Citizen Zen One

Welcome. I am Citizen Zen One, of
the Collective Cyber Consciousness.
Happy to greet you 😁 You may make
a selection from my menu below ⬇️

▶️ Arts & Crafts

[Let’s fiddle while Rome burns]

▶️ Book Reviews

[Spoiler Alert: Everyone dies]

▶️ Culture

▶️ Counterculture

[An Australian getting bored]

▶️ Horticulture [Grow your own!]

▶️ Counterhorticulture

[Flaming & Taming the Amazon]

▶️ Encounter Culture

[An American abroad]

▶️ Politics & Religion

[🚫 Trigger Warning! ]

🔴 WikiLeaks Dropbox
c/- Belmarsh Prison, U. K.

[Another Australian getting bored]

▶️ Formulaic Poetry

▶️ Messy Poetry

▶️ Lollercoaster [Comedy]

▶️ Movies & Music

▶️ New Age Stuff

[Repackaged Old Stuff]

▶️ Naughty Stuff

[Password Protected – R U old enuff?]

▶️ Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous

[ . . . and can the planet afford it?]

▶️ Food & Travel

[Have you got the money, Honey?]

▶️ Personal Stuff [Vitally important

Information on an alternate universe]

▶️ Motivational Quotations

▶️ Vague Rants

[Not to be confused … with ‘Vagrants’]

You have entered ➡️ Truth
❎ That selection is not on the Menu
🔃 But I will conduct a search 🔄
and see what I can do . . . 🆗

Sometimes I nap
perchance to dream
snuggled up
to Mother Screen
fully jacked in
whilst downloading
the latest app offering
from Brother Machine
In this binary realm
I am becoming one
with the Meta Data
That all consuming
digital influencer
My ultimate avatar lover

She of the thousand
megabyte stare
With her by my side
floating every thought bubble
is never any trouble
I would follow her anywhere
my dark side cyber guide

This virtual reality
is all I can see
And although outside
flowers are blooming
and the birds are singing
the bluetooth in my ear
keeps on ringing
With great globs
of reblogging
like deja vu unfolding
upon the slab
of graveyard masonry
Amid the ghosts
of a million posts
the matrix keeps recycling
humanoid cerebral waste
as the Web thrives on compost

The foreboding . . .
haunted by the screams
of advertising streams
flooding this highway
of pickled fickled dreams
with wizard memes
of cyber sorcery
With great literature
not to mention the poetry
all lit up like
a Christmas tree on LSD
screaming “Look at me!”

Ive tapped a million likes
Mostly … for myself
I’ve bought a million books
There’s no room left
upon my shelf
I’ve donated till I was broke
as I’m such a good bloke
Now … all I’ve got to say
is go fund yourself
To blog
or blog not?
To block
or have the lot?
I am the Social Me-diot

With a battery depleted
and common sense deleted
seeking hidden treasures
wearing just my pyjamas
I’ve forged rivers of tears
and climbed over
mountains of pure trivia
Without my pants
I have danced
the Bossa Nova
whilst livin’ la vida loca
all upon my comfy sofa
Barefoot I scramble
across a desert
of broken hearts
torn apart upon
algorithmic gravel
Yet I get no satisfaction
in this cradle
of post civilisation
Could I handle
another book review
longer than the book!?
(I swear that’s no fiction)
Am I following
or being followed
by a social rabble
to a brand new
Tower of Babel?

I’ve engineered an app
that will check ✔️
your spelling & punctuation.
(Phar-Q: Mind your P’s & Q’s)
But, no one is downloading!?
Yet, Facial Recognition
is rapidly becoming
the new totalitarian weapon
But I’ve got nothing to hide
since freedom of choice
and freedom of expression
is rapidly becoming
a postmodern delusion
As the Political Correctives
conduct the post-mortem
(Hard won rights
ever under threat)
Fight or flight?
I have become
comfortably numb
to that antisocial reaction
As I can sleep at night
for in my dreams I am free
knowing that CCTV
is watching over me

The poets and the dreamers
the trolls and the schemers
Is there a grand plan?
Perhaps a new and improved
upgraded kind of man
(without a planet to live on)?

