Plural Of Something In Quotes

What, I wondered, did he mean by “society”? The plural of human beings? Where was the substance of this thing called “society”? I had spent my whole life thinkng that society must certainly be something powerful, harsh and severe, but to hear Horiki talk made the words “Don’t you mean yourself?” come to the tip of my tongue. But I held the words back, reluctant to anger him. ‘Society won’t stand for it.’ ‘It’s not society. You’re the one who won’t stand for it - right?’ ‘If you do such a thing society will make you suffer for it’ ‘It’s not society. It’s you, isn’t it?’ ‘Before you know it, you’ll be ostracized by society.’ ‘It’s not society. You’re going to do the ostracizing, aren’t you?’ Words, words of every kind went flitting through my head. “Know thy particular fearsomeness, thy knavery, cunning and witchcraft!” What I said, however, as I wiped the perspiration from my face with a handkerchief was merely, “You’ve put me in a cold sweat!” I smiled. From then on, however, I came to hold, almost as a philosophical conviction, the belief: What is society but an individual?

He stepped to her again, laid his lips on her brow. "But I want children with you, my lovely Eve. One day." "One day being far, far in the future. Like, I don't know, say a decade when...Hold on. Children is plural." He eased back, grinned. "Why, so it is--nothing slips by my canny cop." "You really think if I ever actually let you plant something in me--they're like aliens in there, growing little hands and feet." She shuddered. "Creepy. If I ever did that, popped a kid out--which I think is probably as pleasant a process as having your eyeballs pierced by burning, poisonous sticks, I'd say, 'Whoopee, let's do this again?' Have you recently suffered head trauma?" "Not to my knowledge." "Could be coming. Any second.

The modern state does not comprehend how anyone can be guided by something other than itself. In its eyes pluralism is treason.

It was once said that this is the land of the free. There is, I believe, a statue out there in the harbor, with something written on it about "Give me your hungry...your oppressed...give me pretty much everybody"-that's the way I remember it, anyway. The idea of America is a mutt-culture, isn't it? Who the hell is America if not everybody else? We are-and should be-a big, messy, anarchistic polyglot of dialects and accents and different skin tones.... We need more Latinos to come here. And they should, whenever possible, impregnate our women.

Let no one reduce to tears or reproach This statement of the mastery of God, Who, with magnificent irony, gave Me at once both books and night Of this city of books He pronounced rulers These lightless eyes, who can only Peruse in libraries of dreams The insensible paragraphs that yield With every new dawn. Vainly does the day Lavish on them its infinite books, Arduous as the arduous manuscripts Which at Alexandria did perish. Of hunger and thirst (a Greek story tells us) Dies a king amidst fountains and gardens; I aimlessly weary at the confines Of this tall and deep blind library. Encyclopedias, atlases, the East And the West, centuries, dynasties Symbols, cosmos and cosmogonies Do walls proffer, but pointlessly. Slow in my shadow, I the hollow shade Explore with my indecisive cane; To think I had imagined Paradise In the form of such a library. Something, certainly not termed Fate, rules on such things; Another had received in blurry Afternoons both books and shadow. Wandering through these slow corridors I often feel with a vague and sacred dread That I am another, the dead one, who must Have trodden the same steps at the same time. Which of the two is now writing this poem Of a plural I and of a single shadow? How important is the word that names me If the anathema is one and indivisible? Groussac or Borges, I see this darling World deform and extinguish To a pale, uncertain ash Resembling sleep and oblivion

Noel: A lot of people see friends as something you have on Twitter or Facebook or wherever. If someone wants to read your updates and you want to read their updates, then you’re friends. You don’t ever have to see each other. But that seems like a stupid definition to me. Roo: Yeah. Noel: Although on the other hand, rethink. Maybe a friend is someone who wants your updates. Even if they’re boring. Or sad. Or annoyingly cutesy. A friend says, “Sign me up for your boring crap, yes indeed” – because he likes you anyway. He’ll tolerate your junk. Roo: You have lots of friends. Noel: No, I don’t. Roo: You do. You know everyone at school. You get invited to parties. Noel: I get invited to parties, yeah. And I know people. But I don’t want their updates. Roo: Oh. Noel: And I sincerely doubt they want mine. Roo: I want your updates. Noel: I want your updates. (He looks down, bashfully.) I do. I want all your updates, Ruby.

It's ridiculous. Here I sit in my little room, I, Brigge, who have got to be twenty-eight years old and about whom no one knows. I sit here and am nothing. And yet this nothing begins to think and thinks, up five flights of stairs, these thoughts on a gray Paris afternoon: Is it possible, this nothing thinks, that one has not yet seen, recognized, and said anything real and important? Is it possible that one has had thousands of years of time to look, reflect, and write down, and that one has let the millennia pass away like a school recess in which one eats one's sandwich and an apple? Yes, it is possible. ...Is it possible that in spite of inventions and progress, in spite of culture, religion, and worldly wisdom, that one has remained on the surface of life? Is it possible that one has even covered this surface, which would at least have been something, with an incredibly dull slipcover, so that it looks like living-room furniture during the summer vacation? Yes, it is possible. Is it possible that the whole history of the world has been misunderstood? Is it possible that the past is false because one has always spoken of its masses, as if one was telling about a coming together of many people, instead of telling about the one person they were standing around, because he was alien and died? Yes, it is possible. Is it possible that one believed one has to make up for everything that happened before one was born? Is it possible one would have to remind every single person that he arose from all earlier people so that he would know it, and not let himself be talked out of it by the others, who see it differently? Yes, it is possible. Is it possible that all these people know very precisely a past that never was? Is it possible that everything real is nothing to them; that their life takes its course, connected to nothing, like a clock in an empty room? Yes, it is possible. Is it possible that one knows nothing about girls, who are nevertheless alive? Is it possible that one says "the women", "the children", "the boys", and doesn't suspect (in spite of all one's education doesn't suspect) that for the longest time these words have no longer had a plural, but only innumerable singulars? Yes, it is possible. Is it possible that there are people who say "God" and think it is something they have in common? Just look at two schoolboys: one buys himself a knife, and the same day his neighbor buys one just like it. And after a week they show each other their knives and it turns out that they bear only the remotest resemblance to each other-so differently have they developed in different hands (Well, the mother of one of them says, if you boys always have to wear everything out right away). Ah, so: is it possible to believe that one could have a God without using him? Yes, it is possible. But, if all this is possible, has even an appearance of possibility-then for heaven's sake something has to happen. The first person who comes along, the one who has had this disquieting thought, must begin to accomplish some of what has been missed; even if he is just anyone, not the most suitable person: there is simply no one else there. This young, irrelevant foreigner, Brigge, will have to sit himself down five flights up and write, day and night, he will just have to write, and that will be that.

Tell me something. Do you believe in God?' Snow darted an apprehensive glance in my direction. 'What? Who still believes nowadays?' 'It isn't that simple. I don't mean the traditional God of Earth religion. I'm no expert in the history of religions, and perhaps this is nothing new--do you happen to know if there was ever a belief in an...imperfect God?' 'What do you mean by imperfect?' Snow frowned. 'In a way all the gods of the old religions were imperfect, considered that their attributes were amplified human ones. The God of the Old Testament, for instance, required humble submission and sacrifices, and and was jealous of other gods. The Greek gods had fits of sulks and family quarrels, and they were just as imperfect as mortals...' 'No,' I interrupted. 'I'm not thinking of a god whose imperfection arises out of the candor of his human creators, but one whose imperfection represents his essential characteristic: a god limited in his omniscience and power, fallible, incapable of foreseeing the consequences of his acts, and creating things that lead to horror. He is a...sick god, whose ambitions exceed his powers and who does not realize it at first. A god who has created clocks, but not the time they measure. He has created systems or mechanisms that serves specific ends but have now overstepped and betrayed them. And he has created eternity, which was to have measured his power, and which measures his unending defeat.' Snow hesitated, but his attitude no longer showed any of the wary reserve of recent weeks: 'There was Manicheanism...' 'Nothing at all to do with the principles of Good and Evil,' I broke in immediately. 'This god has no existence outside of matter. He would like to free himself from matter, but he cannot...' Snow pondered for a while: 'I don't know of any religion that answers your description. That kind of religion has never been...necessary. If i understand you, and I'm afraid I do, what you have in mind is an evolving god, who develops in the course of time, grows, and keeps increasing in power while remaining aware of his powerlessness. For your god, the divine condition is a situation without a goal. And understanding that, he despairs. But isn't this despairing god of yours mankind, Kelvin? Is it man you are talking about, and that is a fallacy, not just philosophically but also mystically speaking.' I kept on: 'No, it's nothing to do with man. man may correspond to my provisional definition from some point of view, but that is because the definition has a lot of gaps. Man does not create gods, in spite of appearances. The times, the age, impose them on him. Man can serve is age or rebel against it, but the target of his cooperation or rebellion comes to him from outside. If there was only a since human being in existence, he would apparently be able to attempt the experiment of creating his own goals in complete freedom--apparently, because a man not brought up among other human beings cannot become a man. And the being--the being I have in mind--cannot exist in the plural, you see? ...Perhaps he has already been born somewhere, in some corner of the galaxy, and soon he will have some childish enthusiasm that will set him putting out one star and lighting another. We will notice him after a while...' 'We already have,' Snow said sarcastically. 'Novas and supernovas. According to you they are candles on his altar.' 'If you're going to take what I say literally...' ...Snow asked abruptly: 'What gave you this idea of an imperfect god?' 'I don't know. It seems quite feasible to me. That is the only god I could imagine believing in, a god whose passion is not a redemption, who saves nothing, fulfills no purpose--a god who simply is.

