my experience), for I always resisted committing suicide, for the sake of my work. What I was referring to is my experience: I used to generally feel very bad; now I generally feel good. But an element in that change is my good (greater) sense of accomplishment.]

● For several days, someone has been in unit 3, which those bastards just vacated. It’s probably a temporary occupant, perhaps a leasing agent or a house-sitter.

● A cynical view of the high monetary inflation we’re having is that it’s the capitalists’ answer to workers’ recent modestly successful push for higher wages.

● Friday, 12-31-2021:   My New Year’s resolution: Keep up the good work!

● From now on, when I add a “later note” to a Journal entry, I’m going to record its exact date, not just the year.

2022 >>