2022

● Saturday, 1-1-2022:   I prefer very cold weather on New Year’s Eve, because it discourages people from shooting off firecrackers (by discouraging people from being outside).

● I neglected to note a significant development with the next-door neighbor in no. 1 when it started. But I’m going to mention it now, lest I eventually forget this significant event. Sometime in 2021, he began using a new attack against me: whenever I make even the slightest sound in subvocalization, sounding out words, under my breath, or even more silently, just by mouth or tongue movements—no matter where I am in my apartment, however slight the gesture, however silently I think I do it, he, with his super-acute hearing, can detect it. And when he does, he makes a noise in his apartment, for my benefit, loudly enough for me to plainly hear it. I try as best I can to suppress those sounds of mine, but occasionally I slip, which, as a writer, is almost inevitable. I think he probably got the idea for this attack from the no. 3 neighbors’ similar attack on me involving my swallowing sound. It was in response to this new attack by the neighbor in no. 1 that I developed my own new sub-silentio attacks on him, which I’ve written about. I think he’s getting the worst of it (his attacks have backfired), because I can avoid his attacks, by suppressing the subvocalization (I just have to be more careful). But he can’t avoid my attacks, which happen many times a day.

● Sunday, 1-2-2022:   This is an extraordinarily quiet and peaceful day. I can’t remember another time like it.

● Wednesday, 1-5-2022:   “He who laughs last laughs loudest” means that the revenge for an unjust attack is more satisfying (to the avenger) than the original attack (was to the original attacker).

● Thursday, 1-6-2022:   I had a pulmonary function test today. I think I did well on it.

● I just noticed a way in which I’ve changed. I used to be extremely moody—wild, sudden mood swings. I don’t recall what triggered them, in either direction. In the last five to ten years, I think I’ve been on a pretty even emotional keel. Perhaps the earlier volatility was a product of my precarious financial situation.

● Saturday, 1-8-2022:   Raphael H, the attorney for whom I work exclusively now, handling workers’ compensation depositions, has raised my pay, probably to the rate he pays the other attorneys who handle his depositions.

● Yesterday, Friday, I had a series of close calls. The night before, Thursday, when I drove my car, the red battery-warning light came on briefly. I drove to my mechanic’s shop; they checked the battery and the alternator and found that those were all right. The day after, yesterday, I had to drive 65 miles to a deposition. On my way there, that red light came on again sporadically, but toward the end of the trip it stayed on. My main concern was to get to the deposition (which I did). Going back home, I knew something bad was happening to the car’s electrical system, because the various car lights got steadily dimmer and dimmer. I planned to bring it to my mechanic’s shop, but decided to stop at home first; and I made it home. When I then tried to drive the car to the mechanic (just about 5 miles away from my home), it wouldn’t start. I called the Auto Club to get a jump start. The man told me that I needed to replace both the battery and the alternator. He got the car started, but after driving for a few blocks, the car began losing power. I decided to try to limp to the mechanic’s shop. I drove in the right lane just in case the car stopped. After 3 or 4 miles, it died. I managed to bring it to rest at the curb, but not at an ideal place: it was in the right-turn lane at a fairly busy intersection. I used my cell phone to call for a tow truck, and I sat in the car for two stressful hours waiting for it to come: stressful because I was worried about getting hit by another car, and, toward the end, worried that I might not get to the mechanic’s shop before they closed. But I got there, in the nick of time, and without a collision. So I not only got to my deposition on time, but I narrowly avoided the car stopping on the freeway, and far from home. I had to travel 135 miles, the first 130 miles by freeway, and the last 5 miles on surface streets. And the car finally dies in that last 5 miles! To boot, on the way back from the deposition, on the freeway, my cell phone was in my briefcase in the trunk of the car (I’d forgotten to take it out of the briefcase and put it in the car, for emergency use). It seems almost miraculous!

● Sunday, 1-9-2022:   Apartment no. 3 is still vacant. Since the previous residents moved out, I’ve noticed slight hostility from the upstairs neighbor. But I’ve come up with this additional rule: If hostility from a neighbor is mild and can be adequately dealt with by strictly defensive measures, use only defensive measures; don’t retaliate. I don’t know exactly why, but it intuitively seems right.

No, here’s why (or at least some further thoughts on it): If his hostility is mild and you successfully defend against it, he may stop it. But retaliation will entrench it; and that will, ipso facto, make it worse, and it will probably escalate further. Besides, though I’m unaware of it, I may be partly to blame for the problem.

● Monday, 1-10-2022:   An update on the preceding entry: His attacks are getting more and more severe. But it occurred to me that I no longer retaliate; or my retaliation has taken a different form. My vengeance is now much more subtle and powerful than overt retaliation. I give attackers as much free rope as they want—and they eventually hang themselves. Or, I give them as much free rope as they want, and, when they put their neck in a noose (which they inevitably do), I pull the rope tight and kick the chair out from under them.

● I just finished watching a documentary film about Fred Rogers. He said that everyone wants to be loved. I don’t want to be loved. I want to be admired. (But if I feel I warrant admiration—whether I actually get it or not—I’ll love myself.)

● Tuesday, 1-11-2022:   My life is going swimmingly.

● I was surprised and disappointed to hear that Fred Rogers was a Republican. How could such a kindly, almost-saintly man be a Republican?

● Wednesday, 1-12-2022:   Sometimes on the road when a driver behind me expresses anger toward me, when I’d normally respond with an obscene hand gesture; if I notice that the other driver is Black, I suppress my reaction. I figure they already get enough hatred and abuse, and I’m loath to add to it.

● To decide which of two quick, easy tasks to do first; I sometimes consider, which one am I more likely to forget to do if I do the other one first. And what would be the consequences of forgetting to do it? I do the one first that I’m more likely to forget to do if I did the other one first, or that would be more problematic to forget to do. For example, just before driving away in my car, I had to decide which to put away first: my jacket, or my briefcase. I put the briefcase away first, because, if I forgot to take off my jacket, I could (when I eventually remembered it) merely pull the car over to the side of the road to take off my jacket. But if I forgot to put away my briefcase, I’d run over it with the car backing out of the garage, and damage or destroy the briefcase.

Relatedly, if you have several quick tasks, do them one at a time, finishing one before starting another: it’s better to forget to start a task than to forget to finish one that you’ve started, because leaving off in the midst of it is risky. For example, if you’re unloading your car, and you forget to finish, you may leave a door open, or unlocked, risking a theft.

● Friday, 1-14-2022:   I read a newspaper article that complained that someone got a scarce heart transplant even though he’d once stabbed a man seven times. And I thought, that’s better than having stabbed seven men once.

● Tuesday, 1-18-2022:   A staple of political news is polling on a politician’s popularity. Often, when he suffers a setback in implementing his agenda, when, for example, his efforts are successfully blocked by the opposing party, it’s said that his popularity declines. And politics being a zero-sum game, that usually works to the opposition’s advantage. This dynamic seems very strange. I would think that support for or opposition to a politician should be based on what he’s trying to achieve, not on how successful he is at achieving it. It would be like deciding whether to support Nazi Germany or the Allies in World War II, based on which side was winning at the time. If you were financially supporting the Allies, but the Nazis won a certain big battle this week, you’d switch your support to the Nazis.

● Wednesday, 1-19-2022:   I’d been having many problems with my websites. I think I finally got the help I needed to fix them. After our long telephone conversation, we had this email exchange:

Hi Richard,

I noticed that you are opted out of getting our post call survey for your feedback on our call (as well as how likely you are to recommend our services to others), if you would like to reply to this email with any comments, I will be happy to forward to a supervisor for review!

Thank you,

Keli B.

GoDaddy Guides / Advanced Hosting THS

My reply:

Hi Kelly,

I thought the help you gave me today with my websites was superb. You let me enumerate the problems; you heard and understood what I said, and you addressed all of them. You explained the causes and the needed fixes in a way that I actually understood. You solved some of the problems on the spot. As to the rest, you sent me detailed instructions for my web developer. You even found a problem that I knew of, but which I forgot to mention. Over the last few weeks, I’ve dealt with numerous people at GoDaddy, and have been frustrated by the lack of competence and follow-through. Your expertise and conscientiousness were a breath of fresh air, and made up for it. Thank you.

Richard Eisner

● Friday, 1-21-2022:   At the suggestion of my new psychiatrist at Kaiser, I’m going to try meditation. I had resisted it before, lest it interfere with my thinking. But I don’t believe that’s a serious risk. The potential benefit seems worth the slight risk.

● For some time, perhaps a year, a new resident has moved into the apartment directly above me. It’s the son of the old lady, Angela, who’s been there as long as I’ve been here (11 years). He came to take care of her. I never had a problem with Angela, but, about a month ago, just after the horrible neighbors in no. 3 moved out, I developed a problem with—I assume—her son. For some reason, he began attacking me. (Perhaps he was doing it before, too, but I noticed it only after the people in no. 3 left.) I responded deftly, and within a week or so I’d established a sub-silentio angry-sound against him. Now, he attacks me every day; but every afternoon, I take revenge on him, without my seeming to act in anger, or even showing that I’m aware of the effect I’m having on him.

● Sunday, 1-23-2022:   Philosophy Club meeting. Topic: “the Fermi paradox.” Some scientists predict that an intelligent civilization, if given enough time, would eventually colonize its entire galaxy. That strikes me as fantasy, driven by wishful thinking—we like to think that eventually we would do that, and thus that we’ll live forever, or much longer than we would if we remained Earthbound (Earth will someday be destroyed, when it falls into the sun, or something).

● Monday, 1-24-2022:   An Asian-American woman was recently murdered, an apparently racially motivated crime. A friend of hers was quoted in the news to this effect: “She did nothing wrong, except encounter a man [her murderer] who considered her to have no value.” That makes no sense. Did I refrain from committing murder today because I thought that everyone I met had value?!

● My big office chair, which I’ve had for about 30 years, lately developed a problem: the gas spindle that raises and lowers the chair wore out and the chair kept sinking lower. So once a day or so, I’d have to reset it to the highest position. The gas spindle needed to be replaced, but the chair is no longer manufactured, and I couldn’t get the part. But I found a handyman, Jesse, who fixed it by setting the chair permanently in the high position. When he finished the job, I asked him how much he’d charge me, and he left it up to me. He and a helper were here for less than half an hour. I gave him $50. He seemed pleased with it. . . . A few days later, I regretted that I hadn’t given him more.

[Later note (4-26-2022): A few weeks ago, I had him do some more work here, and I gave him an additional fifty dollars just for that previous repair . . . and I paid him generously for the current work.]

● Thursday, 1-27-2022:   I’ve just finished the latest read-through of the Journal. This one took almost exactly a month. I’ll take a short break before starting the next read-through.

● Saturday, 1-29-2022:   Every Friday, Raphael H, the attorney for whom I’ve handled workers’ compensation depositions for the last six months, gives me his available depositions for the following week. Yesterday, for the first time since I started working for him, he gave me no depositions. My emotional reaction was a combination of worry and despair. As I’ve said, I tend to “catastrophize”: I imagine that changes are the beginning of trends, rather than (as is usually the case) just fluctuations. My first impulse was to again send out letters to attorneys offering my deposition services, to try to get more attorney-clients. But now, my inclination is to wait to see how this plays out: is it a trend or merely an aberration? On the assumption that it’s an aberration, I won’t scramble to find more work, but instead simply enjoy some time (a week) off, which I can financially afford to do. The key is to use the time productively, and not let myself fall into despair and sloth. I seem to have lost my taste for taking drives in my car, and I feel I must refrain from watching non-educational television. I have several productive (or at least constructive) activities available: watching the mathematics lectures; listening to lectures on how to meditate; reading (or rereading) books on writing; and editing my Journal. I had intended to take a longer break (longer than just a few days) from that editing, but I must be flexible in the face of changed circumstances.

● Well, it’s now 3:00 p.m., my customary time to stop work for the day, eat dinner, and relax. I had a pretty good day. Among other things, I did a bit of all four of the constructive activities I just mentioned. I got about 14 pages into the next read-through of my Journal; I changed just one word: “largest” to “biggest.” Perhaps I’ll actually, finally, publish it soon. Good work, Richard!

● Sunday, 1-30-2022:   I just listened to a mathematics lecture introducing the great mathematician Gauss. The lecturer recounted an incident in Gauss’s childhood when a schoolteacher asked the students to sum the first hundred whole numbers. Young Gauss got the answer almost immediately. Before I heard the answer, or how Gauss reached it, I thought about it for a moment, and likewise saw the answer almost immediately. Here’s how I solved it: Take the last of those numbers, 100. Put it off to the side. Now consider the rest of the numbers, 1 – 99. You can put them into pairs, the lowest and the highest, then the second lowest and the second highest, each pair adding up to 100 (that is, 1 and 99; 2 and 98, and so forth). You continue that pairing, until you get to the middle number, 50. The process doesn’t work for 50, because there’s no number to pair it with. So put the 50, also, to the side. How many of those number pairs do you have? You have 49 (the lower numbers of the pairs are 1 – 49). How many 100s do you have? You have 49 (of the pairs that added to 100) plus the last number (100), which we first set aside. So that’s 50 hundreds. Fifty hundreds is 5,000. What’s left? That 50 in the middle, which we put aside. Adding the 50 to the 5,000, you get 5,050. I then resumed the lecture and found that Gauss used a different method (though of course he got the same answer).

● Well, I just got an email from Attorney Raphael H, explaining that he just got back from out-of-town, and giving me his deposition schedule for next (this) week—three depositions.

● Monday, 1-31-2022:   I just reread a 2001 Journal entry in which I said that I thought my ability to arrange words on a page was excellent, but my ability to arrange my life and time was abysmal. Now, twenty-one years later, my view about the latter has changed. I feel good about the way things have worked out for me. All in all, I think I’ve done well.

● Wednesday, 2-2-2022:   A significant right elbow and forearm injury, that’s plagued me for at least seven years, caused by straining it, has, I think, finally resolved.

● Thursday, 2-3-2022:   I saw a newspaper headline that U.S. troops killed the head of the ISIS terror group in Syria. President Biden was quoted as saying, “May God protect our troops.” I think this proves one thing: [omitted] . . . That’s a stupid comment, of mine. I must have momentarily confused a comment that makes religion look asinine versus an asinine comment about religion. I was going to delete it, but then kept it because I thought my own self-criticism was worthwhile. . . . I had second thoughts, and wondered whether I might not have my cake and eat it, by keeping the critical comment but deleting the dumb remark. But then I thought that people would be so curious to know the original statement, that I ought to just leave it. No, here’s the resolution. If I can’t bring myself to delete this entry (which I really should do), I can compromise and simply not put it in the Journal. No, back to an earlier-mentioned option: I’ll keep it here, but just delete (in this Journal entry) the original dumb remark.

● When I reread my Journal, I laugh at many of the entries. I had always assumed that this meant that they’re funny. I wonder if that’s true.

● Saturday, 2-5-2022:   I got my car smog-checked today. It passed on the first try, unlike two years ago, when it took several weeks.

● Sunday, 2-6-2022:   At most meals (when I eat at home) I have a dessert of cashews, peanuts, and dates. Yesterday evening I had cashews, pecans, and walnuts (and dates). It was delicious, very satisfying.

● I just finished watching the last two (of 24) lectures of the mathematics course. The last two lectures were on Georg Cantor’s set theory. I understood those two lectures pretty much completely. I see that set theory is relevant to my philosophy. It was a wonderful course, which I’ll probably view again.

● It’s been an extraordinarily good weekend.

● Tuesday, 2-8-2022:   I just awoke from a dream in which I was just about to share an apartment with a young woman, a roommate. She was an EMT (emergency medical technician). Toward the end of the dream (just before I woke up), a messenger handed her some documents she’d left at the print shop, because she couldn’t pay for the copying. The printer returned the material to her instead of discarding it. She was going to pay the printer for the job, and I advised her to offer him less money ($100, instead of $130). I said it in a rough, inarticulate way. And the last thing I remember of the dream was her giving me this advice: “Get rid of your caveman slang.”

● Thursday, 2-10-2022:   I had a long, drawn-out dream last night or early this morning. In it I was with my father, who was very old. We were buying handguns. He got a very big, sophisticated, large-caliber machine pistol. I thought it was so big that it defeated the purpose of a handgun: a light, small, maneuverable weapon.

● Sunday, 2-13-2022:   Today’s the big football game, the Superbowl. The game’s outcome is a little arbitrary. If these two teams played ten games against each other, each team would win some, and probably roughly the same number of them. Why is this particular game in the series significant?

● Tuesday, 2-15-2022:   U.S. President Joe Biden in a speech today said that people have a right to choose their destiny. That seems contradictory: destiny implies a lack of freedom. It’s like saying: “I told God I didn’t want free will, but He gave it to me anyway. I had no choice.”

● Thursday, 2-17-2022:   I was shocked to see how high my electric bill was and so I called the electric company (LA DWP). I’m glad I did. I learned that the culprit in my high electric bills is not the lights, as I’d thought, but the radiant heating, which I thought was free (generated by hot water pipes). So now I’m going to turn that heat off at night and when I’m out during the day. Or, when I’m here, I’ll use a portable “space” heater instead.

● Friday, 2-18-2022:   I just awoke from a dream in which I was among 30 or so gangsters who were all scheming and maneuvering to get the largest possible share of a mass of powdered cocaine. Toward the end of the dream, I proposed that we divide the drug equally among all of us. I remember saying, “If we don’t do that, at least half of us will be killed.” I think to my surprise, everyone agreed with my proposed solution, and they were hailing me as a hero for solving the problem. As the dream ended, I was trying, with some difficulty, to get all the cocaine together in a big pile, to divide it up.

● Sunday, 2-20-2022:   I think editors could have a field day with my Journal.