If adults commit adultery, do infants commit infantry? If olive oil is made from olives, what do they make baby oil from? I a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian consume? A writer is someone who writes, and a stinger is something that stings. But fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce, hammers don't ham, humdingers don't humding, ushers don't ush, and haberdashers do not haberdash...If the plural of tooth is teeth, shouldn't the plural of booth be beeth? One goose, two geese-so one moose, two meese? If people ring a bell today and rang a bell yesterday, why don't we say that they flang a ball? If they wrote a letter, perhaps they also bote their tongue.

You take your natural vices and call them virtues. Of which greed is the most despicable. That and betrayal of commonality. After all, whoever decided that competition is always and without exception a healthy attribute? Why that particular path to self-esteem? Your heel on the hand of the one below. This is worth something? Let me tell you, it’s worth nothing. Nothing lasting. Every monument that exists beyond the moment—no matter which king, emperor or warrior lays claim to it—is actually a testament to the common, to co-operation, to the plural rather than the singular.

At least for a moment we all saw, I think, that the danger of pluralism is that it becomes factionalism, and that if factions grind their separate axes too vociferously, something mutual, precious, and human is in danger of being drowned out and lost.

It sounds to me like you're being cruel to yourself." After a moment, I said, "How can you be anything to your self? I mean, if you can be something to your self, then your self isn't, like, singular." "You're deflecting." I just stared at her. "You're right that self isn't simple, Aza. Maybe it's not even singular. Self is a plurality, but pluralities can also be integrated, right? Think of a rainbow. It's one arc of light, but also seven differently colored arcs of light.

The fact that man is capable of action means that the unexpected can be expected from him, that he is able to perform what is infinitely improbable. And this again is possible only because each man is unique, so that with each birth something uniquely new comes into the world. With respect to this somebody who is unique it can be truly said that nobody was there before. If action as beginning corresponds to the fact of birth, if it is the actualization of the human condition of natality, then speech corresponds to the fact of distinctness and is the actualization of the human condition of plurality, that is, of living as a distinct and unique being among equals.

It wasn’t that big a deal.” Raziel sat up. He stared hard at Keira until she had no choice but to meet his eyes. He could still see doubt and uncertainty there. “Stop that. If you did what you say you did, you pulled off a hell of a thing. Several hells of things. Or something like that. I’m not sure how to make that plural. The point is...” Raziel had to stop for a moment to figure out what his point was. She was looking at him with curiosity now, the self consciousness somewhat faded. “The point is thank you.” “Thank… you?” “Yeah. You got me away from Alban. You came to help Kusa. You risked your life to keep me and my friends alive. Thank you.” “You… you…” She struggled for words. “You are so weird.

The Egyptian word Pir-em-us meant to them something of great vertical height. From this the Greek form Pyramis, or the plural Pyramides was formed.

And every word has at most one inflectional suffix. We never get opensed or opensing, nor do the plural -s and possessive s stack up when several owners own something: the dogs’ blanket, not the dogs’s (dogzez) blanket. Finally,

The invention of the laws of number has as its basis the primordial and prior-prevailing delusion that many like things exist (although in point of fact there is no such thing is a duplicate), or that, at least, there are things (but there is no “thing”). The assumption of plurality always presupposes that something exists which manifests itself repeatedly, but just here is where the delusion prevails; in this very matter we feign realities, unities, that have no existence.

It is absolutely from his vision of the whole, in which the genius always lives, that he gets his sense of the parts. He values everything within him or without him by the standard of this vision, a vision that for him is no function of time, but a part of eternity. . . . The scientist takes phenomena for what they obviously are; the great man or the genius for what they signify. Sea and mountain, light and darkness, spring and autumn, cypress and palm, dove and swan are symbols to him, he not only thinks that there is, but he recognizes in them something deeper. The ride of the Valkyrie is not produced by atmospheric pressure and the magic fire is not the outcome of a process of oxidation. And all this is possible for him because the outer world is as full and strongly connected as the inner in him, the external world in fact seems to be only a special aspect of his inner life; the universe and the ego have become one in him, and he is not obliged to set his experience together piece by piece according to rule. . . . The infinity of the universe is responded to in the genius by a true sense of infinity in his own breast; he holds chaos and cosmos, all details and all totality, all plurality, and all singularity in himself.

Rikki looked over at me. “Why now?" she asked, looking back at Arly. “Why is this happening now?" "Hard to say." Arly [therapist] replied. "DID usually gets diagnosed in adulthood. Something happens that triggers the alters to come out. When Cam's father died and he came in to help his brother run the family business he was in close contact with his mother again. Maybe it was seeing Kyle around the same age when some of the abuse happened. Cam was sick for a long time and finally got better. Maybe he wasn't strong enough until now to handle this. It's probably a combination of things. But it sure looks like some of the abuse Cam experienced involved his mother. And sexual abuse by the mother is considered to he one of the most traumatic forms of abuse. In some ways it's the ultimate betrayal.

I don't think anyone creates a fake universe," Herb said, "since it isn't there." "But you're saying something is causing us to see a universe that doesn't exist. Who is this someone?" He said, "Satan." Cocking his head, Elias eyed him. "It's a way of seeing the real world," Herb said. "An occluded way. A dreamlike way. A hypnotized, asleep way. The nature of world undergoes a perceptual change; actually it is the perceptions that change, not the world. The change is in us." "'The Ape of God,'" Elias said. "A medieval theory about the Devil. That he apes God's legitimate creation with spurious interpolations of his own. That's really an exceedingly sophisticated idea, epistemologically speaking. Does it mean that parts of the world are spurious? Or that sometimes the whole world is spurious?Or that there are plural worlds of which one is real and the others are not? Is there essentially one matrix world from which people derive differing perceptions? So that the world you see is not the world I see?

The summation of much pre-Socratic theology and philosophy can be stated as follows: The kosmos is not as it appears to be, and what it probably is, at its deepest level, is exactly that which the human being is at his deepest level — call it mind or soul, it is something unitary which lives and thinks, and only appears to be plural and material.

In recent decades, "pluralism" has become something of a buzzword. It is variously employed. Often it is used to argue that no normative ethic, even of the vaguest and most tentative sort, can be "imposed" in our public life. In practice this means that public policy decisions reflect a surrender of the normal to the abnormal, of the dominant to the deviant. Indeed it is of more than passing interest that terms such as abnormal or deviant have been largely exorcised from polite vocabulary among the elites in American life. The displacement of the constitutive by the marginal is not so much the result of perverse decision makers as it is the inevitable consequence of a polity and legal system in which the advantage of initiative lies with the offended.

In English, plurality and timing matter. You cannot talk about an action, without also talking about when it happened, the past, present, or future, can define an entire experience. This is the hardest part. It is not enough to say that someone gives you something, the old woman tells me, you have to express when. Everything is rooted in time. Say give, say gives, say given, say gave. Give, gives, given, gave. I want to ask her why. Why is it so important in English and not in Chinese. What difference does the question of time make? The Chinese character for time, Shijian, is made with the charter of sun to represent the four seasons.

