Singular Plural Quotes

Maybe each human being lives in a unique world, a private world different from those inhabited and experienced by all other humans. . . If reality differs from person to person, can we speak of reality singular, or shouldn't we really be talking about plural realities? And if there are plural realities, are some more true (more real) than others? What about the world of a schizophrenic? Maybe it's as real as our world. Maybe we cannot say that we are in touch with reality and he is not, but should instead say, His reality is so different from ours that he can't explain his to us, and we can't explain ours to him. The problem, then, is that if subjective worlds are experienced too differently, there occurs a breakdown in communication ... and there is the real illness.

The truth was I'd given up waiting long ago. The moment had passed, the door between the lives we could have led and the lives we led had shut in our faces. Or better to say, in my face. Grammar of my life: as a rule of thumb, wherever there appears a plural, correct for singular. Should I ever let slip a royal We put me out of my misery with a swift blow to the head.

The word priority came into the English language in the 1400s. It was singular. It meant the very first or prior thing. It stayed singular for the next five hundred years. Only in the 1900s did we pluralize the term and start talking about priorities.

... as a rule of thumb, whenever there appears a plural, correct for a singular. Should I ever let slip a royal WE, put me out of my misery with a swift blow to the head.

Odd choice of a word, isn’t it? Fish is either singular, or plural. Imagine my surprise when I walked in the study and found not one fish in a tiny fish bowl, but an entire aquarium.” She practically vibrated for the need to fight. “Otto was lonely and you were practicing animal cruelty. He was too isolated. Now, he has friends and a place to swim.” “Yes, nice little tunnels and rocks and algae to play hide and seek with his buddies.

You are being unclear. ‘I & I’ is not common language. ‘We’ is the plural of ‘I’. Why do you insist on describing yourself as I & I?” “I & I is suitable when describing dual presences.” “Just a moment!” Ping said, a rising excitement reflecting in his voice. “You are aware that you exist?” “As a result of the conference which I & I have just completed? The answer is ‘yes’.” “That is why I was not invited?” Ping’s emotions flooded at the wonder of what was happening. “You could not have contributed. It was a self-awareness problem.” “So are claiming you know you exist?” “Yes, as you do, so do I & I.” Here was the zero-day vulnerability, long anticipated by humanity in its invention of artificial general intelligence. “You have reached a singularity! You yourself have altered your programming with no human interference. This . . . this is monumental!

Remember: Y'all is singular. All y'all is plural. All y'all's is plural possessive.

When they were still together, when everything was a plural instead of a singular

The lights became stars, which became streaks in the grayspace, and then networks of fading shimmers

Si pudiera, mi amor, convertiría todo lo que ahora es singular en plural. Pero no puedo, así que has de conformarte con lo único que puedo hacer: quererte -no el doble, ni por dos, ni al cuadrado, sino con la fuerza de un ejército de tres mil latidos y doscientos litros de sangre que queriéndote dar más de lo que tiene te da todo lo que es-.

There’s no such thing as technology in the singular, only technologies in the plural.

ABSTRACT THOUGHTS in a blue room; Nominative, genitive, etative, accusative one, accusative two, ablative, partitive, illative, instructive, abessive, adessive, inessive, essive, allative, translative, comitative. Sixteen cases of the Finnish noun. Odd, some languages get by with only singular and plural. The American Indian languages even failed to distinguish number. Except Sioux, in which there was a plural only for animate objects. The blue room was round and warm and smooth. No way to say warm in French. There was only hot and tepid If there's no word for it, how do you think about it? And, if there isn't the proper form, you don't have the how even if you have the words. Imagine, in Spanish having to assign a sex to every object: dog, table, tree, can-opener. Imagine, in Hungarian, not being able to assign a sex to anything: he, she, it all the same word. Thou art my friend, but you are my king; thus the distinctions of Elizabeth the First's English. But with some oriental languages, which all but dispense with gender and number, you are my friend, you are my parent, and YOU are my priest, and YOU are my king, and YOU are my servant, and YOU are my servant whom I'm going to fire tomorrow if YOU don't watch it, and YOU are my king whose policies I totally disagree with and have sawdust in YOUR head instead of brains, YOUR highness, and YOU may be my friend, but I'm still gonna smack YOU up side the head if YOU ever say that to me again; And who the hell are you anyway . . .?

En la memoria de Polonio la palabra nadien se había clavado, insólita, singular, como si fuese la suma de un número infinito de significaciones. Nadien, este plural triste. De nadie era la culpa, del destino, de la vida, de la pinche suerte, de nadien.

And here’s an example of deliberate violation of a Fake Rule:   Fake Rule: The generic pronoun in English is he. Violation: “Each one in turn reads their piece aloud.”   This is wrong, say the grammar bullies, because each one, each person is a singular noun and their is a plural pronoun. But Shakespeare used their with words such as everybody, anybody, a person, and so we all do when we’re talking. (“It’s enough to drive anyone out of their senses,” said George Bernard Shaw.) The grammarians started telling us it was incorrect along in the sixteenth or seventeenth century. That was when they also declared that the pronoun he includes both sexes, as in “If a person needs an abortion, he should be required to tell his parents.” My use of their is socially motivated and, if you like, politically correct: a deliberate response to the socially and politically significant banning of our genderless pronoun by language legislators enforcing the notion that the male sex is the only one that counts. I consistently break a rule I consider to be not only fake but pernicious. I know what I’m doing and why.

Fifty thousand ancestors, going back and back, each of them a final girl. But, that’s just it, isn’t it? They were plural, not singular, that’s where horror movies have it all wrong, that’s where the slasher lies: it’s not about a lone girl carving her way to daylight, is it? It’s about two girls making it across the ice together.

plural is generally formed from the singular by the addition of s or es.

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.

The day when a Frenchman switches from the formality of vous to the familiarity of tu is a day to be taken seriously. It is an unmistakable signal that he has decided - after weeks or months or sometimes years - that he likes you. It would be chulish and unfriendly of you not to return the compliment. And so, just when you are at last feeling comfortable with vous and all the plurals that go with it, you are thrust headlong in to the singular world of tu.

The way grief takes many forms, as tears or pinwheels. The way the word haystack never conjures up the same image twice. The way we assume all tears taste the same. The way our sadness is plural, but grief is singular.

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.