● I just (again) came across this 11-4-2015 entry in my Journal: I exercise strategic patience: I endlessly persevere, endlessly building for the future, foregoing short-term good for the sake of my long-term well-being.

To which (in 2021) I appended this Later note: Oh, really?!

Here’s my reaction this time: Yes, indeed so. My feeling about that is a product of my circumstances at the time. Now the original sentiment seems true because my circumstances seem very good. I have enough savings and I’m making enough money so that I can work just part time, giving me leisure to devote to my writing. The activities I’ve done in the past several decades now seem to have paid off: my self-study of workers’ compensation law and my several years’ working as a trial lawyer for Scott Warmuth have given me the experience and expertise to now make a good living. All the time and effort I spent working on my writing turns out to have been very fruitful (the diary entries I made for decades—I’m now harvesting as this Journal). My day-to-day, hour-to-hour existence is fairly pleasant. And knowing that I’m doing what I most value, building my body of work (with which I’m increasingly pleased), enhances my happiness. Yes, my life is good.

● Wednesday, 2-23-2022:   Tomorrow I increase my Prozac dose to 50 mg daily.

● Friday, 2-25-2022:   I’ve heard it declared that, for each person, there’s one special other person, a soul mate. I think it’s interesting that someone would believe that his special soul mate is of his same species; of the opposite sex; living on his same planet, and probably in his same city; alive at the same time as he is, and in fact roughly his same age. But I suppose God arranged it that way.

● In my relationship with neighbors, I have a sort of mantra: On toes . . . housekeeping. (Which means: always be aware and circumspect of my actions in relationship to the neighbors, and take the extra few seconds or minutes to avoid the little traps they set for me.)

● Sunday, 2-27-2022:   I just found $120 in the trash! . . . which I put there. About a week ago, I set the money out on my desk to pay a handyman, who hasn’t come yet. Yesterday, I noticed that it was missing. It occurred to me that I might have inadvertently discarded it with papers I threw out. I went to the recycling bin in the alley, found the papers I’d recently discarded, and there it was!

● I love being Richard Eisner! I’m ecstatic being me! It’s almost like having manic depression, without the depression!

● Philosophy Club meeting. Topic: “Education.”

● A member opined that education has two purposes: one, to enable people to self-actualize, and, two, to contribute to society. It occurred to me that often to self-actualize is also to contribute to society. And the greater the potential that’s actualized, the greater the social contribution. Consider Mozart, Shakespeare, Newton . . .. As to education’s content, it makes sense to teach young students a variety of subjects, so that they can discover where their talents and interests lie.

● Wednesday, 3-2-2022:   I just awoke from a dream. It was Halloween night and I intended to go for a drive and smoke cannabis, for this special occasion. I went to the beach and contemplated building a fire there. I was going to stop on my way back and smoke the cannabis, for which purpose I’d brought my old homemade water pipe. In the dream I was living with my parents, and was having second thoughts about smoking, fearing that my father would know that I’d smoked when I came into the house. I was going to use eye drops to get the redness out of my eyes. In another scene, I was with an old acquaintance from my teenage years, Steve Noble, with whom I used to smoke cannabis, and with whom I was going to smoke now. But I’d forgotten to bring the drug; we stopped somewhere, and he got some. Then my water pipe became an electronic gadget, a little computer with bundles of braided wires attached. I was trying to program it to calculate criminal penalties under a new law for a housing development, in which the penalty for murder differed according to the sexual orientation of the murderer and the victim. At one point I wanted to advise the lawmakers that, logically, that scheme wouldn’t work, that the same penalty should apply to everyone. In another scene, in a restaurant or business waiting area, someone asked me why I felt drawn to solving such problems, and I was eloquently explaining what my inspiration for it felt like: a challenge, the prospect of a sense of accomplishment, and so forth.

● Thursday, 3-3-2022:   When I cash checks at the bank, the less money I have, the smaller the denominations of currency I request.

● I recently started using a new supply of a certain dietary supplement. I used it for several days, and noticed it wasn’t having the same effect as before, and wondered why. I took a closer look at the label on the bottle, and discovered the reason. The pills are advertised on the merchant’s website as “400 mg / 100 capsules.” But the label reads: “400 mg per serving” and then in fine print at the bottom is written: “One serving is three capsules.” So, in effect, I was led to believe that a bottle contained a one-hundred-day supply (of my 400 mg daily dose), but it was only a 33-day supply. That is, I was tricked into thinking I was getting three times as much of the product as I was actually getting. I angrily called the merchant and got a refund. Lying bastards!

● Yesterday, my hostile neighbor in apartment no. 1 put up signs offering a reward for the return of his lost cat. This morning the signs are down, so I assume he found the cat.

● You don’t have to be ecstatic or euphoric to feel good . . . but it helps.

● Last weekend, when I came out of my apartment to go to my car, I smelled cigarette smoke. The smell got stronger as I got to the outer doors of the complex. Then I saw the source—a man sitting on the low raised wall near the sidewalk (and smoking). It occurred to me that this was perhaps the source of the smoke smell that has so often ruined my sleep. So, on my way back to my apartment, I approached him, and offered him a twenty-dollar bill to “do me a big favor” and not light his cigarette until he gets outside the complex. He said he’d do that from now on, and declined the money. I thanked him. I hope that solves the problem.

[Later note (8-5-2023): Only later did I recognize him as one of the hostile neighbors from apartment no. 7.]

● Friday, 3-4-2022:   I just awoke from a dream, in which I was with my old teenage friend-foe Art B. I was riding the old Triumph 650 motorcycle I had when I knew him, but in the dream, I was not in the old relationship; rather, we were reuniting at our present (much older) age. We were searching for the man we’d seen driving a van powered by a double BMW motorcycle engine, the kind of engine those motorcycles had when I was a teenager. We never found him. But we also searched for a woman I’d known in my youth, and her we did find. I was getting reacquainted with her (or acquainted, since I never had a relationship with her before). I noticed that being with her was somehow painful for me; it aggravated my depersonalization / derealization: in her presence, I seemed to disappear even more.

● I have a headache, caused by missing my second cup of tea today.

● Saturday, 3-5-2022:   Haircut (Brenda).

● Sunday, 3-6-2022:   A political commentator on the radio this morning drew a parallel between Russia’s recent invasion of Ukraine and the United States’ invasion, some twenty years ago, of Iraq, equating Russia with Iraq, arguing that our opposition to both countries is a product of U.S. propaganda. I disagree. The parallel between the two situations is, not between Russia and Iraq, but between Russia and the United States: in each case, the invader is the aggressor (and in the wrong). Sometimes the U.S. government’s antagonism to another country is apt. As they say, a stopped clock is right twice a day.

● Monday, 3-7-2022:   Yesterday I bought three pairs of running shoes at Walmart (for walking). Two of the pairs cost about $14 apiece; the other pair cost about $26. This morning I used a $14 pair, and they seemed adequate. I’ll return the $26 pair.

● I’ve just finished the latest read-through of my Journal. This one took just less than a month and a half. I’ll take a short break before starting the next one.

● Tuesday, 3-8-2022:   I’ve been notified that my apartment rent has increased.

● Yesterday, I saw my pulmonologist, Dr. Zouein. He said the tests showed I have chronic bronchitis. But since I have no symptoms, we’ll just watch it, rather than having me use an inhaler. He said that my cough at mealtime seems to be caused by insufficient swallowing of food, so that I’m actually breathing in some small particles of food. He told me to take smaller bites, to swallow each two or three times, and to drink more liquid when I eat.

[Later note (9-26-2023): It’s probably more accurate to say that I have no symptoms that I notice: I probably do have symptoms, but I’ve just gotten used to them, and so am unaware of them. If I used an inhaler, I’d probably know how well I’m supposed to breathe, and then I’d need to use the inhaler. I’d rather live with it and not need the inhaler (the symptoms are apparently not hurting my health).]

● I had no deposition yesterday; and I have none today (though I’ll spend an hour this afternoon preparing a client for a deposition). This morning I was tired and a little depressed, and felt tempted to take a nap. But that’s a bad habit I can’t afford to fall into again, so I must resist it. I at first interpreted it as a function of my fluctuating mood and energy level. But then I realized it was probably a function rather of my circumstances: I’m taking a break from editing my Journal, my customary leisure activity these days. Instead, I’ve been rereading the books on writing, which I’m finding boring and tedious, even more so than rereading my Journal. But whatever the cause, I think this is how to deal with it: realize that it’s just a momentary fluctuation, not the start of a long-lasting phase, so don’t let worry about that compound the funk. Likewise, if I need to take a short break from productive activity, do so (though not by napping), without feeling guilty about it.

● Someone online recommended two lawyers for a certain potential (legal) case, and he concluded with, “Both the best!!” I didn’t reply, but it crossed my mind to say, “Both are the best?”

● I got an email from UPS: “We have successfully completed your Package Pickup.” I replied: “If you successfully completed my Package Pickup . . . why is the package still here??”

[Later note (5-1-2022): This was the health supplement that I was returning for a refund. I left the package out for pickup for several weeks, but they never picked it up. So I kept it (and I got the refund).]

● Monday, 3-9-2022:   When I studied it at university, I noticed that symbolic logic, as useful as it is, does not fully capture all of the nuances of natural language. Similarly, I’ve noticed that my written accounts of my experiences don’t capture all the details of the experience. For example, my 3-3-2022 note, above, about my neighbor’s lost cat; there was much more to it than what I wrote in that short summary. I thought I was partly responsible—not at fault, but responsible—for the cat’s going missing. That neighbor used to let his cats out in the common area of the apartment complex at about 6:00 every morning. Sometimes the orange tabby (the one that was briefly lost) was at the rear gate of the complex when I’d leave to take my exercise-walk. I was always careful to make sure it didn’t get out when I opened the gate. One morning recently it actually did walk out when I opened the gate, but I said, “Hey, come back here!” and (amazingly!) it came back in. The morning it went missing, I came back from my walk by the rear gate, and when I turned the corner into the main common area, the cat was there. I deliberately walked by it very slowly, so as not to startle it. I sensed that it took notice of my gesture. It sat down, and looked at me (or seemed to look at me) as I went back to my apartment. I got the impression that it was in awe, or in wonder, or that it was having some kind of significant awareness about that. When, just a few hours later, I saw the signs offering a reward for the cat’s return, I interpreted it this way: I thought my considerate gesture made the cat realize, by contrast, that its owner, my neighbor in no. 1, was treating it badly, which awareness, or feeling, prompted it to leave. I hoped it would return—not for my neighbor’s sake, but for the cat’s.

● Saturday, 3-12-2022:   In a dream last night, I was painting. I was trying to practice, to learn the craft, but having great difficulty disciplining myself to do it. I was extremely frustrated, because I seemed not to be able to get any decent results and I was making no progress. I finished, or almost finished, one canvas, and it occurred to me that my brush strokes were imitative of Van Gogh’s. It crossed my mind that a certain (albeit small) proportion of my paintings were good; and so, if I wanted to do some good paintings, I’d just have to do a great many more of them.

● Sunday, 3-13-2022:   I was tempted to start the next read-through of my Journal, but I’m going to force myself to wait longer, to freshen my perspective on it.

● Russia (Vladimir Putin) is being urged to stop attacking Ukraine, and to instead negotiate. But I wonder about the logic of that: specifically, about the logic of the second part. When a mugger is beating a victim, he (the mugger) obviously should stop it. But negotiate?!

On further thought, the essential meaning of the entreaty is the first part: stop attacking. The first part is a command; the second, a suggestion, a polite grace note.

● I started applying the moisturizing cream (CeraVe) to my back for the itch, as instructed by my dermatologist, Dr. Israel.

● Monday, 3-14-2022:   I find the epitaph “Rest in Peace” curious: wish them whatever you may, the dead will have the same (absolutely undisturbed) “experience.”

● Saturday, 3-19-2022:   I’m going to start the next read-through of the Journal today. This has been a longer-than-usual break between readings, almost two weeks.

● Sunday, 3-20-2022:   For about a week I’ve been applying CeraVe moisturizing cream to my back, as my dermatologist recommended, to relieve my back itch. It hasn’t helped. But I faithfully applied the cream and refrained from scratching my back. Yesterday I happened to see another version of the CeraVe moisturizing cream, with the added words “Itch Relief.” I looked again at the doctor’s note, and he did indeed specify the itch relief version. He even noted “red and white bottle.” I’d gotten the wrong product. It did no harm, but it did no good, either. So I ordered the itch relief cream. I should have it in four- or five-days’ time. Meanwhile, I’ve reverted to scratching my back. It was very satisfying.

● I’ve read the first ten pages of my Journal in this latest read-through, and I’ve made not a single change!

● I took my truncated Camarillo drive (about 55 miles); I just got back. It was pleasant. I haven’t taken a pleasure drive in three months’ time, not since last Christmas.

● Here’s an idea to open up handicap sport competitions to the able-bodied: Find how much extra weight an able person would have to carry to reduce his performance to that of the average handicapped competitor, and allow able persons to compete in the event carrying that much extra weight. In fact, you could establish different divisions: the 50-pound handicap; the 75-pound handicap, etc.

● I’ve gotten ten pages further into this read-through of the Journal, and have made a few changes, but very slight ones, mostly punctuation.

● Monday, 3-21-2022:   I recently sent this email to Raphael H, the lawyer for whom I handle workers’ compensation depositions:

On your payment note for the 3/11/2022 Josefina Dimas depo, you gave 1.5 hours for travel. That’s downtown Los Angeles. Originally, you gave 2.5 hours for that trip. Then a few weeks ago, I noticed it was only 2 hours. Now it’s down to 1.5 hours? (Ouch!)

He replied thus: “I need to set a flat rate for downtown L.A. You are absolutely right. I’ve been checking Google Maps as I receive your depo summaries and sometimes I’m checking at a time when there’s traffic and sometimes not, so the travel time differs.

“I think 2 hours is reasonable round trip from Sherman Oaks to DTLA. Is that okay with you?”

I replied: “That’s okay with me.”

I’ll soon send him this:

Raphael, I’d like to suggest some revised standard travel times; I think your current estimates are overly conservative. Let me preface the suggestions with these observations. To start with, it seems that Google Maps is accurate for trip distance, but not for trip time: actual time is always greater—sometimes much greater. Part of the reason is that a lawyer’s compensated travel time is supposed to be measured portal-to-portal. But I suspect that Google measures the time from when the car starts moving on the street at the starting address to its arrival on the street outside the destination address. In other words, it omits (on the way there) the time it takes to: go from your office to your car; put your stuff in the car; warm the car up; park the car; get your stuff out of the car; and walk from the (parked) car to the deposition office. Going back, it omits the time it takes to: pack up your stuff at the deposition office; walk to the car; pay the parking; put your stuff in the car; drive out of the parking structure; park your car; remove your stuff from the car; and walk back to your office. Another omission—a big one—is getting situated, or set up, at the deposition office. It seems to take a good 15 or 20 minutes to: find the room; take your stuff out of the briefcases; get the Wi-Fi information from the receptionist; get the computer (and the Zoom device, if needed) up and running, and so forth. I suppose that could be counted as part of the depo-prep time, but somehow it doesn’t seem right to do that. (If an in-person depo prep is supposed to start at 9:00, and at 9:00 you’re just pulling into the building parking lot—you’re late: you won’t actually start the prep until at least 9:20.) Finally, quite aside from those omitted times, the actual address-to-address driving time varies considerably (according to traffic). For a standard time for the return trip, an average time is appropriate, since you simply leave whenever the deposition ends. But not so for the trip to the deposition. Because the travel time varies unpredictably, in order to consistently avoid being late, a conscientious lawyer must plan for, not the average time, but the longest time.

I know that the travel time given for §5710 purposes must inevitably be less than actual time, so that it will seem reasonable at a glance (though if adjusters or defense attorneys question it, you could send them the foregoing paragraph). So the following proposed times are compromises . . .

● Saturday, 3-26-2022:   When, in my writing, I explain, I’m probably doing so just as much for those who don’t need the explanation as for those who do.

● I’m not a made man, but I’m a done dude.

● I’m going to keep wearing a facemask, when I’m with other people indoors, even after the pandemic ends (or “ends”). I know that wearing a mask is effective, because, for the last two years, since the pandemic began, I’ve worn facemasks, and I haven’t gotten sick at all—not even a cold. Before then, I used to get sick all the time, at least once a month, it seemed. Wearing a facemask has been my only relevant changed behavior. I like not getting sick!

● Sunday, 3-27-2022:   Several decades ago, many criticized the huge difference in criminal punishments for possession of two forms of the same drug: crack cocaine and powder cocaine. In particular, the critics thought the (heavier) penalty for crack cocaine excessive and wanted it reduced. This was understood. But it was risky not to spell it out, because two disparate punishments could be equalized as well by increasing the lesser one.

● The most important organ in the human body is . . . the brain.

● Monday, 3-28-2022:   In my mind, I divide the year into two halves: the hot and the cool. April through September is the hot half; October through March, the cool. I suffer through the hot half, longing for the coming of October and the start of the cooler weather.

● Tuesday, 3-29-2022:   I watched a film about the Andy Warhol Diaries. It was interesting. Someone made a comment that I thought insightful, that a painting (or any work of art) represents at once an expression of who the artist is and his attempt to discover who he is.

● Wednesday, 3-30-2022:   We often euphemistically refer to the rest of a person’s life as “forever.” For example, at a funeral service a pastor said that the deceased lived only a short life, but we’ll remember him forever. It helps us temporarily forget that it’s a very short time.