It is well known that Pentecost reverses Babel. The people who built the tower of Babel sought to make a name, and a unity, for themselves. At Pentecost, God builds his temple, uniting people in Christ. Unity – interpretive agreement and mutual understanding – is, it would appear, something that only God can accomplish. And accomplish it he does, but not in the way we might have expected. Although onlookers thought that the believers who received the Spirit at Pentecost were babbling (Acts 2:13), in fact they were speaking intelligibly in several languages (Acts 2:8-11). Note well: they were all saying the same thing (testifying about Jesus) in different languages. It takes a thousand tongues to say and sing our great Redeemer’s praise. Protestant evangelicalism evidences a Pentecostal plurality: the various Protestant streams testify to Jesus in their own vocabularies, and it takes many languages (i.e. interpretive traditions) to minister the meaning of God’s Word and the fullness of Christ. As the body is made up of many members, so many interpretations may be needed to do justice to the body of the biblical text. Why else are there four Gospels, but that the one story of Jesus was too rich to be told from one perspective only? Could it be that the various Protestant traditions function similarly as witnesses who testify to the same Jesus from different situations and perspectives?

We must consider also whether soul is divisible or is without parts, and whether it is everywhere homogeneous or not; and if not homogeneous, whether its various forms are different specifically or generically; up to the present time those who have discussed and investigated soul seem to have confined themselves to the human soul. We must be careful not to ignore the question whether soul can be defined in a single account, as is the case with animal, or whether we must not give a separate account of each sort of it, as we do for horse, dog, man, god (in the latter case the universal, animal—and so too every other common predicate—is either nothing or posterior). Further, if what exists is not a plurality of souls, but a plurality of parts of one soul, which ought we to investigate first, the whole soul or its parts? It is also a difficult problem to decide which of these parts are in nature distinct from one another. Again, which ought we to investigate first, these parts or their functions, mind or thinking, the faculty or the act of sensation, and so on? If the investigation of the functions precedes that of the parts, the further question suggests itself: ought we not before either to consider the correlative objects, e.g. of sense or thought? It seems not only useful for the discovery of the causes of the incidental proprieties of substances to be acquainted with the essential nature of those substances (as in mathematics it is useful for the understanding of the property of the equality of the interior angles of a triangle to two right angles to know the essential nature of the straight and the curved or of the line and (the plane) but also conversely, for the knowledge of the essential nature of a substance is largely promoted by an acquaintance with its properties: for, when we are able to give an account conformable to experience of all or most of the properties of a substance, we shall be in the most favourable position to say something worth saying about the essential nature of that subject: in all demonstration a definition of the essence is required as a starting point, so that definitions which do not enable us to discover the incidental properties, or which fail to facilitate even a conjecture about them, must obviously, one and all, be dialectical and futile.

Darwin’s Bestiary PROLOGUE Animals tame and animals feral prowled the Dark Ages in search of a moral: the canine was Loyal, the lion was Virile, rabbits were Potent and gryphons were Sterile. Sloth, Envy, Gluttony, Pride—every peril was fleshed into something phantasmic and rural, while Courage, Devotion, Thrift—every bright laurel crowned a creature in some mythological mural. Scientists think there is something immoral in singular brutes having meat that is plural: beasts are mere beasts, just as flowers are floral. Yet between the lines there’s an implicit demurral; the habit stays with us, albeit it’s puerile: when Darwin saw squirrels, he saw more than Squirrel. 1. THE ANT The ant, Darwin reminded us, defies all simple-mindedness: Take nothing (says the ant) on faith, and never trust a simple truth. The PR men of bestiaries eulogized for centuries this busy little paragon, nature’s proletarian— but look here, Darwin said: some ants make slaves of smaller ants, and end exploiting in their peonages the sweating brows of their tiny drudges. Thus the ant speaks out of both sides of its mealy little mouth: its example is extolled to the workers of the world, but its habits also preach the virtues of the idle rich. 2. THE WORM Eyeless in Gaza, earless in Britain, lower than a rattlesnake’s belly-button, deaf as a judge and dumb as an audit: nobody gave the worm much credit till Darwin looked a little closer at this spaghetti-torsoed loser. Look, he said, a worm can feel and taste and touch and learn and smell; and ounce for ounce, they’re tough as wrestlers, and love can turn them into hustlers, and as to work, their labors are mythic, small devotees of the Protestant Ethic: they’ll go anywhere, to mountains or grassland, south to the rain forests, north to Iceland, fifty thousand to every acre guzzling earth like a drunk on liquor, churning the soil and making it fertile, earning the thanks of every mortal: proud Homo sapiens, with legs and arms— his whole existence depends on worms. So, History, no longer let the worm’s be an ignoble lot unwept, unhonored, and unsung. Moral: even a worm can turn. 3. THE RABBIT a. Except in distress, the rabbit is silent, but social as teacups: no hare is an island. (Moral: silence is golden—or anyway harmless; rabbits may run, but never for Congress.) b. When a rabbit gets miffed, he bounds in an orbit, kicking and scratching like—well, like a rabbit. (Moral: to thine own self be true—or as true as you can; a wolf in sheep’s clothing fleeces his skin.) c. He populates prairies and mountains and moors, but in Sweden the rabbit can’t live out of doors. (Moral: to know your own strength, take a tug at your shackles; to understand purity, ponder your freckles.) d. Survival developed these small furry tutors; the morals of rabbits outnumber their litters. (Conclusion: you needn’t be brainy, benign, or bizarre to be thought a great prophet. Endure. Just endure.) 4. THE GOSSAMER Sixty miles from land the gentle trades that silk the Yankee clippers to Cathay sift a million gossamers, like tides of fluff above the menace of the sea. These tiny spiders spin their bits of webbing and ride the air as schooners ride the ocean; the Beagle trapped a thousand in its rigging, small aeronauts on some elusive mission. The Megatherium, done to extinction by its own bigness, makes a counterpoint to gossamers, who breathe us this small lesson: for survival, it’s the little things that count.

Through it all that first feeling, on a night more than forty years ago, remains my major feeling: I am so pleased to be here that I can hardly believe I am. What New York represents, perfectly and consistently, in literature and life alike, is the idea of Hope. Hope for a new life, for something big to happen, hope for a better life or a bigger apartment. When I leave Paris, I think, I was there. When I leave New York, I still think: Where was I? I was there of course, and I still couldn’t grasp it all. I love Paris, but I believe in New York and its trinity of values: plurality, verticality, possibility. These are stories of happiness in shadow: the shadow of a darkening time and the shadow of human mortality both. I feel the shadows, we all do, and cringe maybe even more than most. But I try to remember that darkness is a subject, too, and need not always be too sad a one. Shadows are all we have to show us the shapes that light can make.

You are the lifemate of a senstive, modern male. Julian's lazy amusement warmed her further, confirming what she already suspected, that he often stayed a shadow in her mind. How fortunate for me. Desari smiled at herself in the mirror. Her dark hair cascaded in waves down her back. There was a sparkle in her eyes. She knew Julian had made her feel more alive than she had ever been. Sensitive, modern men are so to my liking. Men? I am certain I did not hear my lifemate use the word men.The plural.No man is allowed to be to your liking other than myself. He sounded stern, the fierce Carpathian male at his most menacing. Desari laughed aloud. I suppose I can see your point, Julian, but really, it is so difficult to keep from noticing all of those handsome hunks in the audience. Handsome hunks? His voice dropped low with the affront. They are more like lovesick fops. If they could feel the vibrations in the air, they would show sense and run for their lives. It is bad enough to read their fantasies and hear them talk their trash, cara,but it is altogether worse to hear that my woman is looking back. One smile at the wrong man, lifemate, and trouble will find the man quickly. You sound jealous,she accused him, amusement curving her soft mouth. The first rule for all women to know and never forget is that Carpathian makes do not share their lifemates. Your brother has much to answer for that this was not drilled into you since birth.It was his job to prepare you for my coming. It was said somewhere between jest and complaint. Desari drew in her breath sharply, finding herself wavering between laughter and exasperation. My brother had no idea of your existence, you arrogant male. Besides, how could he possibly prepare me for your total ignorance of women? More likely, had he known you were coming to speak your ritual words, he would have been waiting to ambush you.I myself would have burrowed deep within the ground until you passed beyond my surroundings. You would have burst from the ground staight into my arms,cara mia, and you know this to be true. Now he was laughing, that smug, taunting, male amusement that should have set her teeth on edge but instead made her laugh. I think you are trying to find something to dictate to me about just so you do not lose your ability. Go away and practice this male art form on someone else. You will be singing to me tonight, piccola,and to no other man. You are a spoiled little boy,not a grown man. Should I come show you what a grown man I am? His voice was suddenly low and warm, so sexy she felt a rush of answering heat. She could feel the brush of his fingers against her throat, trailing down the valley between her suddenly aching breasts. Go away,Julian, she laughed in answer. I cannot have you getting me hot and bothered just now. As long as I know you re hot and bothered for me, I will do as you request and go back to work. I can only hope.

