The contents will show what is in the chapter; search & find it.
A Philosophy of Money
The Plasticity of One's Character
A Philosophy of Eating and Drinking
Sex Life
Advice to wives or female companions from a male point of view
One's Self - Ethnicity, Identity, Religion
Masturbation
Masturbation
Living Your Life by the Numbers
Efficiency
Economy and Conservation
Social Consciousness
Living According to Systems
Consciousness
Living According to Systems
Consciousness
The whole of Physician's Notebooks gives a way of life but it will be useful to have this chapter to pinpoint.
First, a legitimacy to make a philosophy. I base it on my present life. It means I survived and experienced and profited from the experience and am still standin' ! And I think I have something of value to offer.
A Philosophy of Money: First of all, today we live in a society where money is all controlling. People can be divided into salary slaves and non-slaves. You are a slave if you cannot go without salary. Is that you, today? As you become aware, you should work to free yourself. First, as much as possible, in an honorable way, rely on parents or unselfish friends to supply you with money and accept the gifts they may give you as long as no bad strings attached. Then, learn the secrets of being "cheapskate", i.e., how to shop, how to spend as little money as possible, how to enjoy self, economically as well as happily and healthfully, how to get good bargains.
And, as soon as you accumulate enough, put it in a bank account. Don't blab you have the account, don't promiscuously pay by checks (but still use checks carefully) because the check is an easy way to get the number of your account. In the USA, the tax authority does not keep a close tab on bank accounts that do not earn interest so a person who is intent on tax saving and has a large bank balance should not have that money as interest-bearing. And, if you have an overseas account, limit it to below US $50,000 per account.
About the tax authority: the advice is to not to try to illegally avoid paying income taxes; rather, to pay as little as you can arrange to without taking undue risks. It means as much as possible being paid as an independent contractor in cash for services and not owning very expensive properties. Being an expatriate is a good way of avoiding the attention. Above all, in all ways, keep low profile. (Cf. Chess champion Bobby Fischer who ended up dying as a tax fugitive in Iceland!)
Once you did the above you should be in the status of having most of your cash in a bank account with a money card. I can't exclaim enough how useful that status can be to one who wants to make use of his or her money creatively for her or his own convenience and pleasure. No big property ownership with its complexities and taxes, no taxable income; just cash liquidity, more than you would use in a lifetime, available at the ATM.
A final word about money: it is supremely important in our current society, but one should always observe a basic morality (according to traditional Judeo-Christian ideal) about the acquisition and use of money. Also in future a democratically developed, subsistence-guaranteed society plus computerized credit system may make unnecessary the importance of money as we now know it.
The Plasticity of One's Character: About personal characteristics like honesty and morality and sense of order, too many readers consider a person's character practically unchangeable. My experience is that one has a larger capacity for changes in his life than he or she is given credit for.
Take my own case? Up until age 70, I was not operating as a really good character; I was a mixed case. But, as the result of things in my past history, I had been given a sense of rightness and wrongness, and, eventually by age 70, I was becoming the kind of person I admired and wanted to become, but did not succeed in becoming previously. So do not categorize a person by their history alone. Someone who may have done bad acts in the past, may be capable of becoming a good person based on his own psychoanalysis or others' good advice. You may think at the moment that your or another person's character will prevent following the advice here; au contraire, just strive to change character and success can come if one is motivated enough by the reward gained.
A Philosophy of Eating and Drinking: because we are social and usually live in family, we have 3-time-a-day eating. In this routine, eating is a sole activity, perhaps with conversation or maybe TV or Internet as you eat. But in my ideal life, eating should not be a sole activity; it should be paired with another that helps your life. In the case I write about now, it is study and reading for learning. Eating should be used as the reward for its associated activity and so can be used as a psychological reinforcement to enhance the learning. (Note this ideal condition is rarely achieved because in our society eating has a key social function and is usually done in groups; nonetheless, especially as one gets older, one should strive for a more solitary type of eating as described here. But that does not mean one cannot eat socially with others, at times, as one pleases.)