● One of the attorneys for whom I used to handle (workers’ compensation) depositions years ago, Lance G, recently asked me whether I was available to handle some depositions for him that week. I wasn’t available then, but he also asked me about my availability for it in future. I told him I’d get back to him about that. I was reluctant to start doing any work for him, because I was afraid of disrupting my working relationship with Attorney Raphael H—I handle all the deposition work he offers me; it gives me enough money and leaves me leisure for my writing. But after thinking about it for a week or so, it occurred to me that, since I didn’t need additional work, I might as well quote Lance a significantly higher fee and state other conditions favorable to me. So I did. To my surprise, he (again) asked me whether I could handle some depositions for him (implicitly accepting my new fee and other conditions). I suggested that every Friday afternoon I could let him know my availability for the following week. That’s when Raphael gives me his available depositions for the following week, and so I could offer Lance the days on which I have no work for Raphael, and so avoid possibly disrupting the relationship with Raphael. Last Friday afternoon, both Raphael and Lance emailed me their available depositions for the following week (this week). Raphael had only two depositions, on Monday and Friday. Lance had a deposition every day. I took Raphael’s two, and Lance’s three, on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. This morning I handled my second deposition this week for Lance. Doing his depositions is even easier and more convenient than Raphael’s—and for higher pay. I’ll start giving Lance priority. So I’ve improved my situation even further. Perhaps I’m not, after all, such a lousy card player!

[Later note (8-6-2023): I no longer do any work for Raphael; giving priority to Lance, and Lance having so many depositions, I was seldom available for Raphael. So he eventually stopped asking me. Which is just as well for me. Raphael’s work was becoming less and less worthwhile, since all his depositions (at least the ones he offered me) were by Zoom, eliminating travel time (for which I charge). I’d rather have more leisure time than that work.]

● Thursday, 3-31-2022:   When I drive, I carry an extra car key in my pocket, so that I won’t lock myself out of the car (if I lock the car with the key inside, I still have the one in my pocket to open the door).

● Friday, 4-1-2022:   When I was a child, there were “five and dime” stores. Now it’s “dollar” stores. And even those are disappearing.

[Later note (11-19-2023): In the “dollar” stores now, the package sizes are shrinking, and the prices are increasing—most are well over a dollar.]

● For perhaps a year now, the neighbors in apartment no. 5, across from me, have been attacking me by coming out of their apartment when I come out of mine. My theory is that the neighbors in no. 7 poisoned the well against me, and told them that I’m attacking them (the people in no. 7), and the no. 5 people are attacking me in sympathy with the no. 7 people . . . probably trying to goad me into retaliating against them in the same way I’m retaliating against the no. 7 people. I don’t take the bait. They (no. 5) try to keep it fairly subtle. But once this week one of them slipped. As I came out of my apartment, one of them came out of theirs, and I avoided exiting. I waited till she went back inside, and then I came out. I hope and believe she was embarrassed by being thus caught out.

● Sunday, 4-3-2022:   Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson testified to the Senate that her judicial philosophy is her judicial methodology. And she said that her methodology in deciding a case is (I’m simplifying, probably oversimplifying) to determine the limits of her authority as a judge, and, within those limits, achieve a just result in the case before her. That statement (of hers) is problematic. In the highest court (the United States Supreme Court), the precedential effect of a ruling (for other cases) greatly outweighs the effect on the parties in that case.

● I had a productive weekend. I went through about 40 pages of the Journal, and made some very good edits.

● Tuesday, 4-5-2022:   Faith healing is an aggressive form of the placebo effect.

● A faith healer successfully fools the public this way. A certain proportion of those who seek his help have symptoms resulting from hysteria, or which have been mis-diagnosed, who could be “healed” by psychological maneuvers. When these people are “healed” after treatment by the faith healer, people credit him with the result. The rest, patients with actual sicknesses, the great majority, who, of course, the faith healer does not cure, are not counted as evidence against him, because people reason that, well, he can’t be expected to cure everyone. And they consider that if he cures even just, say, five percent of sick people, he’s effective.

● Thursday, 4-7-2022:   Some problems are caused, less by changed circumstances themselves, than by our failure to adapt to them. For example, my fingernails started to become chipped. They were getting softer, but I continued to treat them as I had when they were harder. I solved the problem by becoming aware of the changed situation, and changing my behavior to fit it: I began treating my fingernails more carefully and gently.

● Many injuries could be prevented by noticing the start of symptoms and their connection with a certain repetitive activity we do, and then ceasing the activity, or changing the way we do it.

● Saturday, 4-9-2022:   This week I found a way to streamline my 1-800-SUE-THEM email solicitation letter, which I send in reply to various solicitation emails that I receive. Before, I would click on “reply” and copy a standard letter from my word-processing documents. Then I’d (electronically) attach two documents: a sample display ad and a list of reasons why the mark (1-800-SUE-THEM) is so effective. But I rediscovered one of my websites that combines the display ad and the list of reasons. So I redid my standard letter to contain a link to that website. And now I simply copy that new version of the letter into the reply email. I thus save two steps in sending a reply (attaching two documents), and the presentation itself is more concise and efficient: the letter is shorter, and it asks the recipient to look at just one other document, instead of two.

[Later note (8-22-2022): I don’t get many chances anymore to send it: I think all those people who used to send me solicitation emails have taken me off their mailing lists.]

[Later note (11-19-2023): The website that combines the display ad and the list of reasons is www.powerof1800suethem.com.]

● Sunday, 4-10-2022:   A reminder to myself: When the numbers on the face of a digital clock start to dim, it’s time to replace the battery.

● Monday, 4-11-2022:   I’ve said that I’m far more interested in being a good writer than in being a good person. Earlier in my life I think I prided myself on being a bad (or at least a not-good) person, because I somehow thought being a good person was incompatible with being a creative genius (the image of the demonic creator). But now I understand that that’s fallacious, like my associating genius with mental illness. Being kind to others won’t diminish my creativity. I have a choice how to treat other people. And if I can be just as great whether I’m a good or a bad person, why shouldn’t I be a good person? It’s a matter of how I want to be. And, now, I want to be a good person. Perhaps this change of feeling comes from now unequivocally loving myself and my life—and perhaps from simply being wiser. It’s also easy. While it takes considerable work to become a good writer, it takes little (at least for me, now) to be a good person, perhaps just awareness and desire.

● Tuesday 4-12-2022:   I don’t love myself unconditionally. I have many conditions for loving myself. But, in recent years, all of those conditions have been met!

● Loving oneself allows one to be generous with others. It’s the converse of W. H. Auden’s famous line, “Those to whom evil is done do evil in return”: a matter not so much of ethics as of nature and psychology.

● Thursday, 4-14-2022:   I just got some good news. My recent bone-density test shows I’ve had no further bone loss in the last two years. So I can stay off the prescription medication for it (Alendronate).

● Friday, 4-15-2022:   I’m the shrexenboodle! My biography could be called Life and Times of the Shrexenboodle.

● When a moral philosopher argues for beneficence to others, is he interested in others, or simply enjoying being a moral philosopher? (. . . Is he interested in others, or in philosophy?) . . . It could be both.

● Monday, 4-18-2022:   Sufficient condition is if; necessary condition is only if. . . . If and only if is both conditions combined.

● When you have several possible (apparently equally viable) solutions to a problem, try the simplest or easiest one first.

● Sometimes in writing there’s a tradeoff between clarity and conciseness. The writer must judge whether the additional clarity or precision is worth the additional verbiage.

● Thursday, 4-21-2022:   When I’m stopped at a (red) traffic signal, waiting for it to turn green, for go, I watch the lights controlling cross traffic, to see when it turns to amber, to get a few seconds’ notice that my light is about to change. It’s like, when you’re waiting for a bus to come, looking down the road to try to see it coming from a distance. I don’t know what good it does. I don’t know why I do it.

● Sunday, 4-24-2022:   Philosophy Club. This month the Club goes back to meeting in-person (instead of by computer). I’m not going to attend the in-person meetings, because I think it’s not worth the risk of contracting COVID-19. But I’ll continue to read the reference material for the topics, and to write thoughts and arguments on them. I’ve done so with this month’s topic, “What do we owe to the dead?”

● I took my truncated Camarillo drive just now. I hadn’t planned to take a pleasure drive today, but sitting at the computer my energy flagged, and I thought I should take a break. I’m glad I did. It was refreshing.

● Wednesday, 4-27-2022:   The material in the earlier part of my Journal seems more concentrated than that later on. I think the explanation, again, involves what I’ve called the membrane effect. The material in my earlier diaries was generally so bad that editing it (that is, rejecting some entries) was mandatory. Whereas, later material generally was good enough that editing it was optional, and it took more discipline than I had to cut much of it. Also, perhaps, the earlier material (in the Journal, which I continually reread) is so consistently good as to give me the impression that all my diary material is golden, which abets my reluctance to cut it. Or perhaps I felt that the first half was so good that I’m sure to become famous, and so people will now be interested to hear all my thoughts and experiences, even the trivial ones. Whatever the reasons, I was far less choosy with later material. And yet, if I’m pleased with the quality and quantity of what I already have, I should become more selective, not less. This is why I say that (if my writing survives) editors will have a field day with my Journal.

[Later note (9-18-2023): Now when I put Diary material in my Journal, I don’t even try to make a selection; I simply copy it all. Perhaps I compensate by being more selective about what I write in my Diary. I don’t know. Perhaps I’ve just gotten lazy, or lost my perspective.]

● A lawyer today posted online a photograph of himself wearing a bow tie with images of high-denomination U.S. currency notes, and he asked, “Is this bow tie too much for court?”

Someone replied that it might violate a court rule against “bizarre” dress. Someone else commented that he wouldn’t wear it in front of a jury. I replied with this: “It’s okay now, with inflation.”

● Saturday, 4-30-2022:   Brian Gould, the Philosophy Club facilitator, sent an email to some of the Club members a few days ago, saying that he was having a Zoom meeting this Sunday (tomorrow) on the same topic (“What do we owe to the dead?”) for the benefit of many long-time members who could not attend last Sunday’s in-person meeting. I took the opportunity to rewrite my notes on the topic. The rewrite expands and streamlines the material, and makes it less personal:

Strictly speaking, the question “What do we owe to the dead?” assumes that moral obligations are objectively existing things. But they’re not—they’re subjective. A moral obligation is merely a person’s feeling of obligation. To say “I have a moral obligation to do this” is elliptical for “I feel morally obligated to do this.” Hence, a person can have a moral obligation to the dead, because he can feel such an obligation.

Loosely speaking, I think we observe duties to the dead, not for their sake, per se (we can neither help nor hurt nonexistent persons), but rather for ours, to give us, the living, peace of mind in knowing (or hoping) that certain of our own wishes regarding events after our deaths will be honored. It’s an intergenerational Golden Rule: we treat (or symbolically act toward) the dead as we would be treated after we die. From a slightly different aspect, what we feel we owe the dead, or, more accurately, what I would feel I owe them, is limited to what I think is reasonable of them to ask of us. And what I think is reasonable of them to ask of us is what will require very little time and effort on our part. For example, I might feel obligated to carry out my dead father’s wish that I scatter his ashes in the Pacific Ocean. That would take only a few hours’, perhaps a day’s, time. But I don’t think he could reasonably ask me to spend an hour a day for the rest of my life caring for the urn that held his ashes. Every generation should have the right to devote the bulk of their time and energy to their own interests and enjoyment. Otherwise, people would enjoy their lives much less. It’s a matter of proportion. We owe the dead something. But not much. It’s not as if the urn is art—great art—which we have a duty to preserve. And if it were, we’d save it, out of a duty, not to the dead, but to posterity. Aside from some very limited actions, like scattering someone’s ashes, we remember what’s memorable, and keep what’s worthwhile.

[Later note (5-2-2022): I rewrote the foregoing piece before the meeting, but then rewrote it again afterward, to incorporate some of what I said in the meeting. I’ve omitted the first rewrite—what appears is the final version.]

● Sunday, 5-1-2022:   I just awoke from a dream in which I was a Jewish German woman living in Nazi Germany. The time shifted between World War II; post-war twentieth century; and the present (the twenty-first century). I was taking a long journey, partly by rail, to escape from Nazi Germany. At some point, when I was in the United States in one of the post-war times, I realized that I’d lost my money, which I’d taken with me from Germany (or thought I had). And I decided to go back to Germany for it. I was repeating the trip. I had a teenage or young-adult daughter in the United States. It was a long, drawn-out dream, but I remember only a few fragments, and that situation. I wonder if the dream was stimulated by my worry that I’d forgotten to close the garage door.

● Chronologically, I’m old. But, spiritually, I feel young. In fact, I feel like a child—not childish, but childlike.

● I got a pedicure at Hands to Hold, Sherman Oaks. I think the pedicurist was Sheila. I paid $22.00 for it and gave Sheila a $6.00 tip.

● My business is booming. Next week I have, not only a deposition every day, but for the first three days I have two a day. And six of them are the higher-paid ones. Because I can’t take my exercise walk on a day when I have two depositions, I did the walk twice yesterday and twice today. This is the first time in more than two years that I’ve done that.

● I just finished the latest read-through of my Journal. This one took me about 40 days. I did less editing than I’ve done on previous readings, not because I’m less fastidious, but because I’m finding less need for editing. All things considered, though, that was still rather fast. Each reading makes the piece a bit longer, because I update it with my recent diary entries. This update added nine pages to the Journal.

[Later note (10-15-2023): When I say that I edited my Journal, I mean that I improved the wording of entries (or tried to), not that I deleted any entries. I feel the need to start doing that (deleting entries), too. In adding material to the Journal, I’ve been insufficiently selective.]

● Wednesday, 5-4-2022:   The present crisis seems the worst yet . . . only because we’ve survived all the other ones (but we don’t know whether we’ll survive this one).

● Thursday, 5-5-2022:   Why do we often find what we’re looking for in the last place we look? Because when we find it, we stop looking.

● I’m no longer vulnerable to suicide; I’m firmly grounded in the stratosphere.

● Friday, 5-6-2022:   I’m starting another read-through of the Journal.

● Saturday, 5-7-2022:   The capsaicin cream I’m applying to my back (which regimen I started on 4-12-2022 to treat my back itch) caused such an intense itch as I lay in bed that I couldn’t sleep. I had to get up and take a shower, to wash off the cream. It feels all right now.

● Sunday, 5-8-2022:   Russian dictator Vladimir Putin justifies his recent invasion of Ukraine by accusing NATO of breaking its promise to Russia decades ago that it would not expand toward Russia. Though the accusation is true, it doesn’t justify Putin’s invasion. There’s no rational connection; it’s a non sequitur. In fact, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine gives other countries in the region a reason to join NATO: to protect themselves against a Russian invasion.

● Tuesday, 5-10-2022:   Today will be my last dose of Prozac, at least for now. It had no effect on my depersonalization / derealization.

● Wednesday, 5-11-2022:   Yesterday, I went up to floor fifteen in an office building elevator. The floors were numbered one through twelve, and fourteen through twenty. After the first person got out, on floor “fourteen,” and the elevator doors closed again, I laughed and said to the other person in the car, “I hate to tell her, but that’s the thirteenth floor!”

● Thursday, 5-12-2022:   I think I again irritated the urethra or the bladder neck with the catheter today, because I suddenly feel bladder fullness when it’s probably nearly empty. I probably violated one or two of my rules for using the catheter: “When I insert the catheter (and before the tip gets to the bladder), if I feel an intense urge to urinate, pause the insertion, relax the pelvic floor muscles, and wait for that feeling to subside (before resuming the insertion).” And perhaps this one: “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 then resume the insertion.” This is the first time I’ve had the symptom in over six months. I hope it goes away again, quickly.

● Several hours later now, I just urinated (with the catheter), and everything seems fine. Bullet dodged?

● Saturday, 5-14-2022:   It turns out there was some minor injury; the symptoms are slight—probably caused as I surmised. I just have to be even more careful using the catheter.

● I hoped that this current urinary discomfort would be mild and fleeting. But it’s getting worse. It will get worse before it gets better. I’ll just have to ride it out while it runs its course. Nonetheless, the discomfort is much less intense than last time. And there’s no bleeding, which means the underlying injury is less severe.

● Sunday, 5-15-2022:   Why do we traditionally say that women and children should be evacuated from a dangerous situation first? It partly comes from old ideas of chivalry. Which in turn is based on the truth that generally men are stronger than women and more capable of fighting. It makes sense that persons more vulnerable to harm and less able to contribute to the group’s defense should leave first.

● I just remembered a dream I had last night. I was about to graduate from a school, a college perhaps. A graduation ceremony was to take place a few hours hence. As part of the ceremony, each student was allowed to present his business card. I was very much looking forward to presenting my 1-800-SUE-THEM card. I had many of the cards. But when I went to take one, I discovered that all of them had serious defects: either the print quality was bad, or the card was cut wrong, for example. I wanted to hurry to the printer to get more cards printed in time for the ceremony. Perhaps the dream was stimulated by this experience. On Friday (5-13-2022), I gave away my Xerox printer/copier (it had a slight defect that made me want to replace it). The person who took it was someone I’d known, who worked for Attorneys Kim and Robert Pearman when I handled depositions for them two decades ago. He said he was going to move to another state and start working in marketing, instead of law practice. I considered giving him my 1-800-SUE-THEM card (apropos of marketing, and law practice), but ultimately decided not to. I later regretted not giving him one.

● The urinary problem seems to be healing.

● Monday, 5-16-2022:   Now it seems to be getting worse.

● Tuesday, 5-17-2022:   Old age is where you pay for the foolish things you did when you were young.

● Though I have a strong opinion about it, abortion policy, whether it should be allowed or prohibited, or how it should be limited, is a matter of perspective—it depends on how you look at it. Like any moral decision, there’s no right or wrong answer; the judgment is subjective.