Something I'm working on, a possibly helpful spell to cast on yourself in adverse environments... Maybe a self compassion spell that might invite the ancient intelligences in their minute plurality to emerge from the tree line. I am alright in the essenceless stream of becoming I apprehend myself actually dancing with amazing terror while driving the shy and alone animal body itself imagining the breathing maze of dreaming mirrors it dreams itself lost in No one could be expected to do this properly your body in its suchness momentarily in paradise dreaming up all this agonic psychic carnivalia all over again "as the words rain down" like the feathers of birds of paradise that heartbreaking in their naked individuality and that incalculably fine, impossibly necessary to some really friendly abyss you never expected when you were that person sentenced to the futures your bad moods subjugated you to endless hotel hallways the room numbers in no order realizing you will never find yours again and that you must never stop searching laughing like an infant in a bathtub to enjoy the evanescent cartoon pandemonium of awareness while having kinds of relationships We do fine with our sentience for the most part. Thanks anyway. Void yet appearing overthinking sometimes.

[T]he awakened one, the knowing one, says: “Body am I entirely, and nothing more; and soul is only the name of something in the body.” The body is a great wisdom, a plurality with one sense, a war and a peace, a flock and a shepherd. An instrument of your body is also your small wisdom, my brother, which you call “spirit” — a little instrument and plaything of your great wisdom. “Ego,” you say, and are proud of that word. But the greater thing — in which you are unwilling to believe — is your body with its great wisdom; it says not “ego,” but does it…. …Ever hearkens the Self, and seeks; it compares, masters, conquers, and destroys. It rules, and is also the ego’s ruler. Behind your thoughts and feelings, my brother, there is a mighty lord, an unknown sage — it is called Self; it dwells in your body, it is your body. There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy. And who then knows why your body requires your deepest philosophy? Your Self laughs at your ego, and its proud prancings. “What are these prancings and flights of thought to me?” it says to itself. “A by-way to my purpose. I am the leading-string of the ego, and the prompter of its notions.” The Self says to the ego: “Feel pain!” And thereupon it suffers, and thinks how it may put an end thereto — and for that very purpose it is meant to think. The Self says to the ego: “Feel pleasure!” Thereupon it rejoices, and thinks how it may ofttimes rejoice — and for that very purpose it is meant to think.

Then if it is denied that the unity at that level is the interconnection of the plurality or dissimilarity of religions as of parts constituting a whole, rather that every one of the religions at the level of ordinary existence is not part of a whole, but is a whole in itself-then the 'unity' that is meant is 'oneness' or 'sameness' not really of religions, but of the God of religions at the level of transcendence (i.e. esoteric), implying thereby that at the level of ordinary existence (i.e. exoteric), and despite the plurality and diversity of religions, each religion is adequate and valid in its own limited way, each authentic and conveying limited though equal truth. The notion of a plurality of truth of equal validity in the plurality and diversity of religion is perhaps aligned to the statements and general conclusions of modern philosophy and science arising from the discovery of a pluraity and diversity of laws governing the universe having equal validity each in its own cosmological system. The trend to align modern scientific discovery concerning the systems of the universe with corresponding statements applied to human society, cultural traditions,and values is one of the characteristic features of modernity. The position of those who advocate the theory of the transcendent unity of religions is based upon the assumption that all religions, or the major religions of mankind, are revealed religions. They assume that the universality and transcendence of esotericism validates their theory, which they 'discovered' after having acquainted themselves with the metaphysics of Islam. In their understanding of this metaphysics of the transcendent unity of existence, they further assume that the transcendent unity of religions is already implied. There is grave error in all their assumptions, and the phrase 'transcendent unity of religions' is misleading and perhaps meant to be so for motives other than the truth. Their claim to belief in the transecendent unity of religions is something suggested to them inductively by the imagination and is derived from intellectual speculation and not from actual experience. If this is denied, and their claim is derived from the experience of others, then again we say that the sense of 'unity' experienced is not of religions, but of varying degrees of individual religious experience which does not of neccesity lead to the assumption that the religions of inviduals who experienced such 'unity', have truth of equal validity as revealed religions at the level of ordinary existence. Moreover, as already pointed out, the God of that experience is recognized as the rabb, not the ilah of revealed religion. And recognizing Him as the rabb does not necessarily mean that acknowledging Him in true submission follows from that recognition, for rebellion, arrogance, and falsehood have their origin in that very realm of transcendence. There is only one revealed religion. There is only one revealed religion. It was the religion conveyed by all the earlier Prophets, who were sent to preach the message of the revelation to their own people in accordance with the wisdom and justice of the Divine plan to prepare the peoples of the world for the reception of the religion in its ultimate and consummate form as a Universal Religion at the hands of the last Prophet, who was sent to convey the message of the revelation not only to his own people, but to mankind as a whole. The essential message of the revelation was always the same: to recognize and acknowledge and worship the One True and Real God (ilah) alone, without associating Him with any partner, rival, or equal, nor attributing a likeness to Him; and to confirm the truth preached by the earlier Prophets as well as to confirm the final truth brought by the last Prophet as it was confirmed by all the Prophets sent before him.

It is curious how little countenance radical pluralism has ever had from philosophers. Whether materialistically or spiritually minded, philosophers have always aimed at cleaning up the litter with which the world apparently is filled. They have substituted economical and orderly conceptions for the first sensible tangle; and whether these are morally elevated or only intellectually neat, they were at any rate always aesthetically pure and definite, and aimed at ascribing to the world something clean and intellectual in the way of structure. As compared with all these rationalizing pictures, the pluralistic empiricism which I profess offers but a sorry appearance. It is a turbid, muddled, gothic sort of affair, without sweeping outline and with little pictorial nobility. (James 1977, p. 26)

Metaphorically, Daoism anticipates something like the butterfly effect. Way-making (dao) gives rise to continuity, Continuity gives rise to difference, Difference to plurality, And plurality gives rise to the manifold of everything that is happening (wanwu) In Chinese thought, this transformation is called Dahua, the great transformation, a principle that seems to express glimpses of universal evolution.

This may sound like a terrible generalization but the Japanese language has taught me that a person's understanding of the world need not be so well articulated -- so rationally articulated -- the way it tends to be in Western languages. The Japanese language has the full potential to be logical and analytical, but it seems to me that it isn't its real business to be that way. At least, not the Japanese language we still use today. You can mix the present and the past tense. You don't have to specify whether something is singular or plural. You aren't always looking for a cogent progression of sentences; conjunctions such as "but," "and," and "so" are hence not all that important. Many Japanese people used to criticize their language for inhibiting rational thought. It was quite liberating to me when I realized that we can understand the world in different ways depending on the language we use. There isn't a right way or a wrong way.

Pluralism enshrines the notion of the rule of law, the principle that laws should be applied equally to everybody—something that is naturally impossible under an absolutist monarchy. But the rule of law, in turn, implies that laws cannot simply be used by one group to encroach upon the rights of another.

Which would you consider more "real" — the abstract Architect's floor plan — which shows something nobody ever sees in experience but which all can agree serves a useful function — or the various drawings from individual perspectives, which show the plural "realities" that people actually see, but which have no practical function?

The Le Corbusian city was designed, first and foremost, as a workshop for production. Human needs, in this context, were scientifically stipulated by the planner. Nowhere did he admit that the subjects for whom he was planning might have something valuable to say on this matter or that their needs might be plural rather than singular. Such was his concern with efficiency that he treated shopping and meal preparation as nuisances that would be discharged by central services like those offered by well-run hotels. Although floor space was provided for social activities, he said almost nothing about the actual social and cultural needs of the citizenry.

What is Something? Something should be the opposite of nothing. But is this strictly true? If something is the opposite of nothing, then something is the thing of absolute density. Then again, what is absolute density? Is absolute density possible? Absolute Being would be the Being of absolute density. Something with absolute density would lose any dimension and would be non-dimensional. Something with absolute density would have to expel space from itself. Something with absolute density would have to be one because there can be no absolute density if there is any polarity or plurality. Everything must be One squeezed to itself in the primordial singularity. This singularity is 0 nothing. Big Bang comes out of the Zero point of the Absolute. At the point of their absoluteness, something and nothing become the same. Something with absolute density is equal to nothing without any density. The only way for something to become alive is in the dance with the Nothing. The dance of the Something and the Nothing is the Source of life and the ultimate Source of the Universe. The material world cannot be infinite. That is a contradictio in adjecto. Nothingness cannot be wholly full on the macro or micro level. Material something must have an end at some point, on the macro or micro level.