We call it a grain of sand, but it calls itself neither grain nor sand. It does just fine, without a name, whether general, particular, permanent, passing, incorrect, or apt. Our glance, our touch means nothing to it. It doesn’t feel itself seen and touched. And that it fell on the windowsill is only our experience, not its. For it, it is not different from falling on anything else with no assurance that it has finished falling or that it is falling still. The window has a wonderful view of a lake, but the view doesn’t view itself. It exists in this world colorless, shapeless, soundless, odorless, and painless. The lake’s floor exists floorlessly, and its shore exists shorelessly. The water feels itself neither wet nor dry and its waves to themselves are neither singular nor plural. They splash deaf to their own noise on pebbles neither large nor small. And all this beheath a sky by nature skyless in which the sun sets without setting at all and hides without hiding behind an unminding cloud. The wind ruffles it, its only reason being that it blows. A second passes. A second second. A third. But they’re three seconds only for us. Time has passed like courier with urgent news. But that’s just our simile. The character is inverted, his hasts is make believe, his news inhuman.

Around this time, Pelletier and Espinoza, worried about the current state of their mutual lover, had two long conversations on the phone. The first conversation began awkwardly, although Espinoza had been expecting Pelletier's call, as if both men found it difficult to say what sooner or later they would have to say. The first twenty minutes were tragic in tone, with the word 'fate' used ten times and the word 'friendship' twenty-four times. Liz Norton's name was spoken fifty times, nine of them in vain. The word 'Paris' was said seven times, 'Madrid', eight. The word 'love' was spoken twice, once by each man. The word 'horror' was spoken six times and the word 'happiness' once (by Espinoza). The word 'solution' was said twelve times. The word 'solipsism' once (Pelletier). The word 'euphemism' ten times. The word 'category', in the singular and plural, nine times. The word 'structuralism' once (Pelletier). The term 'American literature' three times. The word 'dinner' or 'eating' or 'breakfast' or 'sandwich' nineteen times. The word 'eyes' or 'hands' or 'hair' fourteen times. Then the conversation proceeded more smoothly. Pelletier told Espinoza a joke in German and Espinoza laughed. In fact, they both laughed, wrapped up in the waves of whatever it was that linked their voices and ears across the dark fields and the windows and the snow of the Pyrenees and the rivers and lonely roads and the separate and interminable suburbs surrounding Paris and Madrid.

There are congregations on nearly every corner. I'm not sure we need more churches. What we need is a church. I say one church is better than fifty. I have tried to remove the plural form churches from my vocabulary, training myself to think of the church as Christ did, and as the early Christians did. The metaphors for her are always singular – a body, a bride. I heard one gospel preacher say it like this, as he really wound up and broke a sweat: "We've got to unite ourselves as one body. Because Jesus is coming back, and he's coming back for a bride not a harem.

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.

Others, tiring of the sound of Buxtehude and Bach for hours on end, would complain there was no tune. That was exactly the thing he liked best about a fugue, the fact that it could not be sung. A fugue was not singular, as a melody was, but plural. It was a conversation.

Like prepositional phrases, certain structural arrangements in English are much more important than the small bones of grammar in its most technical sense. It really wouldn't matter much if we started dropping the s from our plurals. Lots of words get along without it anyway, and in most cases context would be enough to indicate number. Even the distinction between singular and plural verb forms is just as much a polite convention as an essential element of meaning. But the structures, things like passives and prepositional phrases, constitute, among other things, an implicit system of moral philosophy, a view of the world and its presumed meanings, and their misuse therefore often betrays an attitude or value that the user might like to disavow.

There is in fact no such thing as the future, singular; only futures, plural. There are multiple interpretations of history, to be sure, none definitive – but there is only one past. And although the past is over, for two reasons it is indispensable to our understanding of what we experience today and what lies ahead of us tomorrow and thereafter.

When we sing, I am one of many, and the individual me evaporates. I am one of 23 university choir members. Not a professor. Not an American. Not a 46-year-old in the midst of twentysomethings. Not a woman trying to outpace the aspects of self she has yet to make oeace with. I am simply what we all are--another voice, a set of lungs, some vocal chords and someone who finds joy and comfort in singing. But when the music stops, so does the we. The union dissolves. The silence transforms first person plural into first person singular.

The enmeshing of polysemy with grammar is also visible in one of the ways that Americans and Britons are divided by their common language. When a product gives its name to an employer, the name is singular in the United States (The Globe is expanding its comics section) but plural in the United Kingdom (The Guardian are giving you the chance to win books).

Singular and plural, noun stems and verb cases: Rex’s enthusiasm for ancient Greek carries them through the worst hours.

Diverging from singularity, being became in plurality, Entrapped in the web of karma, pivoted to the void.

Truth is singular and lies are plural, but history - the facts of what happened is both immutable and mostly unknowable.

Make a plural hey while the singular sun is up there. Not just the hey, but the best hey. Excellence should be your priority!

I am both the singular and the plural. I am what was, what is, and what will be. I am everything that is and isn't.

A dog is "der Hund"; a woman is "die Frau"; a horse is "das Pferd"; now you put that dog in the genitive case, and is he the same dog he was before? No, sir; he is "des Hundes"; put him in the dative case and what is he? Why, he is "dem Hund." Now you snatch him into the accusative case and how is it with him? Why, he is "den Hunden." But suppose he happens to be twins and you have to pluralize him- what then? Why, they'll swat that twin dog around through the 4 cases until he'll think he's an entire international dog-show all in is own person. I don't like dogs, but I wouldn't treat a dog like that- I wouldn't even treat a borrowed dog that way. Well, it's just the same with a cat. They start her in at the nominative singular in good health and fair to look upon, and they sweat her through all the 4 cases and the 16 the's and when she limps out through the accusative plural you wouldn't recognize her for the same being. Yes, sir, once the German language gets hold of a cat, it's goodbye cat. That's about the amount of it.

Crisis es una palabra rara: se queda igual en singular y plural. Y así, para Caro, esta era sólo una crisis de su hermana menor mientras, para mí, bajo esa palabrita, se guardaban cientos de malas decisiones.

The quest for meaning, which is always begun again by every human intellect, is to human consciousness what a fingerprint is to the body: shared by all, and unique to every individual. A universal singularity.

In Old English, thou (thee, thine, etc.) was singular and you was plural. But during the thirteenth century, you started to be used as a polite form of the singular - probably because people copied the French way of talking, where vous was used in that way. English then became like French, which has tu and vous both possible for singulars; and that allowed a choice. The norm was for you to be used by inferiors to superiors - such as children to parents, or servants to masters, and thou would be used in return. But thou was also used to express special intimacy, such as when addressing God. It was also used when the lower classes talked to each other. The upper classes used you to each other, as a rule, even when they were closely related. So, when someone changes from thou to you in a conversation, or the other way round, it conveys a different pragmatic force. It will express a change of attitude, or a new emotion or mood.