Presently, my routine of 24-hour eating is 3, 4 or 5 sessions separated by a several hour intervals. As I am eating, I study-read. My session starts off with tea or coffee or water. (No other drinks because unhealthy.) and sometimes with this I may have a small sweet thing, eating slowly as I read for study. Then, a food-free interval of writing. Then, I return to the eating with a snack of fruit. And I eat contemplatively as I read and study. And then, I end my session with a main snack which is a moderate serving. Usually with the main snack I switch my reading from study for technical learning over to pleasure from a good magazine article.
I buy most of the food at the nearby supermarket or convenience store shortly before eating and do not need or want a refrigerator. If I need to cook, I use microwave or electric heat. My philosophy of buying has evolved into, first, choosing food that is least harmful to me. For example, if I am buying protein, I prefer in order: tofu (bean protein, least unhealthy), seafood, poultry, and red meat, and in my preferred order of red meat, I choose in descending order for good health: beef, pork, sheep (mutton and lamb). Then, I go generally by price. Usually, the less expensive is chosen. But also, the smaller, volume or weight and in terms of calories is chosen.
Caloric Portions are important. Generally I depend on the portions as they are sold in supermarkets in Japan. But I may split them in the eating into fractions, I., half or quarter.
Ultimately, a judgment of success at this eating is one's basal body weight, i.e., the fasting morning body weight after waking, urinating and after sitting to defecate. Converted to Body Mass Index it should be c.17 to 20, the older you get, the lower in that range.
Drinking noncaloric stimulating fluids like tea or coffee should not be habit. Stop buying coffee or tea if you can get it free. Don't be seen walking the streets with a cup of just-bought coffee. And have a real reason for drinking coffee or other liquid stimulant, i.e., to stimulate creative thought before writing, or to build energy to do an important chore.
Sex Life:
Sexuality inevitably gets almost everybody into trouble. Of course, it is a main pleasure and it has an importance in reproduction. In terms of pleasuring one's life, I am certain, now as I look back, that sex is overrated. But also I don't want to underrate sex; I just want to keep it in balance, simple and safe without social problems. Normal healthy practices should be striven after.
A definite, fairly original but controversial observation I have made in my life is that the liberalization of pornography as we've seen in the last 50 years has seemed to have, very badly, affected healthy sexuality in that it has stimulated the dangerous perversions of adult-child sex, of male homosexual sex, of S&M, of anal sex and even of the normal mating behavior. Not only gross pornography but the kind of depiction of sex and romance we see in our entertainment in 2021. This has come out of the culture of USA but it has infiltrated into the world at large. I am not in favor of government censorship, but I think a kind of self-censorship as it used to be in USA in 1930s and 40s when it comes to printed and entertainment description of sex would be a good idea to return to but wth requisite modernizations. Also there should be more education about the danger of abnormal sex. But, lacking that, one has to control for excess sexual stimulation using the kind of education in Physician's Notebooks.
Homosexuality is not necessarily wrong, but it should not be romanticized or made into a mystique as it too often is.
A young man or woman should be brought up in a sexually free atmosphere; by that, I mean his or her parents and the society should educate him or her in a way that says healthy sex is good and not immoral as long as one takes a responsibility for, and has an awareness of the harm one may cause his or her partner. Group sex (more than 2) should be considered wrong sex. Variations like oral sex are acceptable but should not be excessively fantasized, as they are now, and anal sex should be considered dangerous although it may occasionally be done out of curiosity or special need (unavailability of vagina) with no great harm as long as health precautions are observed. Also abnormal sexual connections like sex with the too young (below age c.14) should be treated as a perversion.
Masturbation without being promoted should be accepted as useful to sexual life especially for boys and men. Many dangerous, stupid, wrong sexual acts of men could be avoided if the men simply masturbated before making a decision for the sexual act. This is such an important, basic wisdom that I would like to emphasize it strongly.