A journey itself is beauty: space, journey, is the hope and joy of the world. Nothingness is the most important “dimension” of the Absolute or God; he doesn’t have dimensions without emptiness. Without Nothing, he is Nothing. Without the Nothing, there is no world and ultimately no space; if there is no space, there is nothing to be curved. However, if there is something, that something can exist as the world, only with the Nothing or in the Nothing or the Nothing can exist within it. Nothingness cannot be curved; only the Being can have curvature. The curvature of the Being is only its “physical” appearance and not the actual curvature of space, which is nothing and cannot be curved. As manifested in the world, the Being is many and One simultaneously. It is divided into a multitude yet stays One. There is only one Universe containing plurality—micro shapes, micro-universes, particles, waves, whatever we call all the elements of existence.

Only the world of Oneness and Unity (Singularity) is a universal reality without hierarchies. Still, the World of plurality and dispersed Oneness is the world of hierarchies, orders, degrees of life, understanding, and evolution. In a World of total Oneness, there is no evolution. Evolution and real life are only possible when they become less “real,” when something leads to something else, when something seeks something else, when something is bigger than something else, and when we crave and desire. The purpose of reality is life. The real way of life is motion. Without motion, there is no life. What secures the motion, whether matter is real or a product of a Universal Mind, is less important than the ultimate purpose of it all, and the ultimate purpose is to preserve life and meaning against nothingness.

Being is finite, and only something “nonexistent” can offer infinity to the finitude of the Being. Being and Nonbeing are the alpha and omega of existence. They negate each other and support each other. They fight with each other and make love to each other. The result is a Living Being, a Living World. The lack of one is the death of the other. Without the absoluteness of nothingness, there is no absoluteness of the Being. The absoluteness of one is equal to the absoluteness of the other. The Being and Nonbeing, without the World or plurality, become one, and this Oneness is the negation of both or the transformation of both into nothingness without the attribute of absoluteness (the Nothing cannot be anything else except nothing).

The end is only possible if there is a beginning. Something with the beginning has an end. Nonbeing has no beginning. The Being, the God, has no beginning. Nonbeing is absolute in its nothingness. Being is absolute in its somethingness. Nonbeing and Being, if separated from one another, are the same. Absoluteness makes nothing and something dead or asleep. Absolute contains all Being and Nonbeing. Being and Nonbeing, isolated from one another and independent, both become absolute and, for that reason, must annihilate each other. Without this relationship, there is no life. Without life, there is only absolute nothingness. This Absolute is the only true Absolute. Relativity is possible only in life, the Universe, and through the world or life. Without relativity, God is dead. The savior of the Absolute is relativity itself. Perfection is a dead end. The basis of every creation is purpose and meaning. Absolute cannot have a purpose and meaning without relativity. Relativity means plurality. Only in the plurality of the world life is possible. Absolute singularity is equal to Zero or nothingness. The power of the Absolute is in its absolute potential for relativity. Absolute is an engine—Perpetuum mobile. Only Nothing can be Absolute.

Even endless knowledge of the Universal Mind cannot sustain infinity as actuality. The Universal Mind cannot transform into an absolute plurality of infinity. Its purpose is to transform from one into many and to exist meaningfully. The meaning and the purpose of the Universal Mind are saved based on this limit imposed by something without any limit, the infinity.

The most unscientific idea in the history of humankind is that something came (or can come) into existence from nothing. Yet, since the Absolute is nothing without its emanation (manifestation in plurality), it must create Something to be Something. Absolute is not nothing just for being nothing but because it is an absolute something at its "highest point," at which there is no need for further movement, and all meaning and purpose are lost. The moving of the same thing to a different same point is no movement at all and is pointless.

If there is only one primordial Being “in” the Nothing, there is no relationship between this Being and anything else, and all this void is equal to zero or infinity. But, if there is an appearance of a “different” something, the Universe, the “material” Being “in” the Nothing, there is a relationship between the two entities, and anything in and between them is space. On the other hand, since these universes are pluralities, there is already established space inside them due to the plurality and distances they cause.

God of itself is nothing, and the Nothing of itself is nothing. In the absolute, without the world's existence as a plurality, God equals nothingness, and therefore the whole Absolute is nothing. The world is the Exit of the Absolute through God into nothingness and, in that way, into existence. The primordial essence in this manner becomes existence. Once the Being (God) and the Nonbeing (nothing) are united, neither one is nothing anymore. In this way, not only does the Absolute save itself, but it also saves the Being and the Nonbeing. This Nonbeing (nothing) is not nothing anymore but becomes something equally crucial as the Being itself.

The Absolute can only create and recreate itself if it transforms into something “less absolute.” This “less” absolute Being manifested through many beings is not only the Absolute's creation or recreation but is also its only life. In absolute Oneness, there is no real life. Division is the source of life. The secret to life is plurality. Oneness without plurality loses meaning. Plurality in Oneness is the source of meaning and purpose.

What we do not understand about the world or the things “beyond” the world is not proof that they do not exist but proof of our ignorance. Our ignorance cannot be a measure of anything and should not be a measure of anything, not to mention that it cannot be a measure of the unknown in this world or about what we think is beyond our world. Is something within or beyond only a matter of our understanding and perception rather than necessarily a matter of fact? The world is physics and metaphysics at the same time. Although it sounds paradoxical, we are what we are and are not. The world is more what we do not understand than we know. We seek what is seeking us. The Source is singing the song through all of us. The song of the universe celebrates the existence, the voyage, and the plurality dispersed through almost “eternity” to seek and reach the light that is the reflection of itself because the light of the source is in every one of us. To find the light within is to find the light out. Finding the source is identifying with the source on the way back to the source itself. The world is one organism. Existence needs separations to create and maintain life.

Hawking’s insistence on scientific laws hides the desire to transform the current scientific laws into the ultimate and absolute knowledge of everything, physical and metaphysical, of this world and the outer world. According to him, we are on the verge of declaring, with almost absolute certainty, that we have solved the whole enigma of existence and gone down to nearly the deepest end of science and scientific laws. Although he expressed many ideas in a simple, popular, and often funny way, there is a little bit of unjustifiable scientific conceit (to call it that way) behind some statements. If we were to imagine the creative force capable of creating the Universe, this creative force would be out of time or eternal. The Eternal Being is not contingent or affected by the boundaries of the physical world. The no-boundary proposal is accurate in that there are no boundaries we can apply to the Eternal Being. Still, the Universe, as the Being with its beginning, is bounded by time. The first point of the Universe is its first limit; it would have no limits if it were a timeless Being. Even if there were a series of births and rebirths, these would still be limited creations or recreations of something eternal that creates or recreates itself through the creation of universes. The creative power of the Eternal Being is the ultimate force that keeps the Eternal Being alive. The only way for the Eternal Being to exist with meaning is through its creative power to rejuvenate itself in new ways and myriad forms constantly. The Creator is its creation, and the creation creates the creator in a deeper sense. Without creating, the Universal Being loses its purpose and becomes meaningless. Meaning is only possible in plurality. The World, or Universe, gives the Universal Being meaning and purpose. The world is its salvation.

HARVARD DIVINITY School was proud, and justly so, of what it called its pluralism—feminists, humanists, theists, liberation theologians all pursuing truth together—but the price that pluralism can cost was dramatized one day in a way that I have never forgotten. I had been speaking as candidly and personally as I knew how about my own faith and how I had tried over the years to express it in language. At the same time I had been trying to get the class to respond in kind. For the most part none of them were responding at all but just sitting there taking it in without saying a word. Finally I had to tell them what I thought. I said they reminded me of a lot of dead fish lying on cracked ice in a fish store window with their round blank eyes. There I was, making a fool of myself spilling out to them the secrets of my heart, and there they were, not telling me what they believed about anything beneath the level of their various causes. It was at that point that a black African student got up and spoke. “The reason I do not say anything about what I believe,” he said in his stately African English, “is that I’m afraid it will be shot down.” At least for a moment we all saw, I think, that the danger of pluralism is that it becomes factionalism, and that if factions grind their separate axes too vociferously, something mutual, precious, and human is in danger of being drowned out and lost. I had good times as well as bad ones that winter term. I was able to say a few things that some of my students seemed to find valuable, and some of them said things that I value still, but if there was anything like a community to draw strength and comfort from there at Harvard as years before there had been at Union, I for one was not lucky enough to discover it.

It seems that something more than pluralism is needed to guarantee freedom; some personal and social convictions about freedom have to shape a society.