● Wednesday, 5-18-2022:   I just awoke from a nightmare. I was living in a squalid home with ten or so deformed, grotesque roommates. I’d been there for a few weeks, as part of a punishment, or something, perhaps ordered by a court; the reason was never clear. At one point, as a joke, I was planning to announce to the others that I knew why I was there; I was going to advance two humorous theories: one, that it was just a dream I was induced to have, to make me appreciate my real life when I awoke from it. Two, . . . I’ve suddenly forgotten the other one. I knew all too well that it would be just a joke, because the situation was real. It occurred to me that, if these terrible conditions improved a little, I’d be tempted to resort to intoxication to temporarily escape my misery by getting some pleasure. And I thought that a way to resist the temptation would be simply to remind myself of the improvement in conditions, and to appreciate the (albeit modest) improvement.

● Since we (human beings) are a major focus of our philosophy, philosophy often overlaps with the subjects of psychology, sociology, and anthropology.

● Thursday, 5-19-2022:   When you look at the world, you see not only the world, but also your image of the world, and your image of yourself.

● Friday, 5-20-2022:   The urinary symptoms are improving, slowly. I think that perhaps holding the urine too long (which I did to reduce the frequency of catheterization) may have contributed to, or even outright caused, the problem this time.

[Later note (8-6-2023): That had nothing to do with it.]

● Saturday, 21 May 2022:   Richard, Happy Birthday! Keep up the good work!

● Sunday, 5-22-2022:   Philosophy Club meeting, by Zoom. Topic: “Pet ethics: Is it immoral to own pets?” My response:

Strictly speaking, morality is subjective; so it’s not (strictly) immoral to own pets. Loosely speaking, my own view, or feeling, is this. If keeping a pet is wrong, it’s wrong because it hurts humanity, by using scarce resources, like food and water, to sustain the pet, and producing excrement. Keeping a pet is not wrong (or is less bad) to the extent that it gratifies you. The calculus is the same as for many other personal activities. For example, if you enjoy taking pleasure drives, does your pleasure justify the use of the fuel, and the pollution. And it seems to me that, if you keep a pet, you have a duty to treat it decently. Decent treatment does not require that we give the pet a long life, or even that we maintain its life (an animal has no concept of or interest in longevity; and no animal is a great creator that we’d want to save for its contribution to posterity). Decent treatment requires merely that we not cause it unnecessary suffering. One could argue, though, that you could rightfully cause a pet to suffer if doing so caused you sufficient pleasure. A counter argument would be that whatever pleasure you gained thereby would be outweighed by the distress caused to others by their awareness of the cruelty. Or we could simply say we find the practice unacceptable, with no redeeming value to speak of, and so choose to ban it. That would be my approach.

● In The Case Against Pets, Professors Gary Francione and Anna Charlton argue that it’s morally wrong to own pets because non-human animals have a moral right not to be property. My response is that rights are not something we have, but rather something we give—something we choose to give, or not to give. And I would choose to give animals the right not to be caused (by us) unnecessary suffering, but not a right to life or a right not to be owned. To think that being owned causes an animal suffering, or harms it in any other way, as being owned harms a person, is to anthropomorphize animals—to ascribe to them far greater mental sophistication than they have.

● Tuesday, 5-24-2022:   Gish bagiddle!

● Wednesday, 5-25-2022:   Yesterday there was yet another horrific gun massacre, at a school in Uvalde, Texas, in which 19 young students and two teachers were murdered, just two weeks after the last gun massacre. I fear that “thoughts and prayers” are backfiring—they (at least the prayers) gratify God, and so they actually motivate God to cause further massacres, to stimulate more prayers. God works in mysterious ways.

● I spent most of the day researching the candidates for the upcoming election on June 7^th, and marking my sample ballot. I worked hard at it.

● Friday, 5-27-2022:   Earlier this week I again asked my webmaster, Keri, for her help in fixing my website problems, requesting that she be available for a conference call with my general computer support company.

Here’s part of the email exchange with her, which I’m putting here because I thought my final reply was especially good:

Me: Hi Keri,

GoDaddy has fixed most of the problems with my websites. Just three of the websites still have problems. To fix them, I’ve reached out to Ntiva. Ntiva says they’d like to have a conference call with you (and me). It could take up to an hour. Are you open to that? If so, the first time that works both for me and (apparently) for Ntiva is Thursday morning (5-26-2022) between 7:00 and 10:00. Do you have any availability then? If so, what’s the best time, and how would we get in touch with you—call you?, at what phone number? Please let me know.

Richard (Eisner)

Keri: Hi Richard,

Sorry, for the late response. I am not sure what Ntiva has to do with this, but I don’t see the need to have a call with them. I have no idea what GoDaddy originally did or what they may have done since our last communication. I don’t want to waste your time and money on me troubleshooting an issue that I have already tried to correct. I wish I could be of more assistance.

Thanks,
Keri

Me: Hi Keri,

I appreciate your trying to save my time and money. But that’s my decision. If I’m wasting my time and money, it doesn’t affect you, since I’m paying you for your time. And this is something I want to try. You may know that this attempt won’t work, but I don’t know it, and Ntiva doesn’t know it. Trying a possible solution that doesn’t work, at least accomplishes one thing: learning that it doesn’t work, which you can’t know until you try it. Let Ntiva see that what they have in mind now won’t work. Then they can think about it and possibly come up with a suggestion that does work. But if you refuse to cooperate, they can just say, “Well, we tried to help, but we couldn’t, because she [you] wouldn’t cooperate.”

Richard //

● At the end of a deposition I defended this week, I had to urinate, but debated with myself whether I should hold it and wait till I got home. I decided to hold it. Later it occurred to me that I should have urinated before I left, and not waited till I got home, to ease the stress on my bladder. I derived from that experience a little question to capsulize my choice in such situations: Is this decision prudent, or perverse? (That one was perverse.)

● Saturday, 5-28-2022:   I went to the gas station, to put gasoline in my car (in the gas tank). I prepaid $60.00. After filling my tank, the meter said $56.34. I went to get my change and the attendant gave me $13.66. I handed her back ten dollars. She looked puzzled, but after a moment she understood, and said, “Oh, you gave me $60.00, right?” I nodded. I returned the ten dollars, not for the sake of the oil company, but for the sake of the attendant: I didn’t want her to lose her job for the mistake.

● I get a manicure every other Saturday morning, at 9:00. This morning I arrived early enough that I took a short nap in my car before going into the manicure shop. I actually fell asleep. When I awoke, I had the unusual feeling of not knowing where I was, or the day of the week, or the situation. All I knew was that I was waking up from sleep. Before opening my eyes to find out where I was, I tried to remember what situation I was in. I thought I might be at a deposition (I often sleep, or try to sleep, in the car before the deposition). But I couldn’t remember. I don’t recall ever having had that sensation before. It was actually pleasant. But it was pleasant only because it was just momentary. Had the disorientation persisted, it would quickly have become very unpleasant.

● Sunday, 5-29-2022:   I dreamed that I had a friend who was still in high school, and I was her guest there. She prompted me to enter an essay contest held by the school for the students, and she suggested a subtle, clever way I could structure my piece. The school accepted me as a contestant. But the deadline to submit an essay was noon the next day. I was in a panic to write a draft in just a few hours’ time, and was hurriedly reading the assigned source material. At one point, the teacher extended the submission deadline by a day, but even that gave me very little time, and I was anxious to think and write quickly. Nonetheless, I was confident in my ability to produce a winning essay, and I even taunted the defending champion, boasting that this year I would surely win.

● Tomorrow (Monday) is Memorial Day. It’s now 8:35 a.m. (Sunday, the middle day of a three-day weekend). It’s extraordinarily calm and peaceful, probably because many people are away for the holiday. Many people, for the holiday, go to popular holiday venues. Ironically, they lose the holiday by being in a crowd. I get a holiday by staying at home (whence everyone’s left), and having a wonderful calm. Of course, that works only if you enjoy being at home. Which I do. I work most weekdays; and I look forward to being at home the rest of the time to work on my writing.

● If you have to cut short a remedial action, like ventilating a room, take solace in knowing that you’re losing the less effective part of the action, which does more good at the beginning, since there’s more pollution to start with. As it dissipates, you get diminishing returns.

● Don’t take religious doctrines or arguments too seriously.

● My recent urinary discomfort has largely resolved, but not completely.

● I bought a new cell phone last week. Because of the transition from 3G to 5G, the old one would have become obsolete soon.

● We’ve been pretty lucky with the weather this year. So far, there have been a few very hot days, but generally it’s been temperate. Which means the extreme-heat season will be only four months long this year.

● Monday, 5-30-2022:   Racial discrimination is sustained in a self-fulfilling vicious circle. Our discrimination against a certain group of people causes them to have less wealth, and so less education and less leisure time to actualize their talents. This causes them to accomplish less than other groups. And we cite their lesser accomplishment as evidence of their inferiority, which we use to rationalize and perpetuate our discrimination against them.

● Wednesday, 6-1-2022:   I’ve written several arguments on abortion. Well, here’s another one: A typical argument against abortion goes like this. A woman declares that she wanted to have an abortion, but for some reason didn’t go through with it, and she had the baby; that baby is now sixteen years old, and a wonderful person. Because her having the abortion would have eliminated this wonderful person, that abortion would have been bad, and so abortion is bad, and should be prohibited.

But if she had had the abortion, and then had a baby five years later, that child, too, might have been a wonderful person, no less wonderful, and no less likely to be wonderful, than the other one. And, if not for the abortion five years before, the woman might not have gotten pregnant again, or would have aborted that one (perhaps because she didn’t want more children than the one). So, while the earlier abortion would be responsible for the nonexistence of one wonderful person, it would be responsible for the existence of another wonderful person. Hence, women having abortions does not make for a difference in wonderful people being born. It makes a difference just in the circumstances of their birth. And allowing abortion improves those circumstances, because a birth that the mother wants is in better circumstances than a birth she does not want, or wants to avoid. For example, perhaps the earlier pregnancy was accidental, and she did not want to give birth, because she couldn’t afford to care for the child, but five years later she does want a child, and can afford it—obviously, better for both her and the child . . . and the community.

● Saturday, 6-4-2022:   Haircut (Brenda).

● Well, I don’t have to worry about getting a sexually transmitted disease.

● Sunday, 6-5-2022:   I’ve always had a certain cheat on my no-daytime-naps rule. When I arrive at a destination early, I recline the seat in my car and sleep (or at least try to sleep). But in the last few weeks, I’ve started a new form of cheat, one that’s more problematic (it’s more problematic because the other one is unavoidable, and so excusable). The new cheat is putting my head down on my desk, at home. That’s better than the traditional kind of nap (I don’t lie down, and the naps are shorter). But still it’s cheating. I’m uncertain what to do about it. My inclination is to try to end it; the longer it continues, the harder it will be to stop.

● Monday, 6-6-2022:   The urinary problem I had for several weeks a few weeks ago seems largely to have resolved.

● Tuesday, 6-7-2022:   Today was the last application of capsaicin cream to my back, to try to heal the chronic back itch. I started it almost two months ago, on Tuesday, 4-12-2022. In the next few weeks, I’ll know whether it worked.

● Wednesday, 6-8-2022:   Today I had a deposition in Victorville (California). Getting there was a wild ride. My directions were faulty; I went too far on one road in a remote wilderness area. I had the good sense to judge that I was going the wrong way, so I doubled back. I improvised, and took a freeway entrance that said “to Victorville,” though it wasn’t part of my written directions. I exited the freeway in Victorville after I saw the name of a road that was in my directions. I asked a clerk at a gas station for directions, and followed them (I was close to the destination). I couldn’t find the street name of the destination. So I stopped and called the court-reporting agency. They told me the name of the hotel where the deposition was to take place; I could see the hotel from where I’d stopped. Wisely, I had left the house very early. And, just in time, I arrived.

● Thursday, 6-9-2022:   The weather is finally getting hot. This was the first night this year I left my front door open, to cool the apartment.

● Sunday, 6-12-2022:   “Profit over people” means increasing wealth while decreasing well-being. Take a society composed of ten persons. One of them is a millionaire (a rich person); the other nine are financially struggling working people. A transaction is proposed that would double the millionaire’s wealth, but reduce everyone else’s. Now, the millionaire already has more wealth than he needs: enough to live in luxury without ever again having to work. So increasing his wealth won’t significantly improve his life. But the other nine persons have less wealth than they need, so significantly reducing it would appreciably harm their lives. Thus the transaction would increase wealth but decrease well-being. (Quality of life can worsen for any number of reasons, like overcrowding, or pollution, or heat; but invariably the rich benefit and the rest suffer.) Whereas, to prevent the proposed transaction would, instead, put people over profit.

● Monday, 6-13-2022:   I’m watching the movie Operation Mincemeat (which took place in World War Two). Part of the British cleverness in the operation was the simple wisdom not to underestimate the Germans.

● Tuesday, 6-14-2022:   Well, it’s been a week since I last applied capsaicin cream to my back to try to cure the back itch. It didn’t work. Nonetheless, applying the capsaicin cream for two months was an interesting experience . . . though not something I’d have chosen to do just for the experience.

● Friday, 6-17-2022:   I read a newspaper headline, “Elon Musk is furious!” And I thought to myself, Elon Musk is the world’s richest person—what’s he got to be furious about?! Did he order a radio on Amazon, and it was the wrong color?!

● Sunday, 6-19-2022:   I think that, in their heart of hearts, people understand that there’s no afterlife, no reincarnation, no heaven or hell, and that death is mere nonexistence: we universally wish for the dead, not to have a rollicking time, but to rest in peace—a euphemism for nothingness.

● I find it curious that sometimes people, clamoring for retribution, will demand that certain heinous criminals be killed, and not merely imprisoned: If death is worse than imprisonment . . . we’re all in trouble (because we all soon die—we all end up in the same “place”).

[Later note (9-17-2023): A phenomenon that supports that idea is this: When an accused murderer is on trial for the murder(s), but just before the trial starts, or just before the verdict or the sentence is announced, he commits suicide—we don’t feel gratified by his death; instead, we feel cheated of our opportunity for justice. . . .]

[Later note (9-17-2023): Yes, but . . . we may feel that justice is done—and done best of all—if he’s sentenced to death, and the sentence is carried out. . . .]

Or, if there is a heaven and a hell, why are those vengeful persons sure that God will send the condemned to hell and not to heaven? Aren’t they presumptuous in thinking they know what God will do?

● Thursday, 6-23-2022:   Chronically taking drugs for intoxication is like going through life wearing sunglasses.

● Religious belief inhibits the acquisition of knowledge. Generally, if you’re searching for an explanation, you’ll continue searching until you find it. But if you adopt a religious explanation, you may hold onto it, and stop searching further.

● Friday, 6-24-2022:   I think I’ve outdone myself in speed of composition. I just got Brian Gould’s topic question for this Sunday’s Philosophy Club meeting, and, within just three hours of reading the question, I’ve written a more or less complete answer. Of course, I’ll probably change it considerably. We’ll see. . . . I think that part of the explanation for my great speed of composition these days is my assiduously rereading and editing my Journal for almost two years now. I don’t have to spend time “collecting my thoughts,” because constantly rereading and reworking my Journal has already collected my thoughts within me. My gun is already loaded and cocked; all that’s left for me to do is to point it at the target and pull the trigger.

● Sunday, 6-26-2022:   Philosophy Club meeting, by Zoom. Here’s the topic, as given by Brian Gould, the Club facilitator:

“DO YOU KNOW HOW WELL YOUR LIFE IS GOING? What determines your degree of well-being? For example, is your well-being mainly or entirely a matter of the amount of pleasure and suffering you’ve experienced? Or, is your well-being a matter of how many of your desires (or your important desires) you’ve satisfied? Or, apart from your pleasures, sufferings, and desires, are there objective criteria that determine your degree of well-being? What other considerations should you take into account in determining how well your life is being lived?

“Can you be wrong about your well-being? Consider the difference between, on the one hand, the actual amounts and kinds of pleasure, suffering, or satisfied desires you’ve experienced, and on the other hand, how you evaluate yourself on the amounts and kinds of pleasure, suffering, or satisfied desires you’ve experienced. Which matters more to your well-being?”

And here’s my answer (the final version, from two days later):

How well your life is going (or simply well-being) has an objective aspect, and a subjective aspect. Objectively, just happiness is actually good for you (and unhappiness, actually bad for you). All sentient beings, in all circumstances, appreciate happiness. It’s better to satisfy your desires and be happy, than to satisfy your desires and be unhappy, or less happy. Whereas, all other desires are subjective, a matter of perspective. One man might wish to be a great basketball player. I might think that aspiration, or accomplishment, utterly worthless. And even his own view of it might change with age. The two aspects are interrelated. Satisfying your subjective desires makes you happier. And if you think you’re better off with a certain good job, for example, surely you’d think you’re even better off if it’s a job you enjoy. Now, do you know how well your life is going? As to the subjective aspect; because it’s subjective, there’s nothing actual to know. You may know your feeling about it—how satisfied you feel about your life. As to the objective aspect, you can’t know that you’re happy, or unhappy (after all, this would be a proposition [“I’m happy”], and you can’t know propositions). But you can know your experience, and your experience includes your happiness. Finally, a person has, or should be given, the right to define his own well-being.

[Later note (5-14-2024): Usually happiness is labeled subjective, meaning that it’s part of experience, which only the person having the experience (the subject) can directly perceive. When, in my (foregoing) paragraph on well-being, I label happiness with the opposite term—objective—I mean that, whether or not a person knows how happy he is, there’s a fact of the matter: at any given time, he’s actually experiencing whatever level (possibly zero) of happiness (or unhappiness) he’s experiencing—unlike a person’s desires, which have no amount.]

● A story about a cat who ate a hat could be called The Hat in the Cat.

● About an analytically problematic concept, we can still speak, but we must speak less rigorously, more loosely.

● This afternoon, when I was out of the apartment throwing away some trash, I whistled (the opening melody of the first movement of Mozart’s The Hunt quartet). And I think the neighbor in no. 1 came out just after I went out, and he heard me. Tonight he renewed his efforts to wake me up from sleep.