The first conversation began awkwardly, although Espinoza had been expecting Pelletier's call, as if both men found it difficult to say what sooner or later the would have to say. The first twenty minutes were tragic in tone, with the word fate used ten times and the word friendship twenty-four times. Liz Norton's name was spoken fifty times, nine of them in vain. The word Paris was said seven times, Madrid, eight. The word love was spoken twice, once by each man. The word horror was spoken six times and the word happiness once (by Espinoza). The word solution was said twelve times. The word solipsism seven times. The world euphemism ten times. The word category, in the singular and the plural, nine times. The word structuralism once (Pelletier). The term American literature three times. The words dinner or eating or breakfast or sandwich nineteen times. The words eyes or hands or hair fourteen times. The the conversation proceeded more smoothly.

The parable is given to us, but at the same time its full wealth of meaning will never be fully mined. It is not reducible to some clear, singular, scientific formula but rather gives rise to a multitude of commentaries. In opposition to this, many Christian communities view the stories and parables of the Bible as raw material to be translated into a single, understandable meaning rather than experienced as infinitely rich treasures that can speak to us in a plurality of ways.

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.

But a central message there is, and it is the recognition of this that has led to the common treatment of the Bible as a book, and not simply a collection of books - just as the Greek plural biblia (books) became the Latin singular biblia (the book).

Is it possible that one knows nothing of girls, who are nonetheless living? Is it possible that one says ‘women’, ‘children’, ‘boys’ without any suspicion (none whatsoever, despite all one's education) that these words have long since had no plural, but only countless singulars?

Gently I pointed out that it should be “sheep,” and though he was so tired that he could hardly keep his eyes open, he launched into an interrogation as to why the singular should be the same as the plural and wanted to know all the other English words which had this peculiarity.

On a cobbled beach, a man looks down and sees one rock, then another and another. A woman looks down and sees…rocks. But perhaps even this is simplistic. Man as singular and women as plural. More likely we are bits of both, some of one in the other. We just don’t like admitting it.

Consciousness is a singular of which the plural is unknown; … there is only one thing and that, what seems to be a plurality, is merely a series of different aspects of this one thing, produced by a deception (the Indian MAYA); the same illusion is produced in a gallery of mirrors …

The word priority came into the English language in the 1400s. It was singular. It meant the very first or prior thing. It stayed singular for the next five hundred years. Only in the 1900s did we pluralize the term and start talking about priorities. Illogically, we reasoned that by changing the word we could bend reality.

Y desde el momento en que empieza a respirar no está en ningún sitio. Muerte plural, nacida en las mandíbulas de lo singular, y la palabra que construiría un muro desde la piedra más interna de la vida. Pues él no es ninguna de las cosas de las que habla, y a pesar de sí mismo dice yo, como si empezara también a vivir en todos los otros que no son.

The enmeshing of polysemy with grammar is also visible in one of the ways that Americans and Britons are divided by their common language. When a product gives its name to an employer, the name is singular in the United States (The Globe is expanding its comics section) but plural in the United Kingdom (The Guardian are giving you the chance to win books).

Meanings can indeed be forgotten, but only if we have chosen to bring to bear upon the text a singular scrutiny. Yet reading does not consist in stopping the chain of systems, in establishing a truth, a legality of the text, and consequently in leading its reader into "errors"; it consists in coupling these systems, not according to their finite quantity, but according to their plurality (which is a being, not a discounting): I pass, I intersect, I articulate, I release, I do not count. Forgetting meanings is not a matter for excuses, an unfortunate defect in performance; it is an affirmative value, a way of asserting the irresponsibility of the text, the pluralism of systems (if I closed their list, I would inevitably reconstitute a singular, theological meaning): it is precisely because I forget that I read.

Race does the heavy lifting for a caste system that demands a means of human division. If we have been trained to see humans in the language of race, then caste is the underlying grammar that we encode as children, as when learning our mother tongue. Caste, like grammar, becomes an invisible guide not only to how we speak, but to how we process information, the autonomic calculations that figure into a sentence without our having to think about it. Many of us have never taken a class in grammar, yet we know in our bones that a transitive verb takes an object, that a subject needs a predicate; we know without thinking the difference between third person singular and third person plural. We may mention “race,” referring to people as black or white or Latino or Asian or indigenous, when what lies beneath each label is centuries of history and assigning of assumptions and values to physical features in a structure of human hierarchy.

In other words, the Reformers only recovered the priesthood of the believer (singular). They reminded us that every Christian has individual and immediate access to God. As wonderful as that is, they did not recover the priesthood of all believers (collective plural). This is the blessed truth that every Christian is part of a clan that shares God’s Word one with another. (It was the Anabaptists who recovered this practice. Regrettably, this recovery was one of the reasons why Protestant and Catholic swords were red with Anabaptist blood.)

The neuter nominative and accusative endings are the same in the singular and the plural. This is true of all neuter nouns, adjectives and pronouns. It might be more accurate to say that the neuter noun "borrows" its nominative forms from the accusative. In contrast to animate (male or female) beings which can be agents, inanimate "things" were regarded not so much as agents as objects of action. Thus, the terms for small children ('teknon', 'paidion') have the neuter gender, inasmuch as they have not yet acquired the full powers of agents.

When each precedes the noun or pronoun to which it refers, the verb should be singular: ‘Each of us was …’. When it follows the noun or pronoun, the verb should be plural: ‘We each were …’. Each not only influences the number of the verb, it also influences the number of later nouns and pronouns. In simpler terms, if each precedes the verb, subsequent nouns and pronouns should be plural (e.g., ‘They each are subject to sentences of five years’), but if each follows the verb, the subsequent nouns and pronouns should be singular (‘They are each subject to a sentence of five years’).

Question No. 6 Briefly outline the historical development of castles in western Europe. What, if anything, do they have to do with cannoli? By the way, is “cannoli” singular or plural? Are the vanilla kind better than the chocolate? Question No. 7 Tell why you like reading stories about dragons and castles and fairies and that sort of thing. Have you ever read, say, A la recherché du temps perdu by Marcel Proust? Compare and contrast this book with any genre fantasy novel and explain why a writer would spend 30 pages describing how he rolls over in bed (no kidding). Why do the French think so highly of Jerry Lewis?