Traditionally, the needs of ethnically diverse consumers had been met by smaller companies—the equivalent, in movie terms, of independent filmmakers. In the seventies, Shindana introduced two Barbie-like fashion dolls: Malaika, taller and stouter than Barbie; and Career Girl Wanda, about three-quarters as tall as Barbie and as proportionately svelte. But in 1991, when Mattel brought out its "Shani" line—three Barbie-sized African-American dolls available with mahogany, tawny, or beige complexions— there could be no doubt that "politically correct" was profitable. "For six years, I had been preaching these demographics—showing pie charts of black kids under ten representing eighteen percent of the under-ten population and Hispanic kids representing sixteen percent—and nobody was interested," said Yla Eason, an African-American graduate of Harvard Business School who in 1985 founded Olmec Corporation, which makes dolls and action figures of color. "But when Mattel came out with those same demographics and said, 'Ethnically correct is the way,' it legitimatized our business." Some say that the toy industry's idea of "ethnically correct" doesn't go far enough, however. Ann duCille, chairman of the African-American Studies Program and an associate professor of English at Wesleyan University, is a severe critic. After studying representations of race in fashion dolls for over a year, she feels that the dolls reflect a sort of "easy pluralism." "I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say I'd rather see no black dolls than see something like Shani or Black Barbie," she told me, "but I would hope for something more—which is not about to happen." Nor is she wholly enamored of Imani and Melenik, Olmec's equivalent of Barbie and Ken. "Supposedly these are dolls for black kids to play with that look like them, when in fact they don't look like them. That's a problematic statement, of course, because there's no 'generic black kid.' But those dolls look too like Barbie for me. They have the same body type, the same long, straight hair—and I think it sends a problematic message to kids. It's about marketing, about business—so don't try to pass it off as being about the welfare of black children." Lisa Jones, an African-American writer who chronicled the introduction of Mattel's Shani dolls for the Village Voice, is less harsh. Too old to have played with Christie—Barbie's black friend, born in 1968—Jones recalls as a child having expressed annoyance with her white classmates by ripping the heads and arms off her two white Barbie dolls. Any fashion doll of color, she thinks, would have been better for her than those blondes. "Having been a little girl who grew up without the images," she told me, "I realize that however they fail to reach the Utopian mark, they're still useful.

That brings us to the nub of the issue. The second reason for drawing lines even when drawing lines is not “cool” (as my daughter and son would say) is that the New Testament documents model the distinction between orthodoxy and heresy, even if these terms are not deployed exactly in their English sense. Despite the faddish popularity of religious pluralism, despite the erroneous historical reconstructions of Walter Bauer and others, despite the common practice of treating other religions with more deference than a Christianity that tries to conform to the Bible, the fact remains that there is something disturbingly unfaithful about forms of expression that attempt to be more “broadminded” than the New Testament documents themselves. True, most who read these pages will want to avoid the kind of obscurantist “fundamentalism” that is less concerned with fundamentals than with fences. But most who read these pages will not be tempted down that path, and so they scarcely need to be warned against it. It is a cheap zeal that reserves its passions to combat only the sins and temptations of others. We are more likely to squirm when we read words like these: Do you agree with those who say that a spirit of love is incompatible with the negative and critical denunciation of blatant error, and that we must always be positive? The simple answer to such an attitude is that the Lord Jesus Christ denounced evil and denounced false teachers. I repeat that He denounced them as “ravening wolves” and “whited sepulchres,” and as “blind guides.” The Apostle Paul said of some of them, “whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame”. That is the language of the Scriptures. There can be little doubt but that the Church is as she is today because we do not follow New Testament teaching and its exhortations, and confine ourselves to the positive and the so-called “simple Gospel”, and fail to stress the negatives and the criticism. The result is that people do not reconize error when they meet it. It is not pleasant to be negative; it is not enjoyable to have to denounce and to expose error. But any pastor who feels in a little measure, and with humility, the responsibility which the Apostle Paul knew in an infinitely greater degree for the souls and the well-being spiritually of his people is compelled to utter these warnings. It is not liked and appreciated in this modern flabby generation.29

The locus of the new covenant community was no longer a nation (as was the old covenant community) but a transnational fellowship seeking to live out the new life imparted by the Spirit in a world that could not be expected to share its values. Moreover, this world, politically speaking, was not a democracy in which ordinary citizens could have much direct say in the organization and direction of the Empire. It is impossible to draw straight lines from their circumstances to ours. Nevertheless it is impossible not to recognize that in the current unravelling of Western culture our drift toward pluralism is casting up many parallels to the situation Christians faced in the first century. More precisely, we find in our culture two opposing hermeneutical effects. At one level our culture is departing from the heritage of Judeo-Christian values that so long sustained it, and so we are removing ourselves from the worldview of New Testament writers. At another level we are returning, through no virtue of our own, to something analogous to the pluralistic world the earliest Christians had to confront, and so in this sense the New Testament can be applied to us and our culture more directly than was possible fifty years ago. The fundamental difference, of course, is that the modern rush toward pluralism owes a great deal to the church’s weaknesses and compromises during the past century or two, while the church in the first century carried no such burden. Moreover, the earliest Christians confronted their world from the position of the underdog; we are inclined to confront our world from the position of the once favored mascot who has recently become or is in the process of becoming the neighborhood cur, and expend too much of our energy on howls of protesting outrage. Even so, we shall be less morbid and despairing if we read the Scriptures today and recognize that the challenges of pluralism are not entirely new.

Something of the same difficulty attaches to a number of other books. For example, while one deeply appreciates the tact, humility, and good spirit Fackre displays in one of his recent works,35 pretty soon one recalls the fundamental point Machen made more than half a century ago: At some point one must face the fact that the kind of disavowals and denials one finds in many branches of classic liberalism, and repeated by the major proponents of religious pluralism, are much deeper even than the chasms between, say, Russian Orthodoxy and American Pentecostalism, or between Roman Catholicism and classic evangelicalism; we are dealing with “different religions,” in the strongest sense of that expression.36

In the United States, it is common to hear people speak of “liberal populism,” whereas that expression in Europe would be a blatant contradiction, given the different understandings of both liberalism and populism on the two sides of the Atlantic.5 As is well known, “liberal” means something like “Social Democratic” in North America, and “populism” suggests an uncompromising version of it; in Europe, by contrast, populism can never be combined with liberalism, if one means by the latter something like a respect for pluralism and an understanding of democracy as necessarily involving checks and balances (and, in general, constraints on the popular will).

Why won’t you marry me?” “Gracious, you are persistent.” She patted the bun he’d so expertly fashioned. “Has it occurred to you if I marry you all my wealth and independence would be forfeit?” “If you don’t trust me to leave your fortune in peace, transfer your wealth to your brother’s name. He’ll steward it as you direct.” Gayle would be more conscientious with her money than she was, which was saying something. “And what of my freedom, my independence?” How such a big man could move so quickly was beyond her. One moment Maggie was looking around for her boots and stockings, the next she was flat on her back with fifteen stone of determined earl poised above her. “You call it independence, but you never so much as go for a drive in the park, Maggie Windham. You do not make social calls except on your family members, you do not entertain, and you do not permit yourself even a dog for companionship. As my countess, you’ll have the run of the society functions, your invitations will be accepted by all and sundry, and you will have my charming and devoted company at your beck and call, even and especially in your confinements. Plural, God willing. Marry me.” Devoted

Before she sat, she grabbed the spiral-bound journal she’d been jotting down notes in since she’d first joked about her plan to Lisa, and set it on the table. “I wrote down a few things. You know, about myself? If you skim through it, it’ll help you pretend you’ve known me longer than two days.” Instead of waiting until they were done, he sat down his slice, picked up the notebook and opened it to a random page. “You’re not afraid of spiders, but you hate slugs? That’s relevant?” “It’s something you would know about me.” “You graduated from the University of New Hampshire. Your feet aren’t ticklish.” He chuckled and shook his head. “You actually come with an owner’s manual?” “You could call it that. And if you could write something up for me to look over, that would be great.” He shrugged and flipped through a few more pages of the journal. “I’m a guy. I like guy stuff. Steak. Football. Beer. Women.” “One woman, singular. At least for the next month, and then you can go back to your wild pluralizing ways.” She took a sip of her beer. “You think that’s all I need to know about you?” “That’s the important stuff. I could write it on a sticky note, if you want, along with my favorite sexual position. Which isn’t missionary, by the way.” It was right there on the tip of her tongue--then what is your favorite sexual position?--but she bit it back. The last thing she needed to know about a man she was going to share a bedroom with for a month was how he liked his sex. “I hardly think that’ll come up in conversation.” “It’s more relevant than slugs.” “Since you’ll be doing more gardening than having sex, not really.” “Wait a minute.” He stabbed a finger at one of the notes in the journal. “You can’t cook?” “Not well. Microwave directions help.” “I’d never marry a woman who can’t cook.” “I’d never marry the kind of man who’d never marry a woman who can’t cook, so it’s a good thing we’re just pretending.