● Monday, 6-27-2022:   Well, I did it again. This morning, on my exercise walk, a new dog at a new place barked loudly as I walked by it. I got angry and vigorously and repeatedly kicked the gate with my right leg. I’ll see how much damage I did to my knee.

● Thursday, 6-30-2022:   I dodged a bullet. I’ve had no right-knee symptoms since the kicking incident Monday.

● Friday, 7-1-2022:   In a documentary film about obituary writers of The New York Times, one of the writers says, “There’s nothing you can do about dying.” Well, yes and no. Yes, in that dying is inevitable for each of us. But no, in that you can do something about dying by how you live. You can live so that, when you’re dying, you can look back on your life and feel that you’ve lived well.

● Saturday, 7-2-2022:   To those people who were eligible to vote in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, but didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump’s opponent, (and so didn’t vote,) because they thought Clinton was merely the lesser evil, or because they thought Trump, though bad, was not significantly worse than Clinton—to those people who also rue the U.S. Supreme Court’s recently abolishing the right to abortion . . . behold your handiwork!

● Recent devastating rulings of the United States Supreme Court, including the overturning of Roe v. Wade, should be a lesson to those who don’t vote because they think there’s no real difference between the Democrats and the Republicans!

● If you grew roots for food, and, after harvesting them, you hung them all up to dry, and you numbered them; the one immediately after number 65 would be root 66.

● Sunday, 7-3-2022:   Pro-choice persons often characterize anti-abortion beliefs as “religious.” That’s unfair. Whether a fetus is a person with a right to life may be a religious question, but it’s also simply a philosophical question. It’s no more essentially religious than the belief that an adult person has a right to life and therefore should not be murdered. (Though the [my] answers to those two questions are different.)

● Monday, 7-4-2022:   I’ve just finished the latest read-through of my Journal. This one took about two months. It now runs to exactly 600 pages! I think it’s finally finished, for now. I’ve found someone to post it on the Web for me (not Web Strategies), with whom I’m negotiating a price. He estimates it will take him about three months to post it. I’ll read it through one more time before giving it to him to post. Tomorrow I’ll take a little pleasure drive to celebrate!

● Hanukkah commemorates the “miracle” of a one-day supply of lighting oil lasting for a whole week. But it’s far less likely that the event was a supernatural miracle than that someone simply underestimated how much oil there was or how long it would last.

● On 2-2-2022 I declared that a significant right elbow, forearm, and wrist injury of long standing had finally resolved. It seems to have returned, precipitated by doing my weekly shoulder exercises too vigorously. I’ll ease up on those exercises, which will presumably allow the arm to heal again.

[Later note (7-15-2022): It did, but then, today, I injured it again by doing the shoulder exercises too vigorously.]

● Tuesday, 7-5-2022:   No pleasure drive. My email was not working, and I had to take the time to get it fixed.

● The urinary discomfort seems to have returned, probably caused by my trying new catheters over the last 48 hours. Now I’ll return to the old, comfortable one. I was trying new catheters because the old one is wearing out. From now on, when I try new catheters, if the first one I try is unsatisfactory, I’ll wait at least a few days before trying another new one. . . . On second thought, my impression is that my urinary discomfort comes from injury at or near the bladder neck, not further down in the urethra. But I can tell whether a catheter is good when it’s passing further down in my urethra. So, if it’s a bad catheter, simply withdraw it before it gets to the bladder neck.

● Thankfully, it appears that my foregoing note about the return of the urinary discomfort was a false alarm. Either that, or I took effective remedial action just in time. Whichever it is, I feel grateful.

● Wednesday, 7-6-2022:   Noam Chomsky has said that the world’s most dangerous entity is the (United States) Republican party. I agree. But a gazelle being chased by a lion, if it (the gazelle) could think and speak, would probably disagree.

● Thursday, 7-7-2022:   It’s amazing how reasonable even our severest opponents sound when they’re agreeing with us.

● Here’s a letter I dropped off for my psychiatrist at Kaiser:

Dear Dr. Kohm,

I told you about a negative side effect of the Prozac, loss of libido, which (the libido) is coming back. But I think I have another side effect, which I didn’t mention, and which hasn’t gone away. Namely, several times every hour or so, I think, I get a sensation as if for an instant my nervous system shuts off. It’s as if I’m running on electricity, and someone flips the switch off, then immediately back on again. It’s like a momentary electrical jolt, but the opposite of a jolt—not a sudden surge, but a sudden deficit. I think I feel it prominently in my face (especially my eyes) and my hands and fingers. I notice it more when I’m standing or walking than when I’m sitting or lying down. It’s not dramatic or acute (or dangerous), but it’s unpleasant. I don’t know exactly when it started; but I think it’s been a few months now, and I don’t remember having it before I took the Prozac.

This experience has made me change my mind about trying other medications to attempt to cure my depersonalization / derealization. The decision about that comes down to whether the potential benefit outweighs the risks. There’s no way to precisely quantify the benefit and the risks; it’s an intuitive calculation. But here are my thoughts on that now: When we last spoke you said that trying these drugs is not without risk. This Prozac side effect gives me a new appreciation of the risks. And I think that the benefit (the resolution of the depersonalization / derealization) is a long shot (we’ve already tried two drugs, and neither has worked). A significant risk is far more likely to materialize than the benefit. And, though the resolution of the depersonalization / derealization would be wonderful, it’s not essential. I’m very pleased with myself and my life. The upshot is, I sense that, in further experimenting with these psyche medications, I have more to lose than to gain. Of course, if there’s a medical breakthrough, and some drug seems particularly promising, please let me know.

Meanwhile, can anything be done for the side effect I mentioned?

Sincerely,

Richard Eisner

● Friday, 7-8-2022:   My psychiatrist, Dr. Kohm, responded to my 7-7-2022 letter. She said the symptom I talked about was caused by my stopping the Prozac too suddenly. I needed to taper off the dosage. So she recommended that I resume the Prozac at a low dose and then redo the tapering off. So tomorrow morning I’ll start taking 20 mg of it a day.

● Saturday, 7-9-2022:   I figured out how to change the power setting on my new microwave oven. (It’s the other big dial on the front, the one that says “Power, amount.”)

● I’ve just begun yet another read-through of my Journal. I’ve read thirteen pages, and made not a single change!

● Sunday, 7-10-2022:   Japanese former prime minister Shinzo Abe was assassinated last week. His legacy can be stated simply: he helped the rich and hurt the poor.

● To financially help the rich in a country is to hurt the country, for this reason. Material wealth is correlative, the distribution of scarce resources. When one man acquires more wealth, that wealth has to come from somewhere; and it comes from other men. So when the rich get richer, the poor (or the non-rich) get poorer. And there are far more non-rich people than rich people. Further, since the rich already have more wealth than they need, getting even richer does not significantly improve their well-being—it doesn’t truly help them. But since the non-rich have less than they need, or at least they need what they have, a loss of some of it truly hurts them.

● I’m the Jipperjoodle.

● Well, I read two more pages of my Journal, and I made a change there. But it was an improvement!

● Monday, 7-11-2022:   I’m a right-handed leftist.

● I’ve resumed taking 20 mg daily of Prozac, and today I didn’t notice that unpleasant symptom, the electrical jolt. That’s encouraging.

● Tuesday, 7-12-2022:   Very short story: Once upon a time, there was a King and Queen who lived happily ever after.

● Wednesday, 7-13-2022:   What determines whether I add a “Later note” regarding a Journal entry’s flaws, or simply rewrite the original entry? One factor is just my sense about which will make for a better or more interesting piece of writing. If I’m particularly proud of the underlying piece, I’m inclined to restructure it to improve it, as opposed to merely tacking on a comment. Occasionally I do both. Another factor is the underlying item’s age. I’m more likely to revise the piece than to comment on it if it’s newer . . . I feel as if it’s unfinished; the paint is still wet.

[Later note (1-29-2024): Sometimes the “Later notes” function as a sort of stream of consciousness.]

● Thursday, 7-14-2022:   In a deposition, a way to defend your client against an opposing attorney’s aggressive, rapid-fire questioning is (if your client is using a foreign-language interpreter) to insist that the interpretation be consecutive, rather than simultaneous.

● Friday, 7-15-2022:   I’ve decided to use my old webmaster, Web Strategies, to post my Journal on the World Wide Web. I don’t know how long it will take them to do it, but I’m going to read it through once more before I give it to them to post.

● Saturday, 7-16-2022:   Since April 1999, I’ve kept a log of every time I use a catheter (which, nowadays, means every time I urinate). I keep it in a computer file titled urine.record.

● Sunday, 7-17-2022:   In my apartment, for cooling in the hot weather, I don’t use refrigerated air conditioning; I use just (electric) fans. I have two of them placed across the room from my desk, directed at where I sit at my desk. I have one set at the lowest possible speed; the other, at a slightly higher speed. That gives me a choice of three speeds: the slow one alone; the faster one alone; or both together.

● Wednesday, 7-20-2022:   Yesterday I had blood in my urine. But none since, and no discomfort. I guess I dodged a bullet.

● Friday, 7-22-2022:   . . . But I got hit by another bullet: In the 7-2-2022 entry, above, I recounted that an old injury to my right forearm, which finally resolved five or six months before, came back to life when I did my shoulder exercises too strenuously. Last Tuesday, 7-19-2022, I aggravated it again, and this time, I think, more seriously. I was carrying my heavy briefcase in my right hand, when an attendant in a downtown Los Angeles office building handed me a key card. I didn’t have the presence of mind to set down the briefcase and reach for the card, but instead reached for it, still holding the briefcase (my other briefcase was in my other hand). I paid for that mistake. I hope my arm will recover.

● Saturday, 7-23-2022:   This month’s Philosophy Club topic is “Why we curse.” I think that curse words serve a useful purpose in allowing us to let off emotional steam (verbally), so that the pressure doesn’t build up and violently explode (physically). (I won’t attend this meeting because it’s in-person; I don’t want to risk getting COVID-19.)

● Sunday, 7-24-2022:   I used to find it impossible to successfully budget my money. And I used to chastise myself for it, thinking that my difficulty was caused by a lack of discipline on my part in making a budget. But now I see it more clearly. Now budgeting my money is effortless. And I see that the difference is just a matter of my income. Budgeting your money is hard when you don’t have enough money for all your needs, but it’s easy when you have more money than you need. In fact, I don’t actually have to budget: I know what I spend money on (and I spend it on needs, not wants); I simply follow that routine; it leaves over a significant amount, which I save.

● Wednesday, 7-27-2022:   At university, in one of the fine arts drawing classes I took, the professor gave the class an assignment or exercise designed to stimulate the students’ expressiveness. The professor said that I was the only student he’d ever met who didn’t need that exercise (because I was already extremely artistically expressive). I think the same situation pertains to my use of psychedelic drugs: those chemicals are supposed to stimulate a person’s creative insight—I don’t need it.

● Thursday, 7-28-2022:   The right-wing try to turn the common man against “the elite,” intellectual liberals, or leftists. In so doing, the Right have it half right (or half correct): the elite are to blame for the common man’s oppression, but it’s not the Left elite. There are two elites: the Left elite, and the Right elite. The enemies of poor and working people are the Right elite, the wealthy, who seek to stay wealthy by keeping the rest poor. Indeed, the Left are the common man’s friend: they push for greater economic equality. So the people need not stop blaming the elite; they just need to blame the correct elite—the Right.

● Friday, 7-29-2022:   Do we ever sneeze when we’re asleep?

● If I were alone in a room with Donald Trump, he would have nothing to fear from me—my self-restraint is excellent.

● Donald Trump and his followers, the “stop the steal” movement, don’t actually believe they won the 2020 presidential election. They know they lost. Their claim to the contrary amounts to a declaration that they’re not committed to democracy, that they’re committed, instead, to seizing political power by any means available—including, if necessary, by fraud or force.

[Later note (11-19-2023): Well, the stupider ones may actually believe that Trump won the 2020 presidential election.]

● Sunday, 7-31-2022:   Sometimes the state releases a convicted murderer from prison, and then, when he’s released, he murders again. And people angrily ask how the state could have given such a person the chance to kill again. The criticism is usually unfair. We can’t predict perfectly who will commit a crime, and who won’t. Anyone might potentially do so. The alternative, if we insist on completely eliminating the possibility of re-offense, is never to release anyone from prison. Which is unacceptable. We must simply use our best judgment about whom to let out, understanding that there’s always a risk, and that occasionally we’ll get it wrong. And any criticism of the release policy should be based, not on one instance, but on a pattern.

● Why do people with Turret’s syndrome blurt out swear words? If I tell you not to think of a green elephant, you’ll think of a green elephant. Uttering swear words is taboo. We subconsciously continually restrain ourselves from saying them. When all restraint is removed, that’s what comes out.

● Monday, 8-1-2022:   I’ve found that, when I feel sleepy, and am tempted to take a nap, even just by briefly putting my head down on my desk (which temptation I’ve decided to resist), if I force myself to continue working, the feeling soon (if not immediately) passes. I might make a rare exception to the no-nap policy if the tiredness were caused by a lack of sleep the night before. But I think, in my case, the cause is almost always psychological.

● Wednesday, 8-3-2022:   Severe lower back pain today. It’s not bad when I’m sitting or lying down, but it’s considerable when I walk, or when I get up from a chair, or sit down. Years ago, I’d have taken narcotic pain medication for it, but now I just ride it out with no medication. I really dislike the unpleasant side effects of the narcotics, especially the constipation.

[Later note (9-15-2023): Of course, I still like another side effect: the euphoria. But that’s only momentary, whereas the constipation lasts a long time.]

● Saturday, 8-6-2022:   My back is getting better, slowly but steadily. It was better Thursday than it was on Wednesday; it was better Friday than it was Thursday; and it’s better today than it was yesterday. It will be at least a few more days until I’m well enough to take my long exercise-walks.

On the positive side (or likewise positively), that recent re-injury of my right forearm that I was worried about seems (again) to have completely resolved.

● Monday, 8-8-2022:   I got a new laser printer today. I’ll use it just to make copies of checks.

● Lifting the new printer has aggravated my lower back, and hurt my recovery.

● I just watched the documentary film Take Your Pill, about stimulant drugs. From personal experience, I understand the lure of stimulants. They make hard, tedious tasks feel easy, even fun. But I would reserve them for rare occasions, like critically important examinations (taking them, not preparing for them), for this reason: Preliminarily, you can’t use them daily for a long time. They’re addictive; you develop a tolerance to them. Which means you have to take higher and higher doses to get the same effect. And you can’t keep increasing the dose, because it would ruin your health. But even if you take them daily for just a short time, when you stop, it will be harder to function during the rest of your time—harder, not only than it was when you were taking the drugs, but also harder than it was before then. (If you traveled into space for a week and were weightless; when you returned to Earth, you’d feel not just normally heavy—but extremely heavy . . ..) That adverse effect on the long term (the time after you stop taking the drugs) outweighs the advantage of taking them during the short term, simply because the long term is so much longer than the short term, and so the short-term advantage is not worth it.

● Tuesday, 8-9-2022:   I had my annual routine physical exam today, by Dr. Bhat, M.D. Good news—I’m very healthy! I’ve even gained weight: I weigh 140 pounds.

● Friday, 8-12-2022:   I just finished the latest read-through of my Journal for editing. This time it took just a month and three days. I’m now going to submit it to my webmaster to post on the Internet!

● Saturday, 8-13-2022:   Today was the first time since the backache last week that I took my full exercise-walk. The day before yesterday, I walked a third of the way; yesterday, half.

● I took my Camarillo drive just now (I just got back). It was refreshing. I hadn’t taken a pleasure drive for almost four months.

● Sunday, 8-14-2022:   Avoiding taking naps entails avoiding even lying down, which would be to at least flirt with sleeping. I can sit down, of course, but not lie down. It’s a temptation I must constantly resist. The mystery is why, when actual bedtime comes, that temptation (to lie down and sleep) suddenly disappears.

● I just read an article that said, “A recent study found that eating [French] fries two to three times a week doubles the risk of premature death.” At first blush, that sounds like a precisely quantified statement. But it’s not. What is “premature death”?—dying an hour sooner?, a day sooner?, a week?, a month? If I loved eating fries; for the pleasure of eating them three times a week (for many decades), I’d gladly die a fortnight sooner.

● Tuesday, 8-16-2022:   I had a dream early this morning, in which I worked for a law firm as their marketing director. We were advertising with my 1-800-SUE-THEM, but we’d attracted not a single client. It was a long, frustrating dream.

● Thursday, 8-18-2022:   Here’s a message I left for my Kaiser psychiatrist:

Dr. Kohm, please refill my prescription for the liquid Prozac. I got the medication. It’s in a small bottle, with a separate little measuring syringe. The syringe goes only a short way below the top of the bottle, and I fear that soon, before I finish the prescribed tapering-regimen, the liquid in the bottle will go below the level where I can get to it with the syringe. If I had to, I suppose I could muster the ingenuity to figure out a way around it, but I’d like to reserve that kind of ingenuity for my writing, and not have to use it for problems that can be solved much more simply.

Richard Eisner

● Yesterday I defended a (workers’ compensation Applicant’s) deposition for Accident Defenders, for whom I worked for almost a year through Greg Polster’s legal appearance firm. I charged them the same (higher) rate I’m charging Lance. They want me to do more of them. Their depositions are still less “lucrative” than Lance’s because there’s no travel time; they’re mainly by Zoom, not in-person. . . . And now I have another one this afternoon!

● I’ve seen gurus of the anti-aging movement, explaining, with impressive scientific-sounding arguments, how we can essentially defeat aging, and live forever. Occasionally they show recordings of their much earlier talks, which they may introduce by saying, “I’m consistent. I was making the same point back then.” What I find interesting is that, in all those earlier lectures, these people look much younger . . ..