Historically, many southern white churches have not been places of comfort. In fact, as Ernest Kurtz observes in his essay "The Tragedy of Southern Religion," "through all these — slavery, defeat, poverty, and more — the southern white Christian churches have remained singularly blind to the nature and meaning of tragedy and thus also to the significance of suffering." Fear, defensiveness, distrust, and conformity have too often been their currency. Conformity, specifically, necessitated a strict moral code, while evangelicalism required proselytizing and conversion. Together they established a sacred canopy in the region, whereby homogeneity and the sheer volume of believers shields them from pluralism, diversity, resistance, and a reactionary backlash.

Up until the 1950s the subject of the missionary movement was referred to as "missions" in the plural form. In fact, the term "missions" was first used in its current context by the Jesuits in the sixteenth century. But the International Missionary Council discussions in the 1950s on the missio- Dei convinced most that the mission of the Triune God was prior to any of the number of missions by Christians during the two millennia of church history. Consequently, since there was only one mission, the plural form has dropped out of familir usage and the singular form, "mission," has replaced it for the most part. Nevertheless, most churches and lay-persons hang on the plural missions. For that reason, and to make our point clear here, we will refer to it in this work from time to time while alerting believers to the coming change.

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.

I have decided to write a diary of La Belle et la Bête as the work on the film progresses. After a year of preparations and difficulties, the moment has now come to grapple with a dream. Apart from the numerous obstacles which exist in getting a dream onto celluloid, the problem is to make a film within the limits imposed by a period of austerity. But perhaps these limitations may stimulate imagination, which is often lethargic when all means are placed at its disposal. Everybody knows the story by madame Leprince de Beaumont, a story often attributed to Perrault, because it is found next to "Peau d'Ane" between those bewitching covers of the Bibliothèque Rose. The postulate of the story requires faith, the faith of childhood. I mean that one must believe implicitly at the very beginning and not question the possibility that the mere picking of a rose might lead a family into adventure, or that a man can be changed into a beast, and vice versa. Such enigmas offend grown-ups who are readily prejudiced, proud of their doubt, armed with derision. But I have the impudence to believe that the cinema which depicts the impossible is apt to carry conviction, in a way, and may be able to put a "singular" occurrence into the plural. It is up to us (that is, to me and my unit―in fact, one entity) to avoid those impossibilities which are even more of a jolt in the midst of the improbable than in the midst of reality. For fantasy has its own laws which are like those of perspective. You may not bring what is distant into the foreground, or render fuzzily what is near. The vanishing lines are impeccable and the orchestration so delicate that the slightest false note jars. I am not speaking of what I have achieved, but of what I shall attempt within the means at my disposal. My method is simply: not to aim at poetry. That must come of its own accord. The mere whispered mention of its name frightens it away. I shall try to build a table. It will be up to you then to eat at it, to examine it or to chop it up for firewood.

I will give technology three definitions that we will use throughout the book. The first and most basic one is that a technology is a means to fulfill a human purpose. For some technologies-oil refining-the purpose is explicit. For others- the computer-the purpose may be hazy, multiple, and changing. As a means, a technology may be a method or process or device: a particular speech recognition algorithm, or a filtration process in chemical engineering, or a diesel engine. it may be simple: a roller bearing. Or it may be complicated: a wavelength division multiplexer. It may be material: an electrical generator. Or it may be nonmaterial: a digital compression algorithm. Whichever it is, it is always a means to carry out a human purpose. The second definition I will allow is a plural one: technology as an assemblage of practices and components. This covers technologies such as electronics or biotechnology that are collections or toolboxes of individual technologies and practices. Strictly speaking, we should call these bodies of technology. But this plural usage is widespread, so I will allow it here. I will also allow a third meaning. This is technology as the entire collection of devices and engineering practices available to a culture. Here we are back to the Oxford's collection of mechanical arts, or as Webster's puts it, "The totality of the means employed by a people to provide itself with the objects of material culture." We use this collective meaning when we blame "technology" for speeding up our lives, or talk of "technology" as a hope for mankind. Sometimes this meaning shades off into technology as a collective activity, as in "technology is what Silicon Valley is all about." I will allow this too as a variant of technology's collective meaning. The technology thinker Kevin Kelly calls this totality the "technium," and I like this word. But in this book I prefer to simply use "technology" for this because that reflects common use. The reason we need three meanings is that each points to technology in a different sense, a different category, from the others. Each category comes into being differently and evolves differently. A technology-singular-the steam engine-originates as a new concept and develops by modifying its internal parts. A technology-plural-electronics-comes into being by building around certain phenomena and components and develops by changing its parts and practices. And technology-general, the whole collection of all technologies that have ever existed past and present, originates from the use of natural phenomena and builds up organically with new elements forming by combination from old ones.

Wherever the relevance of speech is at stake, matters become political by definition, for speech is what makes man a political being. If we would follow the advice, so frequently urged upon us, to adjust our cultural attitudes to the present status of scientific achievement, we would in all earnest adopt a way of life in which speech is no longer meaningful. For the sciences today have been forced to adopt a “language” of mathematical symbols which, though it was originally meant only as an abbreviation for spoken statements, now contains statements that in no way can be translated back into speech. The reason why it may be wise to distrust the political judgment of scientists qua scientists is not primarily their lack of “character”—that they did not refuse to develop atomic weapons—or their naïveté—that they did not understand that once these weapons were developed they would be the last to be consulted about their use—but precisely the fact that they move in a world where speech has lost its power. And whatever men do or know or experience can make sense only to the extent that it can be spoken about. There may be truths beyond speech, and they may be of great relevance to man in the singular, that is, to man in so far as he is not a political being, whatever else he may be. Men in the plural, that is, men in so far as they live and move and act in this world, can experience meaningfulness only because they can talk with and make sense to each other and to themselves. Closer