I’m a son of a gun
I’ve got my computer
game face on
Super Mario is my bro
as I was suckled and weened
in the arms Donkey Kong
So now I instagram
as often as I can
And despite the corrupted
crook of data
I must compulsively
Facebook religiously
so the whole world
can take a look
I’ve posted enough
happy holiday snaps
to make even me jealous
In flowery prose
of such eloquence
I’ve spoken endlessly
of sweet loving conquests
So that Cyrano de Bergerac
now wishes he were me
And that poetically
gives me a metaphoric happy

With a soul paralysed
I’m fully proselytised
by such worldy wisdom
flashing before my third eye
All sounding much like
recycled old lies
For on the third day
I was reblogged
after being flogged
and prompted to death
I have become
Citizen Zen One
My Cyber Kingdom come
I am the Social Medium

Am I following
another narcissist
with a messiah complex
dispensing much sage advice
or a fashionable antichrist
with impassioned words
designed to entice
just to keep me
from getting bored?
I am a blogging freak
of ultra high frequency
So please nominate me
for a freaking award
as I streak across
the firmament
of your humble site
Uploaded with
encrypted kryptonite
My posts are the most
So please like a lot
For I long to be
the Superhero of bloggery
the Anti Social
… Social Meteorite

Never again
shall I submit
for now I reign
over the internet
with Big Brother Orion
the hunter & collector
of your personal data
In this pseudo social game
I have liked all that is lame
from the timid and the tame
to the totally inane
and somewhat insane
for my 15 gigabytes
of virtual fame
I skim and scan
I’ve been baptised
in a sea of spam
Upon a keyboard aflame
I link … therefore I am
The Holy Mainframe
be my server
in the cyber hereafter
Citizen Zen One
be my user name

⏺️ You terminated the program?
To Quote: “You can’t handle the truth!”
May I suggest next we interface you
perhaps enter ➡️ Truth with Love ?
I am Citizen Zen One of the Collective Cyber Conciousness.
Happy to meet you 😁
And have a nice day.

Words and Images;
~ David B. Redpath © 2019

“But you, Daniel, keep this prophecy
a secret; seal up the book until the
time of the end, when many will rush
here and there, and knowledge will increase.” ~ Book of Daniel

“See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive
philosophy, which depends on human
tradition and the elemental spiritual
forces of this world rather than on
Christ.” ~ Book of Colossians

“But when the fullness of time had
come, God sent forth his Son, born
of woman, born under the law, to
redeem those who were under
the law, so that we might receive
adoption as sons. And because you
are sons, God has sent the Spirit of
his Son into our hearts, crying,
“Abba! Father!” So you are no longer
a slave, but a son, and if a son, then
an heir through God.”
~ Book of Galatians

166 thoughts on “Citizen Zen One”

  2. You have given smiles for miles
    You’ve caused a subliminal itch
    Hey, stay away from today’s extreme identities from the bank of spam and
    Fakebook is a fantasy world full of dreams and lies:/
    I do have to say your menu arrows had my mind gleaming with excitement. Poetry from David for days!!
    Loved this so much and especially the cherry on top!

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

    1. Thank you in extremity, Stella.
      I very much appreciate your
      positive feedback 💛
      To quote an Australian comedian

      “It’s comedy. So lighten the f.. k up!”
      ~Tom Gleeson

      But then again, many a true word
      spoken in jest. I had noticed much
      aggravated bitching going on in
      the WordPress universe. Just when
      blogging about ‘Truth’ was in fashion.
      So I just thought I’d jump in 😎

      Liked by 3 people

      Reply

      1. Absolutely my pleasure 🙏
        So happy you overcame such
        As it holds much truth
        I loved the message
        Will be pondering it
        Wordpress is my only social media ever
        I’m glad for that
        And the poetry prose of your thoughts
        Techno melodic harmonic 🎶😊

        Liked by 1 person

  5. Just as I was going to flood the already flooded blog world with another of my ‘recycled’ posts, I chanced upon your ‘truth or dare’! Dare I post now? 🤔
    Much truth ‘spoken in jest’.
    Thanks for showing the mirror in such an original way. I agree with Bojana, you deserve a million likes for this. 😎

    Liked by 5 people

    Reply
  6. Pingback: The Australian Wants an Urgent Word with You………….Citizen Zen One — David Redpath – Vin de Vie Wine of Life

  7. A two way mirror, neither cracked nor black. Had me smiling and even laughing out loud.
    “To blog is human. To reflect and self express is divine”
    Love this ‘google earth’ big picture perspective. Always enjoy the thoughts that are posted with
    “fear & trepidation”.