● Lacking a social life has, I think, enhanced my literary output, for these reasons. Most simply, time spent socializing is time you could otherwise spend writing. But also, the urge to communicate a thought or a story may be satisfied by relaying it in conversation, reducing the urge to express it in writing.

● Saturday, 8-20-2022:   My Sony DVD player, which recently stopped working, was still under warranty with Best Buy. I brought it to them, they determined that it was not repairable, and refunded the amount I paid for it. I thought about getting a fancier model to replace it, but decided to get the same one, to avoid service charges for having them come and set it up and show me how to use it. I figured that, with the same model, I could just plug in the electric cords I removed from the old one, and it would work the same as the old one (when it was working). That was wise. It happened just that way. I bought a 4-year warranty on the new one (of course, the price of the item had increased as well; I paid $41). If it breaks within four years, I can get it repaired or have my purchase price refunded. I don’t have to find the receipt. They have a record of it; I need only give them my telephone number.

In general, an advantage of replacing appliances with the same models is that you know how to use them.

[Later note (5-19-2023): One (perhaps the biggest) risk of buying a warranty is just that you’ll forget that you have it, and so won’t use it, even if it would help, when you replace the product. I didn’t remember this one until I reread my Journal entry just now.]

● I just had some blood in my urine on catheterizing; but there was no discomfort (yet). I might have caused some injury yesterday by holding my urine (not urinating) for over twelve hours.

● I just urinated again (about 8 hours later): no blood (and still no discomfort).

● Joshua and Ramin, the Accident Defenders attorneys, wanted me to reduce the rate ($100 an hour) I’m charging them to defend depositions. Ramin left me a telephone message giving some arguments for a reduction. Here’s the (email) response I sent him:

Ramin,

Let me address the telephone message you left for me yesterday. You said you wanted me to reduce the rate I charge you for depositions. Among other things, you said I bill you for some time that you don’t get compensated for, like waiting time. I must use my judgment to determine what’s reasonable. My billing is a compromise. I charge only for time I actually spend. And I don’t charge for all of my time. I already cut my bill. I don’t have minimum fees, or cancellation fees. And even for depositions that proceed, I start the clock at the time the prep or depo is supposed to start, typically 9:00 or 1:00. But I start preparing for it 30 minutes in advance: I print out and review the documents you send me, and I retrieve my Zoom device and get on Zoom. I don’t charge you for that time. I suppose I could start my own pre-preparation right at 9:00 or 1:00, but that wouldn’t leave enough time to do all the things I need to do with the client in the prep. Also, I don’t charge you for time I spend speaking with the client after the deposition, which is sometimes unavoidable, or time I spend preparing and editing my depo reports. And I’m flexible. If you object to an item I bill for, I’m open to making an adjustment, as I did recently for time I spent waiting for an interpreter.

You also said that the [insurance] carriers don’t pay your depo fees right away, and that I should take less if I want you to pay me right away. Are you saying that paying me promptly causes a cash-flow problem for you? Really? If so, I’m willing to wait longer for my payment (I don’t have a cash-flow problem).

More generally, of the $400 an hour the carrier pays us for depositions, I get $100, and you get $300. But I do all the work, and you do no work. That doesn’t strike me as me getting too much money.

But the basic reason why I’m not inclined to reduce my rate is that I already have as much work as I want—at this rate. I don’t need more work. Usually, I’d just as soon have more leisure time than more money. Surely, I wouldn’t take on more work for less pay.

In any event, I hope we can continue our mutually beneficial working relationship.

Richard

● Monday, 8-22-2022:   I can afford to be humble: I let my work boast for me.

● Thursday, 8-25-2022:   It’s hard to save money when you have less of it than you need.

● Friday, 8-26-2022:   Another significant backache.

● Saturday, 8-27-2022:   In an earlier entry in this Journal, I asked “If there’s no such thing as a stupid question, does that mean there’s no such thing as an intelligent question, either?” I implied that some questions are more intelligent than other questions, and so some are less intelligent, suggesting that some of the least intelligent questions may indeed be stupid questions. Here are some further thoughts. Intelligent persons tend to ask more intelligent questions than do less intelligent persons. But I think that, when we say, “There are no stupid questions,” we don’t mean to say what the statement literally says. Rather, we mean merely that people should not be criticized for, discouraged from, asking questions, even “stupid” questions. We often ask questions when we’re confused about a subject; asking questions is part of our attempt to extricate ourselves from our confusion and to come to understanding or clarity. There, asking questions makes us vulnerable, because we reveal our ignorance or confusion. But it’s part of the learning process, which should be encouraged, for anyone. An exception might be where a person persistently asks inane questions that he knows are inane, to annoy us. Then we might rightly tell him that his questions are stupid.

● Keeping and extensively rereading this Journal has made me wiser, also in practical affairs. We (and I) learn from experience. The better we remember our experience, the better we learn from it. I tend to forget my experience. Rereading my Journal causes me to better remember my experience; so I have all those experiences, and lessons I’ve derived from them, in conscious memory, to refer to, and be guided by, when similar situations arise.

● Bishy-boo went, too.

● Sunday, 8-28-2022:   Sudden radical personal change is more often destructive than constructive. Becoming healthier, or learning, or mastering an art, are gradual processes; whereas, you can be killed or badly injured in an instant.

● My own memory of events in my life operates quite differently from people’s memory as depicted in movies. In movies, a character’s memory of an event will be like a continuous motion picture, complete with sound and dialog, a movie within a movie. But my memory is more like a vague, faint, impressionistic still picture, perhaps of a place or a person. There’s no sound. Any dialog is my own silent narration in my mind, as I may speak any words inwardly. Dreams, on the other hand, may be somewhat closer to the movie portrayal of memories. . . . I suppose it makes sense that movies portray memories like a movie—it’s a movie.

● Philosophy Club meeting (by Zoom); topic: “Abortion” (!) I sent to Brian, the Club facilitator, my new piece, or compilation, “Four Short Arguments for the Right to Abortion.” It collects four arguments of mine, already written, on the subject, to wit:

1. “For the Right to Abortion” (originally written in December 1981).
2. My 8-25-2005 Journal entry.
3. My 6-1-2022 Journal entry. And
4. “Abortion: Reply to Ron” (originally written in January 2012).

● In the discussion, one member said she thought that anti-abortion people simply wished to control women’s bodies. I wondered how she would account for women who oppose abortion rights.

● Tuesday, 8-30-2022:   The third and last paragraph of my argument number three (the 6-1-2022 Journal entry) was this:

Since the sole relevant effect of banning abortion is to worsen circumstances for the woman and her family, and since everyone knows that an abortion ban would not significantly affect the wealthy, who have the resources to get abortions in any event, one can’t help but suspect that people’s wish to ban abortion is motivated, not by genuine moral considerations, but at root by a desire to keep down the poor, perhaps to reduce competition and thus maintain their own status.

I sent my “Four Short Arguments” to Brian Gould. He criticized that paragraph (rightly, I think). So I’m going to delete it (from the abortion argument). Just because an action has a certain effect, doesn’t necessarily mean that the actor’s motivation was to produce that effect.

● Wednesday, 8-31-2022:   A book on writing gives this example of jargon: “It is believed that an investigation of certain available and appropriate informational sources will produce the data which is requested in your recent communication.” My translation: “If you look for it in the right place, you’ll find it.”

● Thursday, 9-1-2022:   We’re more forgiving of bias when it’s in our favor.

● Saturday, 9-3-2022:   The greater the number of requirements we impose for items of a certain kind, the fewer such items there will be. For example, if we restrict the ideas we adopt to those we ourselves originate, we may still have good ideas to adopt, but they’ll be fewer than if we took good ideas from anyone.

● The backache has finally resolved.

● Sunday, 9-4-2022:   I had a long, drawn-out dream last night, in which I aspired to make a living advising Korean Americans on workers’ compensation cases. I began my preparation by working for a law firm to learn how to calculate disability ratings, a very technical and difficult matter. Eventually, I panicked, realizing that I would not be able to earn a living at it soon enough: that is, before I ran out of money (I had only twenty dollars). I was planning to fall on the mercy of . . . someone, perhaps it was my father, and say, “I can see that I’m not going to make it.” That seems to be a recurrent dream pattern of mine in recent years. It intensifies my appreciation of my ability now to make a good living, which sometimes seems to me almost miraculous.

● Monday, 9-5-2022:   I got my annual flu vaccination today, at Kaiser Urgent Care in Woodland Hills, California. Because of my age (71), I’m supposed to get the high-dose version of the shot. The nurse who gave it to me, talking about it to another nurse, referring to the low-dose version, and apparently trying to justify giving me that, said: “Well, that’s what he got last year.” I quickly spoke up: “Using that procedure, I’ll never get the high-dose, because every time they’ll say, ‘Well, he got the low-dose last time.’” She left the room, and momentarily returned with the high dose shot; she told me that it was the last one they had. My quick retort was made possible by my familiarity with the Journal. Specifically, my fourth entry of 4-5-2020, and especially my “later note” there, immediately leapt to mind . . ..

● Tuesday, 9-6-2022:   For almost a week, we’ve been in the severest heat wave of the year. At least the electricity has stayed on, and the air quality has been good (except for the occasional smell of cigarette smoke).

● Wednesday, 9-7-2022:   Writing that’s easy for the writer is usually hard for the reader.

● Thursday, 9-8-2022:   Perhaps ten years ago, a collections lawyer asked fellow lawyers for suggestions for an advertising slogan for his law firm. I submitted a suggestion, which I can’t find now. But it was to this effect: “Our telephone number is 1-XXX-XXX-XXXX. Call us—collect.”

● Saturday, 9-10-2022:   In a dream last night I formulated this definition: Intelligence is the ability to discern which elements in a situation are the most pertinent.

● Haircut: Brenda. (She encouraged me to wait until January [2023] for my next haircut, so her salon would be less crowded when I came.)

● About two weeks ago, the neighbor in no. 1 changed his mode of attacking me. Until then, he would attack me in various ways, but mainly he would simply wait for me to subvocalize, and then pounce: make a responsive sound that I could hear. Probably because I got good at avoiding the subvocalization, so that that particular attack no longer works, he changed his methods. Now he repeatedly turns on and off the tap whenever I’m in the bathroom. He uses direct sonic attack, as well as “landmining.” And he does it constantly, round-the-clock. He evidently doesn’t sleep much; I imagine that he’s so frustrated and angry that he can’t sleep. He no longer tries to wake me up, probably having learned that that doesn’t work, and that the attempt will bring retaliation from his upstairs neighbor. He’s having a prolonged tantrum. His attacks don’t faze me. I know well how to evade them, and it’s easy for me to do so. I just have to take care to avoid overtly reacting to them, else it would forge his attack as an effective weapon against me. And I have the satisfaction of knowing that his (utterly ineffectual) attacks are labor-intensive for him, whereas my (sub-silentio, “pure-noise,” and devastatingly effective) attacks against him are very labor-efficient for me.

● Sunday, 9-11-2022:   It seems to me that in the last 6 months or so my memory has improved—perhaps because of better diet, and better sleep.

● Monday, 9-12-2022:   I just awoke from a dream in which I was representing my sister in a workers’ compensation case. She was a high-school student, and she’d been injured in a car crash. Early in the dream, I was a student in a classroom, and the teacher asked the students to suggest how to describe a certain (probably my sister’s) car crash. I had what I thought was the best answer and was eager to say it, but I never got a chance. Then the teacher asked for an explanation of what losses the crash had caused my sister. In addition to the usual damages, like injury, and lost time, my sister claimed that the lost time from school had caused her grades to suffer, by lowering her position in the class grade-curve. An acquaintance of hers was explaining how this was calculated, but I didn’t understand the mathematics involved. Throughout the dream I recurrently had to urinate, and was trying to catheterize myself, but I was having trouble doing so; at one point I asked someone nearby to hand me a plastic bag to put my catheters in. Toward the end of the dream, I was going to court to represent my sister as her lawyer in a mediation or arbitration of her case. I told her that I hoped she could explain the mathematics of the grade-curve, because I could not—I didn’t understand it. She, or her companion, assured me that she could. I was having trouble getting to the court. I was forced to take a detour. I was high on marijuana and riding a motorcycle or scooter. I was late but I was enjoying the ride. The dream perhaps expresses my doubts about my writing, and whether I’ll be defeated by my lack of knowledge of mathematics. I’m perhaps also questioning whether I shouldn’t spend more time having fun, even if it makes me less productive.

● I just had another dream: I was working at an artisans’ center, consisting of shops of different kinds on five outside floors. In one shop I made a ceramic coffee mug, one side painted to look like a face. It was also a bicycle, and I rode it down the five levels of the center; it rode smoothly and comfortably. I was proud of my creation, though I wished it had a motor, so that it would go uphill and on level surfaces. This dream may be the synthesis of the conflict in the previous dream: my productive work may also be my pleasure.

● Wednesday, 9-14-2022:   Today I took my last dose of Prozac.

● A great plague killed almost all human beings. Just ten persons remained, ten physicians in a hospital. They decided to end their lives on their own terms, so they took an overdose of morphine, and they all died in pleasure. The moral of the story?: All’s well that ends well.

● Saturday, 9-17-2022:   Last night / this morning I slept badly, with the smell of cigarette smoke in my bedroom. I don’t make a note here of every time it happens. What I know is that it happens rarely in the cold weather, when I keep my front door closed.

● Coming down from stimulant drugs reminded me of going from roller skating to walking in street shoes.

● Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and England’s Queen Elizabeth II have (or had) very similar noses.

● After that great heat wave, the weather has finally (at least for now) turned cool.

● Sunday, 9-18-2022:   I’m watching a program about people dealing with chronic illnesses. The illnesses ruin their lives and cost them a fortune, both in lost earnings and in paying for (often ineffective) treatments. It makes me appreciate my situation all the more; I’m blessed: with, among other things, good health.

● Tuesday, 9-20-2022:   I can’t prove it, but I suspect that a major cause of our problems here on Earth are space aliens—now hear me out: They’re sophisticated enough to know of our woes; and they could pray to God to solve our problems (which would of course help considerably)—but they refuse to pray for us.

● Wednesday, 9-21-2022:   The month-long tantrum of the neighbor in no. 1 seems to be subsiding. I’ve learned that the turning on and off of the tap when I’m in the bathroom isn’t him. Instead, it’s the doing of the neighbor in no. 9, above me . . . and he’s still doing it.

● Thursday, 9-22-2022:   Is honesty always the best policy? No, but perhaps it usually is. Which demands of us wisdom, to know when to speak the truth, and how; and courage, to do so, when we should.

● Saturday, 9-24-2022:   Music and (verbal) writing have an advantage over graphic art, in that a piece of graphic art is essentially identified with a physical object, which degrades over time. It can be copied, but the copies are not perfect replicas, and the copies likewise will themselves degrade. Whereas, a piece of writing or a music score can, for all intents and purposes, be perfectly copied, and so will, if the effort is made, last much longer than a piece of graphic art.

● Tomorrow is this month’s meeting of the Philosophy Club. The topic this month is “Utopia.” This excerpt is from a reading on the topic: “One of the more profound points that Yuval Noah Harari makes in Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind is that human happiness is pretty much predetermined at birth by our brain chemistry. We’re dished out a certain amount of serotonin, the ‘happy hormone’, by our genes, and nothing that happens to us in our lives can significantly raise or lower our happiness level beyond a relatively brief period.”

Yesterday I wrote this entry in my diary: Lately it occurs to me that, if I learned that my life were about to end, I’d be satisfied with (what survives of) my life’s work. Because that’s my primary criterion for having lived a good life, I feel marvelously content: I have a great surplus; my life isn’t ending; I’m very healthy; and I’m financially secure, with significant leisure; and I’m still creatively productive. It’s the opposite of how I felt when I was much younger: unproductive, and anxious about the swift passage of time, fearful that I wouldn’t accomplish my goal. All in all, I’ve done well.

If it’s not implied by that entry, I’ll say it: I’m far happier now than I was when I was much younger—in fact, in my youth I was pretty miserable; now I’m fairly content. It would be more difficult to state a comprehensive alternative principle about what determines a person’s happiness; I may never come up with such a principle. But my own experience, recounted in the foregoing entry, shows, I think, that Harari’s conclusion that a person’s level of happiness cannot change, is wrong.

● On utopia: it’s hard enough to specify an ideal life for yourself, let alone for a community full of different people.

● We might not be able to specify or describe the ideal community, but we might be able to identify some elements that make it better: relative equality of resources; safety; security; peace; health (or at least healthcare); education . . ..

● Sunday, 9-25-2022:   I had a thought on this month’s philosophy club topic, utopia, but I’m having trouble expressing it. I’m stuck. Based on my track record of working out and articulating my thoughts in writing, I’m confident that I’ll succeed here eventually, and probably sooner than I expect. Perhaps I’ve gotten a little spoiled. The last few times, the writing has come pretty quickly and easily. So I think it should do so now as well. And when it doesn’t, I feel frustrated. I’m writing this account because it helps to talk about it, though I’d rather have the utopia piece. But I’ll no doubt get that, too.

● . . . Yes, I got that, too. Here it is:

● Utopias don’t work; the procedure is backwards. Consider an individual. To achieve a good life, you don’t start with a complete picture, all the elements in place: “I want to live in this city, on this block, marry an attractive blonde lawyer, and spend all of my time as a painter.” Even were that possible, the result would likely be unsatisfactory. You might not like your preselected spouse; you might not be as good a painter, or enjoy painting, as much as you thought you would. Instead, you build your life, by trial and error, piece by piece, organically. In school, you study graphic art, because you like it and think you have talent for it. Then you find you’re not as good at it as you hoped, or you don’t enjoy it, and so you try photography, and you stick with that, because you’re good at it and you enjoy it. You later find full-time work as a photographer. On your job, you meet a young woman in your employer’s writing department (not a lawyer), you fall in love with each other and get married. She already owns a home, so you live there. As hard as it is to predefine an ideal life for an individual, it’s even harder to do so for a community full of different people. And likewise, the process is, instead, to try to solve certain perceived problems and to fulfill certain ideals, to see what works, and to continue and to amplify that. For example, we might try to reduce population size; reduce environmental pollution; reduce wealth inequality among people, and so forth. Hopefully, we thus eventually get to a world that works well. And it will probably work better than the world we might have preplanned. I later learned that Michael Shermer expressed a similar idea, arguing for “protopia” rather than utopia.