Living Your Life by the Numbers: With the advent of a mobile phone I have started living my life, as I say, "by the numbers". And I find it good. I no longer use a wrist watch. Instead I do all my timing by mobile phone. I set my mobile phone alarm for the first minute after the hour, e.g., 6:01 for waking up and I do my activities or rest periods usually in 1-hour intervals. I also find it a good way to stop impulsive activity. Say I feel like starting to eat? Then I set my time-alarm for 1 hour forward (or for the 1st minute after the start of the next hour) and wait until then before I start the activity I impulsively felt like doing.
Efficiency: Under a feeling of priorities, strive for efficient living. Doing things by the numbers is one stroke toward efficiency in your life. Without being a compulsive neurotic, do not waste time, energy or resources, Get to your goal in the shortest line between start and stop.
Economy and Conservation: This follows naturally from trying to be efficient. Especially Earth's and society's (the community) resources should not be wasted and should be positively conserved. This can be carried so far, privately, to what others might laugh at, e.g., using tissue wipes to many-times blow one's nose instead of, as one usually does, blowing once into a wipe and discarding it. Similarly (and no less laughably) with toilet paper. In my flat, (I live alone) to conserve water and reduce the company's bill I flush my toilet commode only once each day as I leave.
Social Consciousness: without being a neurotic goodie-goodie one should not forget that one is a member of Communitas and one wants to make society work better for everyone which means less unreasonable, less excessive inequality, greater justice (without draconian excesses in punishments) and less economic burden on the individual. In this area, you should eschew uncooperative philosophies like Libertarianism that glorify freedom of individual over that of the group but you should always hold democratic governance and good universal free public education at highest level before deciding a way to live.
Living According to Systems: We are all part of Systems whose structure we discern in science knowledge: our universe, life from Evolution and on, and on down to microscopic levels. The closer each one of us aligns to Systems the happier and more successful we become. But we need first to see the course and learn how to align. For a small example, my workplace is between two subway stations on the M-line, one closer to downtown and the other closer to uptown. When I need to go downtown I can walk or take the bus at my door to the Downtown Station. Were I to go first to the Uptown Station it gives a feeling of displeasure because it is opposite to the system's course. From that you may generalize what Systems is.
Consciousness: As all evidence points to each of us having one life with one consciousness that ends at death, it follows that we want a life whose proportion of alert, happy consciousness is greatest. So I sleep only when I am forced to by weariness or by an unhappy, boring stretch of my consciousness. Each individual consciousness since the beginning of life is, of course temporary, starting from the early years and ending with one’s death. But each consciousness is a witness to the greater reality that seems to be eternal. The conclusion I draw is that one should strive to prolong one’s life. (Assuming it is not painful or massively unhappy). And to widen its interests. Also keep in mind a possible DNA connectedness with other humanity.
About the tax authority: the advice is to not to try to illegally avoid paying income taxes; rather, to pay as little as you can arrange to without taking undue risks. It means as much as possible being paid as an independent contractor in cash for services and not owning very expensive properties. Being an expatriate is a good way of avoiding the attention. Above all, in all ways, keep low profile. (Cf. Chess champion Bobby Fischer who ended up dying as a tax fugitive in Iceland!)
Once you did the above you should be in the status of having most of your cash in a bank account with a money card. I can't exclaim enough how useful that status can be to one who wants to make use of his or her money creatively for her or his own convenience and pleasure. No big property ownership with its complexities and taxes, no taxable income; just cash liquidity, more than you would use in a lifetime, available at the ATM.
A final word about money: it is supremely important in our current society, but one should always observe a basic morality (according to traditional Judeo-Christian ideal) about the acquisition and use of money. Also in future a democratically developed, subsistence-guaranteed society plus computerized credit system may make unnecessary the importance of money as we now know it.
The Plasticity of One's Character: About personal characteristics like honesty and morality and sense of order, too many readers consider a person's character practically unchangeable. My experience is that one has a larger capacity for changes in his life than he or she is given credit for.