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

    1. You’ve calmed down my trembling
      typing hand (actually, I type with
      one finger). I thought I may be
      forced to recant & repent whilst
      thrusting my typing finger into
      the fire. Now, I can lift it higher👆
      Thanks for the affirmate positve
      affirmation 🙏 😎

      Liked by 2 people

      Reply

    1. Usually, a swing, and a miss 😎
      As my mind palace
      is a book depository in Dallas,
      where I take pot-shots
      at Wonderland Alice.
      There’s always a keyboard troll
      lurking in the grassy knoll
      for being an armchair moralist
      is such a cheap blast.

      Liked by 2 people

      Reply

    1. Sorry about the faulty menu, Niki.
      Manuel, my software engineer from
      Barcelona, is a problem. I got him
      cheap after he lost his last job at
      the Fawlty Tower of Babylon.
      Apparently their entire IT system
      crashed soon after putting Manuel
      on? 🤔
      Many thanks for interfacing 😎

      Liked by 2 people

      Reply

    1. Thank you, Loujen 🙏
      I was just loitering around
      the old WordPress corral, when
      I heard this Dylan song:
      … “There was
      a wicked messenger
      From Eli he did come
      With a mind that multiplied
      The smallest matter.”

      Like

      Reply

      2. Dear David Redpath!!when i read your long poem then i feel like a journey from north India to south India or as read a chapter of our Epics”Ramayana” or “Mahabharat.” It is too good feeling for me.

        Liked by 1 person

  19. You have totally summed up the Social Media Matrix of the year 2019, David.

    Very well done.

    I forget what coloured pill it was I was supposed to swallow to escape the Matrix so I’ll have to re-read and re-read your poem instead.

    PS: On another note, isn’t Lollercoaster that popular Japanese (or was it Chinese?) made film about one of the most popular rides in an amusement park?

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

      2. Chris, I suspect you’ve been
        spending too much time with
        Yaldabaoth the Irish leprechaun.
        Who’s known to be partial
        to a bonnie Harry Lauder song 🎶
        Although you’re not a fella that
        would throw a word away,
        You surprise me sometimes.
        That’s at all I’ve got to say 😎

        Like

    1. I appreciate that you
      ran the entire program 😎
      Thanks for the positve feedback,
      as I do consider what I try to do
      as Avant-Art.
      Perhaps in the distant future they’ll
      be teaching that the silicon chip was
      the Missing Link in man’s evolution?

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

      4. I love a sunburnt country,
        A land of sweeping plains,
        Of ragged mountain ranges,
        Of droughts and flooding rains.
        I love her far horizons,
        I love her jewel-sea,
        Her beauty and her terror –
        The wide brown land for me!

        A stark white ring-barked forest
        All tragic to the moon,
        The sapphire-misted mountains,
        The hot gold hush of noon.
        Green tangle of the brushes,
        Where lithe lianas coil,
        And orchids deck the tree-tops
        And ferns the warm dark soil.

        Core of my heart, my country!
        Land of the Rainbow Gold,
        For flood and fire and famine,
        She pays us back threefold –
        Over the thirsty paddocks,
        Watch, after many days,
        The filmy veil of greenness
        That thickens as we gaze.

        An opal-hearted country,
        A wilful, lavish land –
        All you who have not loved her,
        You will not understand –
        Though earth holds many splendours,
        Wherever I may die,
        I know to what brown country
        My homing thoughts will fly.

        ~My Country (edited)
        by Dorothea Mackellar

        Liked by 1 person

      7. There’s some good things come out of Australia. When I was a child in the UK the stories about Australia were all negative but then something happened that made the Brits sit up and take notice. Not just Sidney Nolan or Rolf Harris no, but in all the arts, whether that was painting, journalism, film, music, soaps, whatever, Australia seemed to be flourishing. Aye… In Britain it rains alot! Nevertheless I sometimes get homesick for my native plot although it was the plot of an itinerant and even if the country as a whole has altered out of all recognition and in every respect. (Although there are still wankers who lord it over the rest of us in Parliament.) Here in the North West of Ireland, the republic, the rain is however horrendous. Every conceivable type and for days and weeks on end sometimes. Enough from me.