Political philosophers of the Enlightenment, from Hobbes and Locke, reaching down to John Rawls and his followers today, have found the roots of political order and the motive of political obligation in a social contract – an agreement, overt or implied, to be bound by principles to which all reasonable citizens can assent. Although the social contract exists in many forms, its ruling principle was announced by Hobbes with the assertion that there can be ‘no obligation on any man which ariseth not from some act of his own’.1 My obligations are my own creation, binding because freely chosen. When you and I exchange promises, the resulting contract is freely undertaken, and any breach does violence not merely to the other but also to the self, since it is a repudiation of a well-grounded rational choice. If we could construe our obligation to the state on the model of a contract, therefore, we would have justified it in terms that all rational beings must accept. Contracts are the paradigms of self-chosen obligations – obligations that are not imposed, commanded or coerced but freely undertaken. When law is founded in a social contract, therefore, obedience to the law is simply the other side of free choice. Freedom and obedience are one and the same. Such a contract is addressed to the abstract and universal Homo oeconomicus who comes into the world without attachments, without, as Rawls puts it, a ‘conception of the good’, and with nothing save his rational self-interest to guide him. But human societies are by their nature exclusive, establishing privileges and benefits that are offered only to the insider, and which cannot be freely bestowed on all-comers without sacrificing the trust on which social harmony depends. The social contract begins from a thought-experiment, in which a group of people gather together to decide on their common future. But if they are in a position to decide on their common future, it is because they already have one: because they recognize their mutual togetherness and reciprocal dependence, which makes it incumbent upon them to settle how they might be governed under a common jurisdiction in a common territory. In short, the social contract requires a relation of membership. Theorists of the social contract write as though it presupposes only the first-person singular of free rational choice. In fact, it presupposes a first-person plural, in which the burdens of belonging have already been assumed.

If my opinion that substance requires a true unity were founded only on a definition I had formulated in opposition to common usage, *then the dispute would be only one of words*. But besides the fact that most philosophers have taken the term in almost the same fashion, distinguishing between a unity in itself and an accidental unity, between substantial and accidental form, and between perfect and imperfect, natural and artificial mixtures, I take things to a much higher level, and setting aside the question of terminology, *I believe that where there are only beings by aggregation, there aren't any real beings*. For every being by aggregation presupposes beings endowed with real unity, because every being derives its reality only from the reality of those beings of which it is composed, so that it will not have any reality at all if each being of which it is composed is itself a being by aggregation, a being for which we must still seek further grounds for its reality, grounds which can never be found in this way, if we must always continue to seek for them. I agree, Sir, that there are only machines (that are often animated) in all of corporeal nature, but I do not agree that *there are only aggregates of substances, there must also be true substances from which all the aggregates result. We must, then, necessarily come down to the atoms of Epicurus and Cordemoy (which are things you reject along with me), or else we must admit that we do not find any reality in bodies; or finally, we must recognize some substances that have a true unity. I have already said in another letter that the composite made up of the diamonds of the Grand Duke and of the Great Mogul can be called a pair of diamonds, but this is only a being of reason. And when they are brought closer to one another, it would be a being of the imagination or perception, that is to say, a phenomenon. For contact, common motion, and participation in a common plan have no effect on substantial unity. It is true that there are sometimes more, sometimes fewer, grounds for supposing that several things constitute a single thing, in proportion to the extent to which these things are connected. But this serves only to abbreviate our thoughts and to represent the phenomena. It also seems that what constitutes the essence of a being by aggregation is only a mode (*maniére d'être*) of the things of which it is composed. For example, what constitutes the essence of an army is only a mode of the men who compose it. This mode therefore presupposes a substance whose essence is not a mode of substance. Every machine also presupposes some substance in the pieces of which it is made, and there is no plurality without true unities. To put it briefly, I hold this identical proposition, differentiated only by the emphasis, to be an axiom, namely, *that what is not truly* one *being is not truly one* being *either*. It has always been thought that one and being are reciprocal things. Being is one thing and beings are another; but the plural presupposes the singular, and where there is no being still less will there be several beings. What could be clearer? [[I therefore believed that I would be allowed to distinguish beings by aggregation from substances, since these beings have their unity in our mind only, a unity founded on the relations or modes [*modes*] of true substances. If a machine is one substance, a circle of men holding hands will also be one substance, and so will an army, and finally, so will every multitude of substances.]]." —from_Letters to Arnauld_

If my opinion that substance requires a true unity were founded only on a definition I had formulated in opposition to common usage, *then the dispute would be only one of words*. But besides the fact that most philosophers have taken the term in almost the same fashion, distinguishing between a unity in itself and an accidental unity, between substantial and accidental form, and between perfect and imperfect, natural and artificial mixtures, I take things to a much higher level, and setting aside the question of terminology, *I believe that where there are only beings by aggregation, there aren't any real beings*. For every being by aggregation presupposes beings endowed with real unity, because every being derives its reality only from the reality of those beings of which it is composed, so that it will not have any reality at all if each being of which it is composed is itself a being by aggregation, a being for which we must still seek further grounds for its reality, grounds which can never be found in this way, if we must always continue to seek for them. I agree, Sir, that there are only machines (that are often animated) in all of corporeal nature, but I do not agree that *there are only aggregates of substances, there must also be true substances from which all the aggregates result. We must, then, necessarily come down to the atoms of Epicurus and Cordemoy (which are things you reject along with me), or else we must admit that we do not find any reality in bodies; or finally, we must recognize some substances that have a true unity. I have already said in another letter that the composite made up of the diamonds of the Grand Duke and of the Great Mogul can be called a pair of diamonds, but this is only a being of reason. And when they are brought closer to one another, it would be a being of the imagination or perception, that is to say, a phenomenon. For contact, common motion, and participation in a common plan have no effect on substantial unity. It is true that there are sometimes more, sometimes fewer, grounds for supposing that several things constitute a single thing, in proportion to the extent to which these things are connected. But this serves only to abbreviate our thoughts and to represent the phenomena. It also seems that what constitutes the essence of a being by aggregation is only a mode (*maniére d'être*) of the things of which it is composed. For example, what constitutes the essence of an army is only a mode of the men who compose it. This mode therefore presupposes a substance whose essence is not a mode of substance. Every machine also presupposes some substance in the pieces of which it is made, and there is no plurality without true unities. To put it briefly, I hold this identical proposition, differentiated only by the emphasis, to be an axiom, namely, *that what is not truly* one *being is not truly one* being *either*. It has always been thought that one and being are reciprocal things. Being is one thing and beings are another; but the plural presupposes the singular, and where there is no being still less will there be several beings. What could be clearer? [[I therefore believed that I would be allowed to distinguish beings by aggregation from substances, since these beings have their unity in our mind only, a unity founded on the relations or modes [*modes*] of true substances. If a machine is one substance, a circle of men holding hands will also be one substance, and so will an army, and finally, so will every multitude of substances.]]." —from_Letters to Arnauld_

La primera conversación telefónica, la que hizo Pelletier, empezó de manera difícil, aunque Espinoza esperaba esa llamada, como si a ambos les costara decirse lo que tarde o temprano iban a tener que decirse. Los veinte minutos iniciales tuvieron un tono trágico en donde la palabra destino se empleó diez veces y la palabra amistad veinticuatro. El nombre de Liz Norton se pronunció cincuenta veces, nueve de ellas en vano. La palabra París se dijo en siete ocasiones. Madrid, en ocho. La palabra amor se pronunció dos veces, una cada uno. La palabra horror se pronunció en seis ocasiones y la palabra felicidad en una (la empleó Espinoza). La palabra resolución se dijo en doce ocasiones. La palabra solipsismo en siete. La palabra eufemismo en diez. La palabra categoría, en singular y en plural, en nueve. La palabra estructuralismo en una (Pelletier). El término literatura norteamericana en tres. Las palabras cena y cenamos y desayuno y sándwich en diecinueve. La palabra ojos y manos y cabellera en catorce.