● A utopia is like an arranged marriage: the intent is good, but you might not like the spouse your parents pick for you.

● Wednesday, 9-28-2022:   Last week, Wednesday, 9-21-2022, at about 7:00 p.m., on the Ventura freeway northbound, near Laurel Canyon Boulevard, coming home from a deposition, I was in the number 3 lane (of 5). Traffic was heavy, but moving pretty fast. I was going at about 35 to 40 miles an hour. A car tailgated me severely; in my rearview mirror it seemed as if he was just about 4 feet away from me. I give him “the finger.” He then pulls into the lane to my right (the number 4 lane). When he gets next to me, he swerves into my lane; I had to apply the brakes hard to avoid a collision. I went after him to get close enough to write down his license number. He tried to evade me, but with some skillful driving I caught up with him and got his license number: XXXXXXX, a Ford. Today I went to the local Highway Patrol office to make a complaint about it. The officer I spoke to told me that, without a collision, or witnesses, or film, probably no action would be taken on my report. I decided it wasn’t worth making a report, as it might later be used against me. If I ever did bring something like this to court, the other motorist could use the report to argue that I’m a chronic complainer, or that I somehow provoke these incidents.

● Thursday, 9-29-2022:   Today, someone posted this message:

“With the 40^th Annual Red Mass approaching on October 26^th, we are looking to our generous supporters for a 2022 contribution.

“The Red Mass is offered in prayer for judges, lawyers, legislators, and legal professionals. Please consider sponsoring this year’s Red Mass, as this work depends on contributions from donors like you. We are so grateful for your generous support.”

I replied with this:

Let me get this straight: You want people to donate money to Red Mass so that people will pray for legal professionals. How about if I don’t donate money, but I say a prayer for legal professionals? The desired result will have been accomplished without spending money. Or how about this: Send me a donation of $100 or more, and I’ll say a prayer for you, or for whomever you choose? I’m so grateful for your generous support. Send the donations here:

Richard J. Eisner
Lawyer
6520 Shirley Avenue, No. 2
Reseda, California 91335

(818) 343-0123
richard@richardeisner.com
www.RichardsResume.com

● I’m watching a film about infinity. One question that was asked is whether human creativity is infinite. My answer is this: It may not be infinite theoretically, but it’s infinite practically: we’ll never run out of new ideas.

● We don’t matter to the universe. But we matter to ourselves. And that’s all that matters.

● My nonexistence didn’t bother me before I was born; and it won’t bother me after I die.

● Saturday, 10-1-2022:   If the Virgin Mary had sex, we’d stop worshiping her. That shows what we revere women for. How would you like to be admired—just for being a virgin?

● Last night I started taking a new medication, Naltrexone, prescribed by my psychiatrist, Dr. Kohm, to see if it might cure my depersonalization / derealization. It made me drowsy in a strange way and stimulated bizarre dreams, or dream elements. One such element was the sustained sensation that there were two of me, with a sort of equal sign between them; whatever affected one of them also affected the other. There was no effect on the depersonalization / derealization, but that sensation of my being divided into two, seems possibly vaguely relevant to the depersonalization / derealization. We’ll see.

● Sunday, 10-2-2022:   I’m going to switch the Naltrexone dose to the morning (I take it once a day), because, despite a possible initial slight sedation, it interferes with sleep: it gives me shortness of breath and an unpleasant hypnogogic effect. I’ll then have to see what side -effects I get from the morning dose.

● Monday, 10-3-2022:   The boundary between science and philosophy is, in places, blurry.

● Friedrich Nietzsche wrote: “What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.” What does that mean? What things make you stronger? Many things didn’t kill me today; but they didn’t make me stronger—or weaker, or have any effect on me. A man was driving his car in Arizona today. I wasn’t in Arizona today. His driving didn’t kill me; but it didn’t make me stronger—it simply had no effect on me. I think what Nietzsche means is that great traumas that nearly kill you, but don’t—make you stronger. But is that true? It may sometimes be true, but usually it’s not. Say I have a severe stroke. It doesn’t kill me, but it leaves me permanently bedridden; unable to care for myself, to walk, talk, or even write. Am I stronger? Hardly!

● Thursday, 10-6-2022:   I watch many crime documentary programs (for entertainment). I’ve noticed that prison terms for serious crimes are higher in the United States than in Europe.

● I left this note in the apartment complex suggestion box:

6 October 2022

This week, the lights in the common area started going off an hour or so earlier than before—they now go off at least an hour before there’s any sunlight. So the common area is pitch dark for at least an hour in the morning. For residents, including me, who use the common area then, it’s inconvenient and dangerous.

Richard Eisner
Unit 2

● The idea of the authentic self is problematic. I’m different in different situations, with different people. And how I am even when I’m alone varies.

● Saturday, 10-8-2022:   “The wrong place at the wrong time” is no worse than “the right place at the wrong time,” because, even the “right” place, when the time is wrong, is the wrong place to be. The first formulation is redundant; “wrong” is repeated merely for emphasis, for dramatic effect. The phrase is nonsensical: Being in the wrong place at the wrong time could turn out to be good. And when is the right time to be in the wrong place? If you’re there at the right time, it’s not a wrong place.

● Apartment number 3, next-door, is finally again occupied, as of yesterday, I think. It’s a young couple (a man and a woman) and their young daughter.

[Later note (6-27-2023): They also have a toddler.]

● It’s my destiny to fifofiate.

● Sunday, 10-9-2022:   One sign that Summer is over is my runny nose.

● I’m reading The Reader Over your Shoulder by Robert Graves and Alan Hodge. At the bottom of page 156, Graves quotes a passage by H. G. Wells:

“Within recorded time there is no such thing as a complete natural man.

“He clips himself, he cuts himself about, he hacks bits off himself. He tattoos himself, and sticks things through his ears and nose, he wraps skins and fabrics about himself.”

On page 157, Graves criticizes the passage on the grounds that it’s unclear who the “he” is. Graves argues that it cannot be “man” in general, because “Mr. Wells’s readers, for example, do not stick things through their ears and noses.”

The criticism is inapposite. It seems clear that Wells is indeed referring to man in general. That not all men do the behaviors mentioned does not make “he” unclear, but rather, if anything, makes the conclusion questionable, the argument weak. That is, Graves is criticizing, not the writing’s clarity, but its content.

The writing principle (make it clear what you’re referring to) that Graves purports to illustrate is good, but this illustration of it is bad.

[Later note (11-13-2022): I’ve found no other false notes in the book, which I think is brilliant, and from which I’m learning a lot.]

● To escape responsibility for a crime on the basis of insanity, it’s not sufficient simply that you be insane. You must be insane in the right way. The test of that insanity is not the weirdness or the unusualness or even the irrationality of the urge to act, but rather the actor’s ignorance of the act’s wrongness. For example, I may sincerely believe that cutting off a person’s head, making a candle out of it, and walking exactly five times around my apartment naked, holding that (lit) candle, while reciting an Elizabethan sonnet—will make me ecstatic for a decade’s time (a crazy urge or belief). And yet I might realize that my doing so would be to gain pleasure for myself at the expense of another person’s life. That’s what would make the action morally depraved (wrong), and which knowledge on my part would make me sane in doing it. If, on the other hand, I believed that such action would make my victim, too, ecstatic for a decade—that might make me legally insane in doing it.

● I got a pedicure today, from my usual manicurist. She does an excellent job. I paid $23.00 and gave her a $6.00 tip. Next time, I’ll increase the tip.

● Monday, 10-10-2022:   I had my annual hearing test today. There was slight deterioration, since my last test, of hearing in both ears in the high frequency range. But Dr. Vorasubin characterized my hearing as “pretty stable.” I must resign myself to slight, slow deterioration of my hearing, given my age (71).

● Wednesday, 10-12-2022:   We often say that in this country a person is “presumed innocent until proven guilty.” That’s not exactly true. Until you’re proven guilty, you’re not presumed innocent—you’re presumed merely not guilty. Innocence is a factual matter; not-guilty is a legal matter. Innocent means that you—in fact—did not commit the crime in question. Not-guilty means that the state has not (yet), by prescribed legal procedures, found you guilty of the crime. To be presumed not guilty until proven guilty means that the state cannot punish you for the crime until you’ve been thus officially found guilty of it. But unofficially, privately, people are entitled, for any reason, or for no reason, to presume, or believe, whatever they please—including that you committed a crime. Even after a trial, if you’re acquitted, people are free to presume you’re guilty; or if convicted, that you’re innocent. And sometimes, of course, the law gets it (guilt) wrong.

● Thursday, 10-13-2022:   I got the new and improved COVID-19 vaccine today.

● Friday 10-14-2022:   The side effects of this new COVID-19 booster vaccine were minimal.

● Saturday, 10-15-2022:   The new neighbors in no. 3 are already hostile; they’re attacking me. But I don’t retaliate. My responses are strictly defensive. I’m in the waiting-for-him-to-put-his-neck-in-the-noose phase.

● The right forearm symptoms, which flared up in July (2022) have still not resolved. Every time they seem to be doing so, I manage to aggravate the arm by too-strenuous (practically any) exertion, as with the shoulder exercises. I’ll suspend those for a while.

● Sunday, 10-16-2022:   Well, I bought another luxury briefcase (the Bosca Partners Briefcase). It was a completely unnecessary purchase: I already have two of the same case that I don’t use. It was prompted by a big half-price sale notice that I got by email. When I got to the store, it turned out that only the little things out on the sidewalk were on sale; the goods inside (including this briefcase) were not on sale (at a reduced price). But I was so (anticipatively) excited about getting it that I bought it anyway, even though it wasn’t on sale. I also bought some of the half-price little things. The briefcase was expensive (for a briefcase—I paid nearly $900.00 for it), but I can easily afford it. I’m a miser; I rarely treat myself to luxuries; and when I occasionally do, I get small luxuries, nothing very expensive: no house, or car; just a fancy pen or briefcase now and then.

● For a long time, I’d been meaning to clean out my briefcase. It took buying a new one for me to finally do it. I’m glad I bought it. It’s a lovely case. I use my briefcases almost every day (for depositions). If it makes the experience more pleasant, it’s well worth it. The new case is less functional than the other one, but more luxurious. It’s like using an expensive sports car instead of a pickup truck, for hauling goods (but other people can’t see that it’s less functional). The lesser functionality will, I think, be more than offset by my imagining that people will see me, because of my fancier briefcase, as a more successful attorney. Other people thinking well of me feels good, and their thinking well of me perhaps also helps me think better of myself.

● Monday, 10-17-2022:   The weather is getting cooler. This was the first morning since February or March that I had to wear my jacket on my morning walk.

● When I hear charities asking for donations to help feed the destitute on Thanksgiving Day or Christmas Day, I think: that’s well and good; but what about all the other days of the year?

● Thursday, 10-20-2022:   What do we owe to distant future generations? The situation is, I think, analogous to abortion. I’ve argued that a woman has a right to control her body in this connection, but that the right is not absolute. Specifically, a woman has a right to end her pregnancy, but not a right to mistreat the child in her womb such that the child irreparably suffers after it’s born.

Similarly, society as a whole has a right not to create posterity. Many of us would regret its loss, but we can’t (shouldn’t) force people to have children against their will. If we do have children, however, we should live with a consideration of our actions’ effect on those children, and their children, and so forth.

This perspective does not tell us exactly what constraints we should place on our conduct for this purpose, but it tells us that there should be some constraints.

And yet, if we accept that we have a responsibility to posterity, it’s not hard to determine the content of that responsibility. We can assume that future people will want the same kinds of conditions that we want and that we’d want for our children.

A supplemental point. I seem to remember seeing an argument against moral obligations to remote future humans, to the effect that moral obligations are owed just to particular persons; but there are no particular persons now existing in future generations. There’s no one to whom we owe a duty, and so no duty. But imagine the following. It’s late at night and you need to park your car on the street. You can’t find a place to park it at the side of the road. You consider temporarily parking it in the middle of the road, in traffic lanes. You’d move it later, but in the meantime another driver is liable to collide with it and be injured. I would think that you’d have a moral obligation not to leave your car in the middle of the road, even temporarily. Yet there’s no particular person who would thus be injured. In either case—other drivers or posterity—you owe a duty to avoid actions that you can foresee will harm someone, though you don’t know whom.

● Saturday, 10-22-2022:   The new neighbors in no. 3 seem significantly better than previous neighbors there—civilized. We’ll see if they’re better enough. Perhaps we can live with each other in peace. But inevitably it’s unpleasant having neighbors in an adjacent apartment with practically no soundproofing.

● I’m watching Alone, a “reality” television series, in which twelve people, individually, try to survive in the wilderness; the one who’s left after all the others give up, wins. It reminds me of my life: trying to survive, and even thrive, on my own in a hostile environment. I can survive and thrive in a city. But I could not survive on my own in the wilderness.

● The philosophy club meets tomorrow, in person. I’m not going. I attend only the ones that meet by Zoom (by computer). But I read the reference materials for the topics. This month’s topic is “Open Borders: Pro and Con.” Here are two thoughts I had on the topic: [omitted]

● Well, that didn’t take long! Later in the day, the bastards put their neck in the noose . . . and I pulled the rope tight and kicked the chair out from under them! Idiots. I’ve thus established, with those neighbors, a pure-noise sub-silentio angry sound: the plastic gloves.

● Sunday, 10-23-2022:   Truncated Camarillo drive. Pleasant.

● Wednesday, 10-26-2022:   Three more signs of the seasons’ changing: dead leaves litter the ground outside my apartment; it’s cold enough in the mornings that I have to wear my jacket and a muffler when I leave the house, and when I’m in the car; and at night I have to turn on the electric blanket.

● Sunday, 10-30-2022:   Philosophy Club meeting, by Zoom. Topic: “Open Borders: Pro and Con.” I took the occasion to revise the comments I wrote the week before [omitted]:

● A Short Meditation on Immigration:

A wealthier state’s restricting immigration is merely an instance of its not sharing its wealth with other people and states. Just as we don’t feed all malnourished foreigners, we don’t give our land, our living space, to all foreigners who need and want it. Doing so, in either case, would hurt us. Indeed, in the case of immigration, we, in the United States, are already so overpopulated (a place becomes overpopulated when increasing the number of people in it reduces the per capita well-being of those already there) that letting in all of the huge number who want to immigrate here would devastate our quality of life. It would be unlivable (or so it would seem to those of us now here and doing well). I’m not justifying this position; I’m only identifying the motive for it. But if we’re formulating a “justification” to restrict immigration, why not say simply, “We want to benefit our existing populace, even at the expense of outsiders, and we think that restricting immigration benefits our existing populace.” Here’s a possible answer. That may be an adequate defense vis-a-vis outsiders (at least when the outsiders can’t retaliate against us). But many of our own citizens urge unrestricted, or less restricted, immigration, and they argue that such would benefit the country. So, to answer their arguments, we must say why restricted, or more restricted, immigration benefits us. And when it seems that more restricted immigration will help some of us and hurt others of us, we feel compelled to justify helping the ones who are helped at the others’ expense. Perhaps this touches on why we do moral philosophy. Why not just act as we wish? Why must we explain or justify it at all? Part of the answer may be that we feel an urge to explain or justify it to ourselves—our conscience.

● The philosophical issue about immigration is the debate between completely unrestricted immigration versus restricted immigration, which is reflected in Brian’s topic title: “Open Borders: Pro and Con.” The debate about the degree of restriction is a mere policy debate.

● Monday, 10-31-2022:   On Saturday (10-30-2022) I emailed my piece on immigration to Brian Gould (the Philosophy Club facilitator). Yesterday (Sunday), he sent me this response:

“Hey Richard, thanks for your thoughtful meditation. You make good points, I think, though I disagree with the word “merely” in your first sentence. I know you’re not necessarily arguing for all these positions, just stating them. I think it’s also an open question as to whether the US is overpopulated, or that increased immigration would devastate our life quality (at some point of massive immigration, that would be true, but we’re probably nowhere near that point), or that we would not benefit (economically, culturally) from higher rates of immigration. Though I see you bring up that counterargument.

“I hope you bring up your points in the discussion today!”

Brian

● Today I sent him this reply:

Brian,

My contention was that massive immigration might eventually cause overpopulation, at which point it would be in the country’s best interest to restrict immigration. As to whether we’re overpopulated now, what I see around me tells me that we are: there are more people than we can conveniently house; more car and truck traffic than the roads can handle—not more people than we can possibly accommodate, but more people than we can comfortably accommodate; the criterion for appropriate population size should be, not the maximum, but the optimum. In the discussion yesterday, Michelle said she was sympathetic to Santa Monica’s desire to limit population density for the sake of the quality of life there. The country as a whole has the same interest.

Richard

● Having established (now, two!) sub-silentio angry-sounds with the new neighbors in no. 3, I have ample offensive weaponry. Now, I need not retaliate in the traditional sense. I spend my time interacting with them strictly defensively: dodging their attacks and avoiding any overt sign of response: careful to deny them the means to do to me what I’m doing to them. But that defense is hard work; it requires constant vigilance on my part—they’re incessantly probing and prodding . . . waving the bait, hoping I’ll slip, and take it.

● Tuesday, 11-1-2022:   Sometime last week, I increased my Naltrexone dose to 50 mg a day.