Take my own case? Up until age 70, I was not operating as a really good character; I was a mixed case. But, as the result of things in my past history, I had been given a sense of rightness and wrongness, and, eventually by age 70, I was becoming the kind of person I admired and wanted to become, but did not succeed in becoming previously. So do not categorize a person by their history alone. Someone who may have done bad acts in the past, may be capable of becoming a good person based on his own psychoanalysis or others' good advice. You may think at the moment that your or another person's character will prevent following the advice here; au contraire, just strive to change character and success can come if one is motivated enough by the reward gained.
A Philosophy of Eating and Drinking: because we are social and usually live in family, we have 3-time-a-day eating. In this routine, eating is a sole activity, perhaps with conversation or maybe TV or Internet as you eat. But in my ideal life, eating should not be a sole activity; it should be paired with another that helps your life. In the case I write about now, it is study and reading for learning. Eating should be used as the reward for its associated activity and so can be used as a psychological reinforcement to enhance the learning. (Note this ideal condition is rarely achieved because in our society eating has a key social function and is usually done in groups; nonetheless, especially as one gets older, one should strive for a more solitary type of eating as described here. But that does not mean one cannot eat socially with others, at times, as one pleases.)
Presently, my routine of 24-hour eating is 3, 4 or 5 sessions separated by a several hour intervals. As I am eating, I study-read. My session starts off with tea or coffee or water. (No other drinks because unhealthy.) and sometimes with this I may have a small sweet thing, eating slowly as I read for study. Then, a food-free interval of writing. Then, I return to the eating with a snack of fruit. And I eat contemplatively as I read and study. And then, I end my session with a main snack which is a moderate serving. Usually with the main snack I switch my reading from study for technical learning over to pleasure from a good magazine article.
I buy most of the food at the nearby supermarket or convenience store shortly before eating and do not need or want a refrigerator. If I need to cook, I use microwave or electric heat. My philosophy of buying has evolved into, first, choosing food that is least harmful to me. For example, if I am buying protein, I prefer in order: tofu (bean protein, least unhealthy), seafood, poultry, and red meat, and in my preferred order of red meat, I choose in descending order for good health: beef, pork, sheep (mutton and lamb). Then, I go generally by price. Usually, the less expensive is chosen. But also, the smaller, volume or weight and in terms of calories is chosen.
Caloric Portions are important. Generally I depend on the portions as they are sold in supermarkets in Japan. But I may split them in the eating into fractions, I., half or quarter.
Ultimately, a judgment of success at this eating is one's basal body weight, i.e., the fasting morning body weight after waking, urinating and after sitting to defecate. Converted to Body Mass Index it should be c.17 to 20, the older you get, the lower in that range.
Drinking noncaloric stimulating fluids like tea or coffee should not be habit. Stop buying coffee or tea if you can get it free. Don't be seen walking the streets with a cup of just-bought coffee. And have a real reason for drinking coffee or other liquid stimulant, i.e., to stimulate creative thought before writing, or to build energy to do an important chore.
Sex Life:
Sexuality inevitably gets almost everybody into trouble. Of course, it is a main pleasure and it has an importance in reproduction. In terms of pleasuring one's life, I am certain, now as I look back, that sex is overrated. But also I don't want to underrate sex; I just want to keep it in balance, simple and safe without social problems. Normal healthy practices should be striven after.
A definite, fairly original but controversial observation I have made in my life is that the liberalization of pornography as we've seen in the last 50 years has seemed to have, very badly, affected healthy sexuality in that it has stimulated the dangerous perversions of adult-child sex, of male homosexual sex, of S&M, of anal sex and even of the normal mating behavior. Not only gross pornography but the kind of depiction of sex and romance we see in our entertainment in 2021. This has come out of the culture of USA but it has infiltrated into the world at large. I am not in favor of government censorship, but I think a kind of self-censorship as it used to be in USA in 1930s and 40s when it comes to printed and entertainment description of sex would be a good idea to return to but wth requisite modernizations. Also there should be more education about the danger of abnormal sex. But, lacking that, one has to control for excess sexual stimulation using the kind of education in Physician's Notebooks.