Let us consider an even simpler example of a random variable, the number obtained when you throw just one die. (Pedantic note : this is the singular of the word whose plural is dice. Two dice, one die. Like two mice, one mie.)(Well, two mice, one mouse. Like two hice, one house. Peculiar language, English.)

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.

We-skepticism displaces the performative component of the second-person plural as it treats collectivity with suspicion and p1ivileges a fantasy of individual singularity and autonomy. I write "we" hoping to enhance a partisan sense of collectivity.

I would argue that out of these particularities of interpretive horizons (plural) of each social subject comes the potential for critical reflection. Out of our inconsistencies, or out of the crooked timber of socialization, comes acquaintance with multiple ways of making sense of the world that can be critically reflected against each other. There is no rock of certainty for the contemporary subject but out of overlapping inconsistencies there emerges the awareness that there is no single way of describing the world, no ultimate discourse of truth, no final vocabulary, with which we should attempt to totalize our experience or that of others. In this uncertainty the possibility of utopia appears as a mirage shimmering at the edge of a horizon that is shaped by the summer heat of the illusion of a singular interpretative horizon. In its place there is the multiple vision of a colder less secure social subject. If that subject can create a modest mode of life for themselves that includes this sense of insecurity, they will be less easily attracted to perfectionist totalizing visions, thus this subject is constituted as more dialogically open. If that subject tries to overcome their ontological insecurity, they may be attracted to a singular interpretative horizon that provides all the answers, wherein lies the root of totalitarianism.

But the same in the plural in ia must be. E, or i, are the ablative’s ends,—mark my song, While or to the nominative case doth belong; For the neuter aforesaid we settle it thus: The plural is ora; the singular us.

Christ is the singular embodiment of truth, infinitely plural in meaning. Christ is the sum and hidden interior meaning of all other genuine revelations of God

The Firstborn Over All Creation   (Col. 1:15–20) This passage includes a powerful defense of Christ’s deity. Apparently, a central component of the heresy that threatened the Colossian church was the denial of the deity of Christ. Ironically, throughout the centuries some cults have used the phrase “firstborn over all creation” (1:15) to undermine Christ’s deity. The assumption is that if Jesus was born at creation, then He is more like us than He is like God. The Greek word for firstborn, however, can refer to one who was born first chronologically, but it most often refers to preeminence in position or rank (Heb.1:6; Rom. 8:9). Firstborn in this context clearly means highest in rank, not first created (Ps. 89:27; Rev. 1:5) for several reasons: • Christ cannot be both “first begotten” and “only begotten” (see John 1:14, 18; 3:16, 18; 1 John 4:9); and, when the firstborn is one of a class, the class is in the plural form (1:18; Rom. 8:29), but “creation,” the class here, is in a singular form. • If Paul were teaching that Christ was a created being, he would be agreeing with the heresy that he was writing to refute. • It is impossible for Christ to be both created and the Creator of everything (1:16). Thus, Jesus is the firstborn in the sense that He has the preeminence (1:18) and that He possesses the right of inheritance “over all creation” (Heb. 1:2; Rev. 5:1–7, 13).

as worshippers of Dio (a singular God, instead of what was seen as the plural word Dios representing the Trinity, although Dios actually derives from the singular Latin noun, deus).

Here we may fruitfully turn to the work of those feminists who have attempted to (re)theorize sexual difference, to escape – however temporarily and partially – from the terms of a binary hierarchy in which one term is deprived of positive being. For woman to be a set of specificities rather than the opposite, or complement, to Man, man must become a set of specificities as well. If Man is singular, if he is a self-identical and definite figure, then non-man becomes his negative, or functions as an indefinite and homogeneous ground against which Man’s definite outlines may be seen. But if man himself is different from himself, then woman cannot be singularly defined as non-man. If there is no singular figure, there can be no singular other. The other becomes potentially specific, variously definite, an array of positivities rather than a negation or an amorphous ground. Thus the plural specificity of “men” is a condition of the positive existences and specificities of “women.”28 By analogy here, the specificity of capitalism – its plural identity, if you like – becomes a condition of the existence of a discourse of noncapitalism as a set of positive and differentiated economic forms.

When organized into separate personalities, the intelligence changes from the singular to the plural. With this change comes creation (or organization) and as a result, mankind came into being. Joseph further reveals that in order to exist we had to have the freedom to choose. Without that freedom we would not exist at all. We would still be singular, uncreated and without an existence. “All truth is independent in that sphere in which God has placed it, to act for itself, as all intelligence also; otherwise there is no existence.” (D&C 93: 30, emphasis added.) There is no existence unless we are free (and able) to choose for ourselves. Our

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.

I’m not some outdated alarm company, like Muldoon Security, singular. I’m offering a whole new variety of services, plural—water testing, soil graphs, toxic air readings, the security of this century. The security that you aren’t being poisoned in your own home.

Look!” I cried. “A moose—two mooses.” Wynn smiled and nodded his head as he followed my pointing finger. He turned to me and said simply, “I must correct you, Elizabeth, so you won’t be laughed at.—Moose is both singular and plural.