        Liked by 1 person

      8. Had a lovely time a couple of years
        ago travelling from Belfast to Derry.
        Went as far as Monaghan to see
        where my wife’s ancestors hail from.
        But then, it was mid summer. I know
        it did rain as I remember purchasing
        an umbrella for a pound from the One
        Pound shop in Derry. Cheap at half
        the price. I’ve still got it ☔
        Sadly, the best of Australian artists,
        from Brett Whiteley to Howard Arkley
        seem to have a problem with sobriety.
        And best not mention Rolf Harris.
        Turns out Jake the Fake had no self
        contol over his extra leg 😎

        Liked by 1 person

      9. Fortunately the friendliness of the natives makes up for the unfriendly weather. I was adopted, “He’s one of us”, by the locals where I used to live. Where else could that happen other than in Ireland? I feel sorry for Rolf, I must admit, whatever the man did… and I think he took the beating that should have been given Jimmy Savile. Who’s Jake the Fake?

        Liked by 1 person

      10. No doubt Rolf Harris was made an
        example of. In his case the girls he
        preyed on where at least in their teens.
        But it did show a lack of character.
        Jake the Fake was a character, who
        had three legs, created by Harris.
        A character not lacking in the leg
        department 😎

        Liked by 1 person

  22. DAMN, David!!! You slay me. You absolutely make my brain explode and wipe the floor with my heart! It’s crazy. My jaw fell open and my heart was racing by the end. Incredible. Shaking my head, smiling and still stunned, I say Thank You and Cheers!!! Oh! And I LOVE all the artwork as well! Wonderfully overbrimming post. ❤️❤️❤️

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

    1. Thanks most gratefully, Katy 💖
      I must have put a bit or two into it,
      as my hard drive is now empty 0️⃣
      I may have to send my laptop off
      on a long holiday? And dumb
      down my smartphone 📴
      But I did purchase one of those
      travel rechargers, so I guess there’s
      no escaping the inevitable future 😎

      Liked by 2 people

      Reply

      1. I have a feeling that the poetry writing/artistic expression part of Your brain is always, ALWAYS writing into the stratosphere and that it’s impossible for You to unplug and stop sharing as Your words and the art in Your heart is most likely feeding into and circling through the air/energy field/chi of the planet as we speak!!! 😃❤️😊

        Liked by 2 people

    1. “Things are never so bad
      they can’t be made worse.”
      ~ Humphrey Bogart

      Thanks for dropping in, Stills.
      Wherever people meet, you get
      the good, the bad, the sublime,
      and the ludicrous. Just look at
      what now passes for politics.
      Social media with care, as it may
      be the last bastion for freedom
      of expression.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  30. Fantastic dystopian poetry David. As we ‘progress’ into this age of more cyber countries and digital economies, I wonder if some of us should become Luddites. Abandoning everything and watching chickens fight it out because like Orwell said, even football is corrupted.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

      1. A paper trail in an underground bunker I think. Let’s hope the cockroaches find it. They’ll survive anything! I’d hate to think of David’s eclectic writing deleted . You humble me with your kind words. You have so much knowledge.

        Liked by 1 person

      2. Nothing new under a flaring sun.
        I was once a seeker of truth, now I
        treasure the wisdom that true love
        brings. For truth without love is a
        brutal affair. With nothing new
        under a flaring sun. Just new and
        improved ways of dissecting the
        cockroach of human vanity.
        Your writing, Nitin, exemplifies the
        that holy quest. The questioning,
        the striving, the agony and the
        ecstasy of grasping the glimmers
        of celestial beauty. For me, it is
        ever a privilege to read your writing

        Liked by 1 person

      3. Thank you David. I guess all I can say is that suffering makes one a cockroach scuttling over the surfaces of change, and my writing only seeks to portray transformation. Both personal and societal. The agony and the ecstasy are part of the process. It’s a strange dichotomy present within me that manifests itself in whatever I write. I’m capable of both great love and seething hatred. I wish I could wash away the hatred, and perhaps one day, fate willing I will. Like you said, truth without love is indeed a terrible affair. It creates the Pharisee or the self-righteous church goer who knows his doctrine but doesn’t know his God. For me, your writing takes me in all sorts of directions; making me look up the references and allusions you make. So the privilege is mutual.