Homosexuality is not necessarily wrong, but it should not be romanticized or made into a mystique as it too often is.
A young man or woman should be brought up in a sexually free atmosphere; by that, I mean his or her parents and the society should educate him or her in a way that says healthy sex is good and not immoral as long as one takes a responsibility for, and has an awareness of the harm one may cause his or her partner. Group sex (more than 2) should be considered wrong sex. Variations like oral sex are acceptable but should not be excessively fantasized, as they are now, and anal sex should be considered dangerous although it may occasionally be done out of curiosity or special need (unavailability of vagina) with no great harm as long as health precautions are observed. Also abnormal sexual connections like sex with the too young (below age c.14) should be treated as a perversion.
Masturbation without being promoted should be accepted as useful to sexual life especially for boys and men. Many dangerous, stupid, wrong sexual acts of men could be avoided if the men simply masturbated before making a decision for the sexual act. This is such an important, basic wisdom that I would like to emphasize it strongly.
Living Your Life by the Numbers: With the advent of a mobile phone I have started living my life, as I say, "by the numbers". And I find it good. I no longer use a wrist watch. Instead I do all my timing by mobile phone. I set my mobile phone alarm for the first minute after the hour, e.g., 6:01 for waking up and I do my activities or rest periods usually in 1-hour intervals. I also find it a good way to stop impulsive activity. Say I feel like starting to eat? Then I set my time-alarm for 1 hour forward (or for the 1st minute after the start of the next hour) and wait until then before I start the activity I impulsively felt like doing.
Efficiency: Under a feeling of priorities, strive for efficient living. Doing things by the numbers is one stroke toward efficiency in your life. Without being a compulsive neurotic, do not waste time, energy or resources, Get to your goal in the shortest line between start and stop.
Economy and Conservation: This follows naturally from trying to be efficient. Especially Earth's and society's (the community) resources should not be wasted and should be positively conserved. This can be carried so far, privately, to what others might laugh at, e.g., using tissue wipes to many-times blow one's nose instead of, as one usually does, blowing once into a wipe and discarding it. Similarly (and no less laughably) with toilet paper. In my flat, (I live alone) to conserve water and reduce the company's bill I flush my toilet commode only once each day as I leave.
Social Consciousness: without being a neurotic goodie-goodie one should not forget that one is a member of Communitas and one wants to make society work better for everyone which means less unreasonable, less excessive inequality, greater justice (without draconian excesses in punishments) and less economic burden on the individual. In this area, you should eschew uncooperative philosophies like Libertarianism that glorify freedom of individual over that of the group but you should always hold democratic governance and good universal free public education at highest level before deciding a way to live.
Living According to Systems: We are all part of Systems whose structure we discern in science knowledge: our universe, life from Evolution and on, and on down to microscopic levels. The closer each one of us aligns to Systems the happier and more successful we become. But we need first to see the course and learn how to align. For a small example, my workplace is between two subway stations on the M-line, one closer to downtown and the other closer to uptown. When I need to go downtown I can walk or take the bus at my door to the Downtown Station. Were I to go first to the Uptown Station it gives a feeling of displeasure because it is opposite to the system's course. From that you may generalize what Systems is.
Consciousness: As all evidence points to each of us having one life with one consciousness that ends at death, it follows that we want a life whose proportion of alert, happy consciousness is greatest. So I sleep only when I am forced to by weariness or by an unhappy, boring stretch of my consciousness. Each individual consciousness since the beginning of life is, of course temporary, starting from the early years and ending with one’s death. But each consciousness is a witness to the greater reality that seems to be eternal. The conclusion I draw is that one should strive to prolong one’s life. (Assuming it is not painful or massively unhappy). And to widen its interests. Also keep in mind a possible DNA connectedness with other humanity.
(May be added to in future updates).
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