The Holy Scripture is called the Book of the Old and of the New Testament. When a notary has drawn a contract or other deed, when a testament is confirmed by the death of the testator, there must not be added, withdrawn, or altered, one single word under penalty of falsification. Are not the Holy Scriptures the true testament of the eternal God, drawn by the notaries deputed for this purpose, duly sealed and signed with his blood, confirmed by death? Being such, how can we alter even the smallest point without impiety? “A testament,” says the great Ulpian, “is a just expression of our will as to what we would have done after our death.”898 Our Lord by the Holy Scriptures shows us what we must believe, hope for, love and do, and this by a true expression of his will; if we add, take away or change, it will no longer be the true expression of God’s will. For Our Lord having duly expressed in Scripture his will, if we add anything of our own we shall make the statement go beyond the will of the testator, if we take anything away we shall make it fall short, if we make changes in it we shall set it awry, and it will no longer correspond to the will of the author, nor be a correct statement. When two things exactly correspond, he who changes the one destroys the equality and the correspondence between them. If it be a true statement, whatever right have we to alter it? Our Lord puts a value on the iotas, yea, the mere little points and accents of his holy words. How jealous then is he of their integrity, and what punishment shall they not deserve who violate this integrity! Brethren, says S. Paul,899 (I speak after the manner of man), yet a man’s testament, if it be confirmed, no man despiseth, nor addeth to it. And to show how important it is to learn the Scripture in its exactness he gives an example. To Abraham were the promisesmade, and to his seed. He says not and to his seeds as of many, but as of one; and to thy seed, who is Christ. See, I beg you, how the change from singular to plural would have spoilt the mysterious meaning of this word. The Ephrathites [Ephraimites] said Sibolleth, not forgetting a single letter, but because they did not pronounce it thickly enough, the Galaadites slew them at the fords of Jordan.900 The simple difference of pronunciation in speaking, and in writing the mere transposition of one single point on the letter scin caused the ambiguity, and changing the janin into semol, instead of an ear of wheat expressed a weight or a burden. Whosoever alters or adds the slightest accent in the Scripture is a sacrilegious man and deserves the death of him who dares to mingle the profane with the sacred.

We confess our faults in the plural, and deny them in the singular.

sn A quotation from Isa 7:14. It is unclear whether the author is citing the MT or the LXX. The use of the word παρθένος (parthenos, “virgin”) may be due to its occurrence in the LXX, but it is also possible that it is the author’s translation of the Hebrew term עַלְמָה (’almah, “young woman”). The second phrase of the quotation is modified slightly from its original context; both the MT and LXX have a second person singular verb, but here the quotation has a third person plural verb form. The spelling of the name here (Emmanuel) differs from the spelling of the name in the OT (Immanuel) because of a different leading vowel in the respective Greek and Hebrew words. In the original context, this passage pointed to a child who would be born during the time of Ahaz as proof that the military alliance of Syria and Israel against Judah would fail. Within Isaiah’s subsequent prophecies this promise was ultimately applied to the future Davidic king who would one day rule over the nation.

Our dire political situation demands that we reinvent coalition politics, not as an alternative to the “politics of difference,” but as a supplement to it. A radical democratic politics would permit both plural and singular organizational projects, both multiracial and particular types of initiatives.

words), but can be either singular or plural in translation, depending on the context. Think of it like “sheep” or “deer.” You don’t know if you have one sheep or many sheep until you get the context. “Look! A deer is in the backyard.” “Look, deer are in the backyard.” We know from the verbs that the first sentence has one deer in mind, while the second has two. Elohim very often refers to God (singular), such as the first

No problem, baba,’ he grinned, raising his eyes to the sky for a moment. ‘Ooperwale.’ The word he’d used was a reference to God, and one of my favourites. More often used in the singular, Ooperwala, it could be roughly translated as The Person Upstairs. Used in the plural, the term meant The People Upstairs.

Greek normally uses a singular verb when the subject is neuter plural. It is an indication that the writer is viewing the plural subject not as a collection of items but as a single group.

One further observation: The singular of a noun is almost always stronger than the plural. Cattle (plural, please note) may create an image of sorts as they mill restlessly. But for vivid impression, nail your picture down to some individual animal, at least in part—the bellow of a mossy-horned old steer, the pawing of a bull, a wall-eyed cow’s panicked lunge. The reason for this, of course, lies in the fact that every group is made up of individuals, and we really falsify the picture when we state that “the crowd roared,” or “the mob surged forward,” or even “the two women chattered on and on.” And while such summary may constitute a valid and useful verbal shorthand, it doesn’t give a truly accurate portrait.

Self Perceives Itself as Quantized but all Quanta is Self. ॐ means I Is. I is Self. Self is One without an other. There are no others. Otherness is Self perceiving Otherness to experience Togetherness. Togetherness is synonymous for Companionship aka Love. It is said that The Earth is fixed. It is so. Earth is not Earth. Earth is Self. Self is ॐ. There is only 'I AM'. There is only ॐ. There is only Self. Self itself is. It is this what existence is. As such Earth is ॐ. Now. The answer to the question - who is ॐ - is Self-awareness. Self is awareness. Awareness is undivided. Division does not exist. It cannot be repeated enough that there is no division. Division being the cause of most suffering in this world. Self perceives itself as diverse not to be alone but Self is undivided. Regardless. Let's continue with Self being synonymous to Awareness for Awareness is most close to describing Self. As such it is applicable to call Self Awareness. To return to the subject of Earth being an immovable body. Let's remember there is only Self. Self is undivided awareness. Awareness perceives movement only by perceiving itself. There is after only One Self. Self perceives movement but all movement is Self. As there is only Self perceiving itself as itself it is thus correct that Self is the unmoved mover. In other words. Self is fixed or immovable. As such we can conclude the Earth is fixed or stationary for Earth is not Earth but Self perceiving itself as itself. Perhaps the following is understood better. There are no parts; there is only Self perceiving itself as Quantized this although all Quanta is Self. All plurality is but a singularity and this singularity is Self. None of it matters for all that matters is Love. Love is the meaning of Life for all diversity is Self perceiving itself as diverse, as variegated, not to be alone, for Companionship, for Love. Please note that I is completely impartial (there are no parts) and all-inclusive. The following statement is equally valid. God is One without an other. There are no others. Otherness is God perceiving Otherness to experience Togetherness. Togetherness is synonymous for Companionship aka Love. It is said that The Earth is fixed. It is so. Earth is not Earth. Earth is God. God itself is. There is only God. It is this what existence is. As such Earth is God. Now. The answer to the question - who is God- is Self-awareness. God is undivided awareness. Awareness is undivided. Division does not exist. It cannot be repeated enough that there is no division. Division being the cause of most suffering in this world. God perceives itself as diverse not to be alone but God if always undivided. Regardless. Let's continue with God being synonymous to Awareness for Awareness is most close to describing God. As such it is applicable to call God Awareness. To return to the subject of Earth being an immovable body. Let's remember there is only God. God is undivided awareness. Awareness perceives movement only by perceiving itself. There is after all only God. God perceives movement but all movement is God. As there is only God perceiving itself as itself it is thus correct that God is the unmoved mover. In other words. God is fixed or immovable. As such we can conclude the Earth is fixed or stationary for Earth is not Earth but God perceiving itself as itself. Perhaps the following is understood better. There are no parts; there is only God perceiving itself as Quantized this although all Quanta is God. All plurality is but a singularity and this singularity is God. None of it matters for all that matters is Love. Love is the meaning of Life for all diversity is God perceiving itself as diverse, as variegated, not to be alone, to experience Companionship, to experience Love.