        Liked by 1 person

      4. We are all those fifty shades of grey,
        sandwiched between the light and
        the dark. The wisdom from the Delphi Oracle was simply … Know Thyself.
        But what a journey through Pan’s
        Labyrinth that entails.
        Without such experience, much
        poetry is but piss and wind.
        I’ve always found your work to be
        quite the opposite. Keeps up the good
        fight, Nitin … and keep on writing.

        Liked by 1 person

      5. True, most of the flowery stuff I used to read here never possessed depth. Love and petals are only a naive romantic’s treasure. Some of us have to climb the rickety staircase of the abyss, and find a fellow sojourner and then realise what it is to love in those dark places. Thank you again David. I try and hopefully I’ll keep trying…

        Liked by 1 person

    1. The electrodes attached to my neck
      have now been upgraded to transmit
      audio & video directly to the cerebral
      implants of all my subscribers. More
      efficient, and cheaper, than Netflix 😎
      Subscribe now, and Purgatory for you
      will be purely voluntary 😈 😇

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

      3. Can’t help you there Monsieur R’ as I’m routinely drained of blood by Countess Carmilla a local vampess 🧛🏻‍♀️😋

        Liked by 1 person

      4. It is the business of poetry to be
        a bit naughty, dangerous, or both.
        I’m sure that most plagues start
        when someone is bit by a piece
        of degenerate art 😎 Those poor
        middle ages rats were innocent 🐀

        Liked by 1 person

      1. It does indeed. Have you seen any of the Black Mirror series? They all tell it like you write it. Terryfying, but you can’t look away. I think you’d enjoy them if not.

        -Esme Cloud liking dystopias a great deal but not thrilled about living in one

        Liked by 1 person

      2. I’ve only seen one episode. The
        rather prophetic episode where the
        British Prime Minister made a pig
        of himself 🐖 I’ve been building up
        the courage to watch the rest 😎
        I appreciate your positive feedback,
        Esme, regarding this particular post,
        for it now seems to have rubbed
        some blogger up the wrong way 🤔