Clearly, we have entered a world very different from the world of modernity as previously described. The subject/object distinction has broken down. In this world, foundationalism is a washout;49 the old distinction between fact and opinion is disappearing from view. The quest for certainty, precision, and ahistorical knowledge of objective truth is judged impossible. “Truth” is not an objective entity; the classic dikes between fact and opinion are springing leaks. Of course, not all the tenets of modernity have been sacrificed. Irrationally, philosophical naturalism (for most advocates of this radical hermeneutics), still holds sway; moreover, I must still say something about the place of science in this new model. But some variation of what once held the status of a minority report advanced only by a few intellectuals is now adopted almost everywhere.

The confusion inherent in the word comics has been apparent to those writing in the filed for years. The word has a plural form but is singular in application. And in its singular form, comic, it can be an adjective for something humorous or another name for a comedian. In short, comics lacks the precision it ought to have for ordinary communication let alone serious philosophical deliberations.

Here is how A5 and A6 come together: A5 Active Knower states that consciousness contributes features of the mind to experience and A6 Plural Subject specifies that since it changes, the way it organizes experience must do so as well. In an idea that Nietzsche will incorporate into the self-overcoming Übermensch and Heidegger into ecstatic Dasein, Hegel paradoxically makes this constant flux part of the very definition of consciousness: “Consciousness . . . is something that goes beyond limits, and since these limits are its own, it is something that goes beyond itself

From The Bridge” by Captain Hank Bracker Mundane Happenings Life is just packed with “Mundane Happenings!” It’s the mundane happenings that usually take the most time and they always seem to interfere, just about when you want to do something really important. Let’s start with mundane things that are routine, like doing the dishes and taking out the garbage. The list for a single person might be a little less involved or complicated but it would be every bit as important as that of a married couple or people with lots of children or even pets. Oh yes, for some the list of mundane responsibilities would include washing clothes and taking the children to their activities. You know what I mean… school, sports, hobbies, their intellectual endeavors and the like. For most of us beds have to be made, the house has to be kept clean, grass has to be cut and the flowers have to be pruned. Then there are the seasonal things, such as going trick or treating, buying the children everything they need before school starts or before going to summer camp. Let’s not forget Christmas shopping as well as birthdays and anniversaries. This list is just an outline of mundane happenings! I’m certain that you can fill in any of these broad topics with a detailed account of just how time consuming these little things can be. Of course we could continue to fill in our calendar with how our jobs consume our precious time. For some of us our jobs are plural, meaning we have more than one job or sometimes even more than that. I guess you get the point… it’s the mundane happenings that eat up our precious time ferociously. Blink once and the week is gone, blink twice and it’s the month and then the year and all you have to show for it, is a long list of the mundane things you have accomplished. Would you believe me, if I said that it doesn’t have to be this way? Really, it doesn’t have to, and here is what you can do about it. First ask yourself if you deserve to recapture any of the time you are so freely using for mundane things. Of course the answer should be a resounding yes! The next question you might want to ask yourself is what would you do with the time you are carving out for yourself? This is where we could part company, however, whatever it is it should be something personal and something that is fulfilling to you! For me, it became a passion to write about things that are important to me! I came to realize that there were stories that needed to be told! You may not agree, however I love sharing my time with others. I’m interested in hearing their stories, which I sometimes even incorporate into my writings. I also love to tell my stories because I led an exciting life and love to share my adventures with my friends and family, as well as you and future generations. I do this by establishing, specifically set, quiet time, and have a cave, where I can work; and to me work is fun! This is how and where I wrote The Exciting Story of Cuba, Suppressed I Rise, now soon to be published as a “Revised Edition” and Seawater One…. Going to Sea! Yes, it takes discipline but to me it’s worth the time and effort! I love doing this and I love meeting new friends in the process. Of course I still have mundane things to do…. I believe it was the astronaut Allen Shepard, who upon returning to Earth from the Moon, was taking out the garbage and looking up saw a beautifully clear full Moon and thought to himself, “Damn, I was up there!” It’s the accomplishment that makes the difference. The mundane will always be with us, however you can make a difference with the precious moments you set aside for yourself. I feel proud about the awards I have received and most of all I’m happy to have recorded history as I witnessed it. My life is, gratefully, not mundane, and yours doesn’t have to be either.” Captain Hank Bracker, author of the award winning book “The Exciting Story of Cuba.

The past has a future, something it becomes, and that transforms it. Like the facts themselves, the person, the "I", who experiences it and looks back on it discovers that it is not singular, but plural. Traveling through those places marked down in those epic chronicles of thirty years ago, one gets the impression of slicing through paper-thin, invisible barriers, different levels of reality, still present and with us even though not discernible to the naked eye, infrared or ultraviolet rays of history, images and instants that at this point cannot print an image on the celluloid, but which nonetheless are, and exist in the same way for tangible experience as electrons which elude our grasp.

But something seemed funny, even strange and surreal. When she called her friends mouses, was that right? What's the deal?

The modern state does not comprehend how anyone can be guided by something other than itself. In its eyes pluralism is treason. Once you credit man with the power of reason and with inviolable rights, you set bounds beyond which the will of majorities may not go.

As we previously postulated, God of itself is nothing, and the Nothing of itself is nothing. In the absolute, without the world's existence as a plurality, God equals nothingness, and therefore the whole Absolute is nothing. The world is the Exit of the Absolute through God into nothingness and, in that way, into existence. The primordial essence in this manner becomes existence. Once the Being (God) and the Nonbeing (nothing) are united, neither one is nothing anymore. In this way, not only does the Absolute save itself, but it also saves the Being and the Nonbeing. This Nonbeing (nothing) is not nothing anymore but becomes something equally crucial as the Being itself.

Rabbi Sarah were here, she would say that we’ve been given a rare chance to do good. To save lives. Not everybody gets the chance to do something that might make an important difference. At the end of our days, whether we are successful or not, we won’t have to apologize for turning a blind eye. All things considered, Rabbi Sarah would say, the outcome doesn’t really matter. Yes, it would be nice for us to catch the creep who’s behind all this. Or creeps, plural. But Rabbi Sarah would tell us that we might never know if our presence at the school made a difference or not. She would stress that good deeds, mitzvahs, are like rocks tossed into the center of a pond. They create ripples, concentric circles reaching out.

Sometimes those around us aren't a part of us, and that is something we must come to terms with. Sometimes we are alone. Sometimes we aren't plural.

WHAT CAN WE CALL IT You can’t stop someone from adding an s to a word. Loves. Depressions. Deaths. Griefs. Gods. Most of the time, the plural of something is worse.

I have always felt that I am an empiricist, that is, a pluralist. But what does this equivalence between empiricism and pluralism mean? It derives from the two characteristics by which Whitehead defined empiricism: the abstract does not explain, but must itself be explained; and the aim is not to rediscover the eternal or the universal, but to find the conditions under which something new is produced (creativeness).

As Halper remarks, a “primary one”, such as he thinks Plato affirms, “does not make something that belongs to it one; it makes the complex of itself and the other thing a plurality or, to the extent the other has no existence apart from a primary one, it makes the other less than one.”[95] This is, however, a perfectly Platonic argument for why the One neither is, nor is one (Parm. 141e), for it is not a unit but any unit—cf. Halper’s own argument that for Aristotle, “the one”, “the primary one”, “being qua being” and “one qua one” all refer to the nature of any being.[96] The identity of ‘the One’ in the ultimate sense is like the structural “zero symbolic value” of Lévi-Strauss, which if it expresses anything for itself, expresses the purely diacritical determination of the elements of the system.

For all of you who might be experiencing this, or something similar, I want you to know that it doesn’t go on forever and that ROCD has in fact a very good prognosis. Treatment with CBT and ERP is very favorable and has shown to produce effective results within a short period of time. In our case, after Hugh began practicing ERP with the help of his therapist (to whom I am eternally grateful), his attitude changed overnight. It was a revelation. He had been cold and distant and I had in turn reacted defensively. But then he made an effort to do ERP and in a matter of days he was completely different around me. He treated me with more kindness and he didn’t shy away from showing affection. Of course, there were still moments when he would be afraid and engage in his OCD. But those were nothing compared to the barrage of intrusive thoughts that harassed him and the compulsions he was giving into before. I felt like we might make it through to the other side. Now I understand that there isn’t really another side. We have needed to learn to keep going with the intrusive thoughts, but doing our best to ditch the compulsions. You might wonder that I speak in the plural here. Well, we both interact with Hugh’s OCD. I make the mistake of offering him reassurance more often than I would like to admit, and I sometimes ask him about the thoughts, both things I should never do. But even though OCD is incredibly tough, one can learn to live with it. And that has been one of the greatest lessons we have learned so far. We live with the OCD not as our companion, but as a condition, like so many others, in our lives (don’t forget that I also have OCD, although it doesn’t manifest as ROCD).