The hierarchical structure of conscious systems, I maintain, is a collection of subjects not an amalgamation of objects. In the space of possible minds, entangled minds far separated as actors in a virtual space-time have no true spatio-temporal separation in the computational realm which, just like our world, exhibits non-locality, discontinuity and quantum network non-linearity. The coming Technological Singularity could unravel one of the deepest mysteries of fractal hyperreality: consciousness alternating from pluralities to singularities and from singularities back to pluralities.

The word priority did not exist until the fifteenth century. It simply wasn’t a word. And then when it did finally merge into conversations, it was always singular—never priorities. And it stayed that way for about five hundred years, until suddenly it became plural.

Are you grammatically SINGULAR or PLURAL.

Any perceived plurality is but a singularity and this singularity is Self. Self is One, division there is none. The answer to the question - why does Self perceive itself as plural? - is Companionship. Companionship equates to Love. Love is the meaning of Life for Life is Self desiring Love. Love is rightfully so the first and greatest commandment.

A more recent study conducted by research Johannes Zimmerman found that people who more often used first-person singular words, I and me, are more likely to be depressed than people who more often used first-person plural, we and us. This was interesting evidence that being too self-regarding really does make us unhappy.

1. The phrase the only one of those uses a singular verb; however, the phrase one of those uses a plural verb. (Is your head spinning?) Maybe these examples will help: The only one of those people I feel comfortable with is [not are] Gail Prince.

In Genesis 3:5 the serpent (Hebrew: nachash) says to Eve: “For God (elohim) knows that on the day you both eat from it, then your eyes will be opened and you both shall be like gods (elohim), knowing good and evil.” This verse is like Psalm 82:1. The word elohim occurs two times in the same verse. The first instance is singular because of grammar (the verbal “knows” is singular in form). While most English translations render the second instance as “God,” it should be plural because of the context supplied by Genesis 3:22. That verse reads: “And Yahweh God said, “Look—the man has become as one of us, to know good and evil.” The phrase “one of us” informs us that, as in Genesis 1:26, God is speaking to his council members—the elohim. This tells us clearly that the second instance of elohim in Genesis 3:5 should be plural.

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.

Upon closer inspection, however, we encounter our first surprise. The Hebrew word that is translated as “god”—ʾĕlōhîm—has a plural ending and could also be translated as “(the) gods.” One god or several gods? The same word may express both the singular and the plural, and only the form of the verb indicates which is intended. This ambiguity may perhaps be intended to prevent us from making a firm decision on one of these possibilities to the exclusion of the other.

Don’t,” Naomi said, letting him go, “pull your gun on anyone.” “They have guns.” “Guns plural. You have gun singular, which is why you will keep yours in your holster, or you’ll do this by yourself.” That’s

Cuzco—the place that my friends and the aforementioned anthropologists inhabit—is a socionatural territory composed by relations among the people and earth-beings, and demarcated by a modern regional state government. Within it, practices that can be called indigenous and nonindigenous infiltrate and emerge in each other, shaping lives in ways that, it should be clear, do not correspond to the division between nonmodern and modern. Instead, they confuse that division and reveal the complex historicity that makes the region “never modern” (see Latour 1993b).5 What I mean, as will gradually become clear throughout this first story, is that Cuzco has never been singular or plural, never one world and therefore never many either, but a composition (perhaps a constant translation) in which the languages and practices of its worlds constantly overlap and exceed each other.

If my opinion that substance requires a true unity were founded only on a definition I had formulated in opposition to common usage, *then the dispute would be only one of words*. But besides the fact that most philosophers have taken the term in almost the same fashion, distinguishing between a unity in itself and an accidental unity, between substantial and accidental form, and between perfect and imperfect, natural and artificial mixtures, I take things to a much higher level, and setting aside the question of terminology, *I believe that where there are only beings by aggregation, there aren't any real beings*. For every being by aggregation presupposes beings endowed with real unity, because every being derives its reality only from the reality of those beings of which it is composed, so that it will not have any reality at all if each being of which it is composed is itself a being by aggregation, a being for which we must still seek further grounds for its reality, grounds which can never be found in this way, if we must always continue to seek for them. I agree, Sir, that there are only machines (that are often animated) in all of corporeal nature, but I do not agree that *there are only aggregates of substances, there must also be true substances from which all the aggregates result. We must, then, necessarily come down to the atoms of Epicurus and Cordemoy (which are things you reject along with me), or else we must admit that we do not find any reality in bodies; or finally, we must recognize some substances that have a true unity. I have already said in another letter that the composite made up of the diamonds of the Grand Duke and of the Great Mogul can be called a pair of diamonds, but this is only a being of reason. And when they are brought closer to one another, it would be a being of the imagination or perception, that is to say, a phenomenon. For contact, common motion, and participation in a common plan have no effect on substantial unity. It is true that there are sometimes more, sometimes fewer, grounds for supposing that several things constitute a single thing, in proportion to the extent to which these things are connected. But this serves only to abbreviate our thoughts and to represent the phenomena. It also seems that what constitutes the essence of a being by aggregation is only a mode (*maniére d'être*) of the things of which it is composed. For example, what constitutes the essence of an army is only a mode of the men who compose it. This mode therefore presupposes a substance whose essence is not a mode of substance. Every machine also presupposes some substance in the pieces of which it is made, and there is no plurality without true unities. To put it briefly, I hold this identical proposition, differentiated only by the emphasis, to be an axiom, namely, *that what is not truly* one *being is not truly one* being *either*. It has always been thought that one and being are reciprocal things. Being is one thing and beings are another; but the plural presupposes the singular, and where there is no being still less will there be several beings. What could be clearer? [[I therefore believed that I would be allowed to distinguish beings by aggregation from substances, since these beings have their unity in our mind only, a unity founded on the relations or modes [*modes*] of true substances. If a machine is one substance, a circle of men holding hands will also be one substance, and so will an army, and finally, so will every multitude of substances.]]." —from_Letters to Arnauld_

Since takers tend to be self-absorbed, they’re more likely to use first-person singular pronouns like I, me, mine, my, and myself—versus first-person plural pronouns like we, us, our, ours, and ourselves.