● Eye exam. I have cataracts in both eyes, but not bad enough yet to need surgery, and floaters in my left eye. . . . Of course, eventually my body will deteriorate, and I’ll die. That’s everyone’s ultimate destination. But I hope that, by then, I’ll have reached another destination of mine: the achievement of a great body of creative work. To the extent I feel I’ve done that, I’m consoled about my death: I’ll feel that I lived a good life. . . . In fact, even that statement is inaccurate, inadequate. It suggests that the main point of my existence is having lived; and the essence of living is experience. But what I value is my accomplishment, not my experience.

● It’s commonly thought that our country’s name America derives from the name of an Italian early explorer of the continent, Amerigo Vespucci. I’m glad his first name was used for it, instead of his last name. We probably came very close to being called Vespucci . . . I’m proud to be a Vespuccian!

● Thursday, 11-3-2022:   On 10-22-2022, I wrote: The new neighbors in no. 3 seem significantly better than previous neighbors there—civilized. They’ve proven to be different merely in degree, not in kind.

● Friday, 11-4-2022:   It’s been an unusually long time (almost a month and a half) since I had a headache bad enough to require medication.

● Saturday, 11-5-2022:   A computer technician once told me that he couldn’t remember which key on the keyboard, which character, was the “forward slash” (“/”) and which was the “back slash” (“\”). I told him to think of the slash as a person standing up, the head at the top, and walking forward along the line of text from left to right, the direction in which we read. The person falling forward is the “forward slash”; the person falling backward is the “back slash.” The technician said that now, for the first time, he could remember it.

● On Friday, I got a $5.00 an hour pay-raise from Attorney Raphael H. It’s not much, but my pay is now $5.00 an hour less inadequate than it was.

● Tuesday, 11-8-2022:   Often, when the Republicans win an election, it’s because of Republican vote-fraud; when the Democrats win an election, it’s despite Republican vote-fraud.

● Thursday, 11-10-2022:   I heard on the news that Trump criticized as corrupt a certain city’s election process, in which the Democratic candidate beat the (opposing) Republican candidate. If I were the Democratic party there, I’d take Trump’s criticism as good news: it just means we won: If the Democrat won, Trump would criticize the election process; if the Republican won, he wouldn’t criticize it.

● Friday, 11-11-2022:   Since buying that additional expensive briefcase a month ago or so, we’ve had rain several times. I thought I should buy a less expensive briefcase to use in the rain. I bought a less expensive case, but it seemed far too nice to use in the rain! I bought some other fairly inexpensive briefcases, and now I have one that I’d feel comfortable using in the rain. In fact, I bought two of them, and now I use them as a matched pair, carrying one in each hand. I use one to carry my laptop computer and other electronic devices; the other to carry my papers, pen, glasses, and urinary catheters. It’s easier (and safer) to lift and carry two lighter cases than one very heavy case.

● Saturday, 11-12-2022:   Sometime last week I had a strange and strangely satisfying dream. In the first part of the dream, I was arguing with an authority, perhaps a professor, on a certain subject. I thought I had won the argument. In the second and final part of the dream, I was criticized for arguing with the man, and was on trial for it: a jury was examining a record of the argument, and a prosecutor was trying to prove that I had actually lost the argument. A point was reached in the replaying of the argument, when the prosecutor seemed to feel satisfied that he’d scored a point against me; but I realized that it was rather in my favor, and I smiled. The argument was being recounted only in its abstract form. I suggested that the argument’s actual content be disclosed, because it would make it easier for the jury to follow, and because I was proud of the content.

● One of the world’s greatest novels is Leo Tolstoy’s Special Military Operation and Peace.

● Monday, 11-14-2022:   I think my chronic neck ache has largely abated since I replaced my old pillow (with a new pillow) about two months ago.

● Wednesday, 11-16-2022:   Capitalism, or great wealth disparity—unlike socialism, or egalitarianism—is, not a philosophy of what’s good for the world, but merely a state of affairs desired by those who are rich or who hope to get rich.

● Thursday, 11-17-2022:   An artist is as good as the art he produces. A non-artist is as good or bad as the good or harm he does in the world. (. . . Just a thought . . . not necessarily a good thought, or a sound thought.)

● Friday, 11-18-2022:   Of course, that’s not an objective principle, but just my own view. But even thus qualified, it’s problematic: If Hitler had painted some good paintings, are we, in evaluating him, supposed to ignore the massive harm he did?

And, by the way, about evaluating a non-artist . . . if someone murders ten chronically unhappy people and derives great happiness from doing so, is he good? (. . . Assuming that the ten murder victims are not artists.)

[Later note (1-10-2024): Here’s the resolution. One can be both an artist and a non-artist, and be evaluated in both ways. For example, we might describe a certain man as a great writer but a terrible person. And we can judge whether he did more good as an artist than he did harm as a person. Hitler, say, would have to have done some very great art to even begin to redeem the evil he did.]

● Sunday, 11-20-2022:   Philosophy Club meeting (by Zoom). Topic: “Forgiveness.”

● Forgiveness is your change of heart toward someone who has wronged you. You have no obligation to forgive. You should do so only when you feel ready to. Otherwise, it backfires. It feels just as bad to forgive, or to say you forgive, before you’re ready to forgive, as it feels good to do so when you’re ready to do so.

● Having, early in my career as a philosopher, convincingly answered the greatest, most profound philosophical question of all (the meaning of life), I have since then approached all other philosophical questions and subjects casually.

● I find I don’t have much to say on this topic. I seem not to be able to relate well to subjects involving feelings, like love.

● Every time I sit down on the toilet, I see a certain small piece of debris on the floor at the other end of the bathroom, and I think, “I’ll pick that up and throw it away.” That’s been going on for about a month now, and I still haven’t picked it up.

● . . . Now I picked it up.

● Tuesday, 11-22-2022:   Socrates is a maze; I’m a pair of clear eyeglasses.

● Wednesday, 11-23-2022:   Well, I did it again: I bought yet another expensive leather briefcase, for $550.00. Oh well. . . . And if I like it (I bought it online, and it still has to be delivered), I’ll probably feel compelled to buy another one, to have a matched pair!

● The media commonly refer to mass shooters as mentally ill. Liberal author Thom Hartmann said today on his radio program, “They’re not mentally ill persons—they’re just terrorists.” I agree with him that those shooters are mischaracterized as mentally ill, but disagree that they’re terrorists. According to the dictionary, a terrorist is one who uses or threatens to use force or violence with the intention to intimidate or coerce a society or government, often for ideological or political reasons. I don’t think these shooters are interested in intimidating or coercing anyone, let alone for ideological or political reasons, or even in making a statement or point. I think that, rather, they’re simply angry people. Unhappy with themselves and their place in the world, they act out their anger about that by violently hurting the world. Calling them “terrorists” gives them too much credit. They’re not terrorists—they’re just murderers.

● Thursday, 11-24-2022 (Thanksgiving Day):   I took my Ridgecrest drive today. It was pleasant, if not joyous. There was too much traffic, not that it would have been joyous if not for the traffic. I again ate at the IHOP restaurant on West Avenue K in Lancaster. It was terrible; cold. And it just didn’t taste good.

On second thought, it makes sense that, the lighter the traffic, the greater my enjoyment of a pleasure drive. That’s probably true for everyone, as evidenced by television commercials advertising new cars: they (the commercials) always show the advertised car being driven in a picturesque area—alone, with no other cars on the road.

● Why is attributing homicide to mental illness inappropriate? A symptom of depression is chronic sadness; of anxiety, intense apprehension. But no mental illness has as a symptom killing other people. If homicide could be attributed to mental illness, the mentally ill killer would not be responsible for his act of killing. But we (rightly) hold such people responsible for their actions. The exception is criminal insanity, wherein the criminally insane person cannot understand that his act is criminal, or wrong. But that’s a very rare condition, which, like the homicidal act itself, is no more prevalent among the otherwise mentally ill than among the otherwise non-mentally-ill. Blaming homicide on mental illness is, not only erroneous, but also counterproductive: It causes us to pursue false solutions to the problem of mass shootings, like trying to identify the mentally ill and denying them access to guns. Which unfairly hurts the mentally ill, and (because, when we think we’ve found the solution, we stop searching) precludes our finding true solutions.

● Looking back on it, I think my mind was working on that question (about mental illness and crime) during the drive. At one point, I purported to abandon it, because I thought I wouldn’t likely solve it. But the answer finally came to me toward the very end of the drive.

[Later note (11-21-2023): If the answer had come to me earlier in the drive, I probably would have enjoyed the drive—not because working on the problem was unpleasant, but because I’d have felt good about having solved it . . .]

● Friday, 11-25-2022:   This morning I took my last dose of Naltrexone, the latest psychiatric drug that we’ve tried, to see if it might dispel my long-term depersonalization / derealization. Like all the other drugs we’re tried for this, it didn’t work.

● Saturday, 11-26-2022:   Sometimes I look forward to working on a piece of writing, because I enjoy the process, and I’m actually disappointed at how quickly I reach the solution.

● I recently heard a public radio discussion about retirement. Retirement is not right for some persons because, without their accustomed work activity, they’ll feel lost; they’ll lose their sense of purpose. Or perhaps they’ll find that they don’t actually enjoy what they fantasized about doing in their retirement. For me, all these considerations are academic: I don’t have enough money to retire. If I had enough money, I’d retire. But I have a good compromise now: I’m semi-retired, doing more or less well-paid part-time work.

● I had a thoroughly miserable day, stuck at home. In the early morning, I did my stretching exercises in bed; took my first (exercise) walk (of two); ate breakfast; took my second walk; revised my paragraph on mental illness and homicide; reread a short section in The Reader Over Your Shoulder, by Robert Graves and Alan Hodge; and watched television. For much of the time I felt de-energized and demoralized. I’m getting increasingly bogged down and depressed. The neighbors’ attacks on me are always more vicious and sustained during weekends. But I think the big difference is that I no longer have my Journal to work on; I stopped working on it when, in August (2022), I gave it to Keri, my webmaster, to post on the Web. I then stopped reviewing existing material in the Journal, but I’ve continued writing new entries, in this Diary-Journal, the raw material for Eisner’s Journal.

● Sunday, 11-27-2022:   I think that, on balance, I actually benefitted from the COVID-19 pandemic. It gave me two marvelous gifts: One, Eisner’s Journal (which I was prompted to create by the great surplus of free time occasioned by the lack of paid work); and, two, the practice of wearing face masks (which has enabled me to virtually stop getting sick—and I used to get sick [mostly with common colds] perhaps as often as once a month).

● Today was a much better day for me than yesterday. I didn’t feel depressed; I had more energy.

● Monday, 11-28-2022:   Psychiatrist Phillip Stutz teaches that a person’s life force consists of a three-part pyramid: the lowest level is your relationship with your body; the middle part, your relationship with other people; and, at the top, your relationship with yourself. I think that your relationship with yourself can affect your relationship with your body. For example, having a good relationship with yourself (as in liking yourself), can motivate you to exert the discipline to take better care of your body.

● Tuesday, 11-29-2022:   Nosebleed, left nostril.

● Well, what shall I write about now? Nothing.

● Wednesday, 11-30-2022:   That would make a funny inscription on my tombstone.

● Wednesday, 12-7-2022:   I may write an opera titled Thus Spract the Gippergoose.

● Saturday, 12-10-2022:   I’ve heard people say that, when they were young, things seemed simple; but now that they’re older, things seem complicated. For me it’s been the other way round: I think that when I was young things seemed complicated. Now (and I’m no longer young) things seem simple.

● Sunday, 12-11-2022:   How could it be raining, and precipitation be only 67 percent?! It couldn’t: the updating of that element of the weather website lagged.

● What’s luggage? It’s equipment or tools for lugging.

● I’m glad I was born when I was. Had I been born even just a few decades later, I think that circumstances would have been much less conducive to my being a philosopher. To start with, my education would have suffered: teachers would have taught their students, not to educate them, but to do well on tests. And I would not have developed the habit of deep, prolonged thought; I’d have been preoccupied by the culture of distraction, by the tyranny of the superficial—constantly distracted by social media, addicted to constantly checking my computer and cell phone for social media feedback. And, had I been born even a few decades earlier, I wouldn’t have had the advantage of computerized word processing, which has been a boon to my writing. Of course, had I not been born just when I was born, I’d be a different person. Or, more exactly, I wouldn’t have been born at all.

● Sometimes, when talking with an acquaintance, I remember a mutual experience and he doesn’t. I then flatter myself by thinking that I have a better memory than he does. But that may not be true. Our memory is selective, or spotty. I happen to remember this event and he doesn’t. He’ll probably remember other events that I don’t.

● Wednesday, 12-14-2022:   “Slow and steady wins the race.” No: Slow does not win the race—steady wins the race. If the race is won that way, it’s because of steady—and despite slow. The aphorism’s point is to tout the virtue of steadiness, not of slowness. (In a race between them, fast and steady would beat slow and steady!)

● The life force . . . operates only when you’re alive.

● Friday, 12-16-2022:   “X is better than Y” is elliptical for “I prefer X to Y.”

[Later note (10-17-2023): Not necessarily. One thing may be actually better than another thing for a certain purpose.]

● Sunday, 12-18-2022:   Dr. Marin Luther King, Jr.’s epigram “The moral arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice” has a possible harmful effect, in suggesting that progress is inevitable, that it will happen by itself, thus reducing our motivation to work. But justice won’t happen by itself. It will happen exactly to the extent that we work toward it and prevail over the forces working against it. And it’s not inevitable that we’ll work toward it, or that we’ll prevail.

● Monday, 12-19-2022:   Last night I dreamed that I was Hitler’s defense attorney.

● Thursday, 12-22-2022:   Last Sunday, 12-18-2022, I began taking yet another psyche medication to see if it will cure my depersonalization / derealization. The drug is Aripiprazole (or Abilify), 1 mg. It’s an anti-psychotic. So far, no effect.

● Friday, 12-23-2022:   I had a colonoscopy today. Everything was clear: no problems.

● Saturday, 12-24-3022:   Most views on God’s beneficence are selfish. They smack of the there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I attitude. The rest of the world could be in wretched shape, but if the religionist and his family are doing well, then God is good. But why should it be more important that you do well than that others do well? Why should God’s goodness not be measured by the well-being of the many, rather than by that of a fortunate few?

● Sunday, 12-25-2022:    . . . like a lizard in a blizzard . . ..

Christmas stimulates profound thoughts.

● This has been the year of . . .
○ Deterioration of vision in my left eye.
○ Resumption of making good money.
○ The briefcase-buying spree.
○ The late-June 2022 paragraph on well-being—a breakthrough, I think.
○ Sending my Journal to the webmaster for posting on the Web.
○ Forgetting to write a birthday edition of my annual retrospective.

● Truncated Camarillo drive; pleasant.

● Wednesday, 12-28-2022:   Late last night and early this morning I first had a series of dreams in which I was a legislative aid, and I was amazingly articulate. I could think practically any thought, about the political process, and I would immediately develop and express it. It was a little like a lucid dream in thought and language. Then I had a series of dreams, or one prolonged dream, with a sort of opposite theme. I was thinking and saying that, in a deposition, the interrogating lawyer needn’t actually speak to the witness.

● Thursday, 12-29-2022:   Today I emailed this note to the property management company in charge of the condominium I’m living in:

A Plea for Surveillance Cameras at the Recycle Bin

I, Richard Eisner, live in Unit 2 of the condominium complex at 6520 Shirley Avenue, Reseda, California 91335. In an alley behind the complex, we have a trash bin and a (blue) recycle bin for use by residents here. Of course, no trash is supposed go in the recycle bin. It’s much worse to put trash in the recycle bin than to put a recyclable item in the trash bin. That’s because a piece of trash can contaminate all the recyclables in the recycle bin, and turn it into trash.

For well over a year, and daily, or almost daily, someone has been putting trash in that recycle bin (certain distinctive signs make me think it’s the same person every time). And he (I imagine it’s a man) is doing it, not ignorantly, or out of laziness, but knowingly and maliciously, to sabotage the efforts of the rest of us to recycle. How do I know it’s knowing and malicious? To begin with, the trash that he puts in the recycle bin is not something the average person might make an honest mistake about (like metal cans or Starbucks coffee cups)—it’s obvious trash: often garbage (platefuls of oily food). And even if he doesn’t read English, everyone knows that the blue bin is for recyclables only. Further, the recycle bin is right next to the trash bin. And the recycle bin is kept covered; whereas, the trash bin stays uncovered. If this culprit were acting just out of laziness, he’d throw his stuff in the trash bin, because that would be easier—he wouldn’t have to lift a cover.

This criminal’s conduct is annoying for those of us who see the result; and it harms the public at large. I’ve been witnessing this for a long time now, and I’m finally fed up. I’d love to catch that son of a gun, and make him stop, and perhaps also make him pay. But first we need to identify him. It would be worth posting a live watcher, because it wouldn’t take long—he commits this crime pretty much every day. But installing a surveillance camera would probably be the most cost-effective solution—and the most effective, since he’d be less likely to see it in advance.

I’d very much appreciate your passing this note along to someone who might be able to act on it. Thank you for your attention.

Sincerely,

Richard Eisner

● Today, for the first time ever, I used comforter clips, or grips, to try to keep my comforter and the cover together. I’ll report later how well they work. If they work well, it will be a real coup. I’ve been struggling with that most of my life.

● Friday, 12-30-2022:   Someone posted this New Year’s greeting:

“I enjoy being part of this group and learning from all your email responses, whether sent directly to my questions or others. Wanted to wish you all a very Happy New Year! May 2023 bring you all the happiness, peace, and success you all deserve. Stay safe 🙂

Regards,”

I replied thus: Wishing people what they “deserve” is always a little tricky!

● Saturday, 12-31-2022:   Yesterday I decided to take my desert drive today. But when today rolled around, I didn’t feel like it.

2023 >>