This is a season of denialism. In my circles, the word tends to mean denial that climate change is real or human-caused. But denialism can stand for something broader: a refusal to see the things that tie us inconveniently together. These include the unequal history that the land remembers, the perennial presence in American life of migration and foreign labor, the decline of relative American power. You could distill it by saying that denialism is the ethos that refuses to see how the world is deeply plural at every scale and that we are in it together. The denial comes not because the denialist cannot see this but because he does see it, not because he doesn’t believe others are there but because he feels their presence so acutely, suspects they will make claims on him, fears they will get power over him and take what he has. When I was in high school in Calhoun County, West Virginia, my classmates told me that Michael Dukakis (the 1988 Democratic presidential nominee) would take everyone’s guns and Jesse Jackson (who ran for the nomination that year) had a plan to put all white people in camps. Today we hear that climate change is an internationalist stalking horse for global government. Interdependence is incipient war and conquest. Climate denial is really less about science than it is about who has claims on you, and who rules you.

It is absolutely from his vision of the whole, in which the genius always lives, that he gets his sense of the parts. He values everything within him or without him by the standard of this vision, a vision that for him is no function of time, but a part of eternity. . . . The scientist takes phenomena for what they obviously are; the great man or the genius for what they signify. Sea and mountain, light and darkness, spring and autumn, cypress and palm, dove and swan are symbols to him, he not only thinks that there is, but he recognizes in them something deeper. The ride of the Valkyrie is not produced by atmospheric pressure and the magic fire is not the outcome of a process of oxidation. And all this is possible for him because the outer world is as full and strongly connected as the inner in him, the external world in fact seems to be only a special aspect of his inner life; the universe and the ego have become one in him, and he is not obliged to set his experience together piece by piece according to rule. . . .The infinity of the universe is responded to in the genius by a true sense of infinity in his own breast; he holds chaos and cosmos, all details and all totality, all plurality, and all singularity in himself.

Marvin Vincent, author of “Word Studies in the New Testament” says of “aionian” (see his notes on 2 Thessalonians 1: 9), “( It is) a period of time of longer or shorter duration, having a beginning and an end, and complete in itself… The word always carries the notion of time, and not of eternity. It always means a period of time. Otherwise it would be impossible to account for the plural, or for such qualifying expressions as this age, or the age to come. It does not mean something endless or everlasting… The adjective… in like manner carries the idea of time. Neither the noun nor the adjective, in themselves, carry the sense of endless or everlasting… Words which are habitually applied to things temporal or material cannot carry in themselves the sense of endlessness. Even when applied to God, we are not forced to render (the word) everlasting. Of course the life of God is endless; but the question is whether, in describing God (by this Greek word), it was intended to describe the duration of His being, or whether some different and larger idea was not contemplated.

Teilhard offers two further options, plurality or unity/monism. Here we are faced with two fundamental ways of feeling or thinking about someone or something.

There is no clump called “I” moving from this spot to that spot, instant by instant. Rather, through particular encounters with particular people, within each encounter, within each transition, something called “I” makes its appearance. Thus it is that what seems to be an object outside yourself is, in reality, your complement, that which gives this instant of your life its glow.

What has made the European family of nations an improving, instead of a stationary portion of mankind? Not any superior excellence in them, which, when it exists, exists as the effect, not as the cause; but their remarkable diversity of character and culture. Individuals, classes, nations, have been extremely unlike one another: they have struck out a great variety of paths, each leading to something valuable; and although at every period those who travelled in different paths have been intolerant of one another, and each would have thought it an excellent thing if all the rest could have been compelled to travel his road, their attempts to thwart each other's development have rarely had any permanent success, and each has in time endured to receive the good which the others have offered. Europe is, in my judgement, wholly indebted to this plurality of paths for its progressive and many-sided development. But it already begins to possess this benefit in a considerably less degree. It is decidedly advancing towards the Chinese ideal of making all people alike.

1/11/2020 X Marks the Spot Sound Tangler Riddle-Puzzle The X: The idea of this puzzle is like trying to say something awkward 10 times, but here each X entry has its own subtle pronunciation, which would limber up any tongue in the X-ese language. Another approach is to write them out in whatever order you want pronunciation as you go. You will find both confusingly challenging. X (chi/ki, now YZ indeed? eks, plural exes): eks __ ks gz kzh k/sh h z gzh kh kh eks __ ks gz kzh k/sh h z gzh gzh kh eks __ ks gz kzh ks/h h z z gzh kh eks __ ks gz kzh k/sh h h z gzh kh eks __ ks gz kzh k/sh k/sh h z gzh kh eks __ ks gz kzh kzh k/sh h z gzh kh eks __ ks gz gz kzh k/sh h z gzh kh eks __ xxxxxxxx8 marks the spot Sound Key: -X (own name; X-ray) not listed -(k)/eks (excite, extra, intellectual) -__ (silent: Sioux Falls, faux) -ks (exit, ox, xion, ction) -gz (exert, exaltation, auxillary, exhaust) -kzh (luxury, Tupuxuara-flying dinosaur) -k/sh (complexion, obnoxious, textual) -h (Don Quixote, Xavier) -z (xylophone, Xerox, Xanadu) -gzh (luxurious, luxuriate) -kh (chi, ki) (Overlapping is subtle) *Zenzizenzizenic8 –“the eighth power of a number.” See the archaic word site The Phrontistery online, a great collection of rare, obsolete and extinct words of all sorts. exit.... dlaurent 2 of 2 end

Not much. You take your natural vices and call them virtues. Of which greed is the most despicable. That and betrayal of commonality. After all, whoever decided that competition is always and without exception a healthy attribute? Why that particular path to self-esteem? Your heel on the hand of the one below. This is worth something? Let me tell you, it’s worth nothing. Nothing lasting. Every monument that exists beyond the moment—no matter which king, emperor or warrior lays claim to it—is actually a testament to the common, to co-operation, to the plural rather than the singular.

Let us review three cases from widely separated locations in the world. A Tungus shaman in Siberia agrees to the request of tribal hunters to locate game during a poor hunting season. Using a drumming technique, he enters an ASC and provides information to help his hunters. The Western interpretation—if it accepts at all the validity of this kind of information—would be that the shaman calculates the behavior of the game according to weather and well-known environmental conditions. In other words, his is information based on cognitive processing of sensory data. The explanation of the shaman himself is different: Guidance has been provided by forest spirits. On another continent, hunters of the Kalahari !Kung tribe leave the settlement to hunt for a period that may last anywhere from two days to two weeks. The tribe’s timely preparation for the return of successful hunters is necessary for processing the game. The people left behind make the appropriate steps long before the hunters’ reappearance. Their foreknowledge of the hunters’ return could be explained rationally by attributing it to a messenger sent ahead or the use of tam-tam drums or smoke signals. The tribesmen report, however, that it is the spirit of ancestors who informs them when the hunters will return. Next, we move to the Amazon basin. The Shuar shaman is facing a new disease in the community. An herbal remedy is sought by adding leaves of a candidate plant into the hallucinogenic beverage ayahuasca, a sacrament indigenous to the Upper Amazon region. The shaman drinks it and, upon return to ordinary consciousness, decides the usefulness of the plant in question. Is his decision based on accumulation of ethnobotanical knowledge of several generations in combination with trial and error? The headhunter Shuar are not likely to be merciful to an ineffective medicine man, and his techniques must be working. As Luis Eduardo Luna explained to me, according to ayahuasqueros, the spirit of a new plant reveals itself with the help of the spirits associated with the ayahuasca. Sometimes, they also tell which plant to use next. We can point to the following contradiction: Healers from different cultures are unequivocal in their interpretation of the source of knowledge, whereas rational thinkers use diverging, unsystematic explanations. Which side should be slashed with Occam’s razor? Also called the “principle of parsimony,” Occam’s razor is usually interpreted to mean something like “Do not multiply hypotheses unnecessarily” or “Do not posit pluralities unnecessarily when generating explanatory models.” The principle of parsimony is used frequently by philosophers of science in an effort to establish criteria for choosing from theories with equal explanatory power. At first glance it is the “primitives” who multiply causes unnecessarily by referring to the supernatural. Yet Occam’s razor may be applied easily to the rational view, if those arguments are less parsimonious.