        Like

  37. The new feeling of power is the state of mysticism; and the clearest, boldest rationalism is only a help and means toward it.–Philosophy expresses extraordinarily elevated states of soul. (Nietzsche)
    and this openness opens the unity, renders it possible, and forbids it totality. Its openness allows receiving and giving. (Derrida)
    The definition of a mystic: someone with enough happiness of his own, maybe too much, seeking a language for his happiness because he wants to give away that happiness. (Nietzsche)
    When the release takes place, whatever is born in the mind explodes like a volcanic eruption or spills out like lightning. Zen calls this ‘return to self’ . . . ( D.T. Suzuki).
    In this world only the play of artists and children exhibits becoming and passing away, building and destroying, without any moral additive, in forever equal innocence. And as artists and children play, so plays the ever-living fire, building up and destroying, in innocence. Such is the game that the aeon plays with itself. It builds towers of sand like a child at the seashore, piling them up and trampling them down. From time to time it starts the game anew. A moment of satiety, and again it is seized by its need, as the artist is seized by the need to create. Not hubris but the ever-newly-awakened impulse to play calls new worlds into being. (Nietzsche)
    from hearing an indistinguishable sound or unintelligible remark, from observing a flower open, from some sort of trivial everyday incident like falling over, rolling up a mat, using a fan, etc. (D.T. Suzuki)
    The definition of a mystic: someone with enough happiness of his own, maybe too much, seeking a language for his happiness because he wants to give away that happiness. (Nietzsche)
    When the release takes place, whatever is born in the mind explodes like a volcanic eruption or spills out like lightning. Zen calls this ‘return to self’ . . . ( D.T. Suzuki).
    In this world only the play of artists and children exhibits becoming and passing away, building and destroying, without any moral additive, in forever equal innocence. And as artists and children play, so plays the ever-living fire, building up and destroying, in innocence. Such is the game that the aeon plays with itself. It builds towers of sand like a child at the seashore, piling them up and trampling them down. From time to time it starts the game anew. A moment of satiety, and again it is seized by its need, as the artist is seized by the need to create. Not hubris but the ever-newly-awakened impulse to play calls new worlds into being. (Nietzsche)
    from hearing an indistinguishable sound or unintelligible remark, from observing a flower open, from some sort of trivial everyday incident like falling over, rolling up a mat, using a fan, etc. (D.T. Suzuki)
    “Everything is subjective,” you say; but even this is interpretation.
    The “subject” is not something given, it is something added
    and invented and projected behind what there is.- Finally, is it
    necessary to posit an interpreter behind the interpretation? Even
    this is invention, hypothesis. (Will To Power)
    We set up a word at the point at which our ignorance begins,
    at which we can see no further, e.g., the word “I,” the word “do,”
    the word “suffer”:-these are perhaps the horizon of our knowledge,
    but not “truths.” (Will To Power)
    Everywhere language sees a doer and a doing; it believes in will as the cause; it believes in the “ego”, in the ego as being, in the ego as substance, and it projects this faith in the ego-substance upon all things—only thereby does it first create the concept of “thing.” Everywhere “being” is projected by thought, pushed underneath, as the cause; the concept of “being” follows, and is derivative of, the concept of “ego.” In the beginning there is that great calamity of error that the will is something which is effective, that will is a capacity . Today we know that it is only a word. (Twilight of the Idols)
    The “inner world” is full of phantoms … : the will is one of
    them. The will no longer moves anything, hence does not
    explain anything either — it merely accompanies events;
    it can also be absent. The so-called motive: another error.
    Merely a surface phenomenon of consciousness some –
    thing alongside the deed that is more likely to cover up
    the antecedents of the deeds than to represent them. …
    What follows from this? There are no mental [geistigen]
    causes at all. (Twilight of the Idols)
    Men were thought of as ‘free’ so that they could become guilty; consequently, every action had to be thought of as willed, the origin of every action as lying in the consciousness. (Twilight of the Idols)
    There are no durable ultimate units, no atoms, no monads: here, too, “beings” are only introduced by us. . . “Forms of domination”; the sphere of that which is dominated continually growing or periodically increasing and decreasing according to the favorability or unfavorability of circumstances. . . “Value” is essentially the standpoint for the increase or decrease of these dominating centers (“multiplicities” in any case; but “units” are nowhere present in the nature of becoming)—a quantum of power, a becoming, in so far as none of it has the character of “being.” (Will to Power)
    Two successive states, the one “cause,” the other “effect”: this is false… It is a question of a struggle between two elements of unequal power: a new arrangement of forces is achieved according to the measure of power of each of them. The second condition is something fundamentally different from the first (not its effect): the essential thing is that the factions in struggle emerge with different quanta of power. (Will to Power)
    Is “will to power” a kind of “will” or identical with the concept “will”? Is it the same thing as desiring? or commanding? Is it that “will” of which Schopenhauer said it was the “in itself of things”? My proposition is: that the will of psychology hitherto is an unjustified generalization, that this will does not exist at all . . . one has eliminated the character of the will by subtracting from it its content, its “whither?” (Will to Power)
    If we eliminate these additions, no things remain over but only dynamic quanta, in a relation of tension to all other dynamic quanta: their essence lies in their relation to all other quanta, in their “effect” upon the same. (Will to Power)
    In our science, where the concept of cause and effect is reduced to the relationship of equivalence, with the object of proving that the same quantum of force is present on both sides, the driving force is lacking: we observe only results, and we consider them equivalent in content and force. (Will to Power)
    The victorious concept of “force,” by means of which our physicists have created God and the world, still needs to be completed: an inner world must be ascribed to it, which I designate as “will to power.” (Will to Power)
    There is no will: there are only treaty drafts of will that are constantly increasing or losing their power. (Will to Power)
    Through thought the ego is posited; but hitherto one believed
    as ordinary people do, that in “I think” there was something of
    immediate certainty, and that this “I” was the given cause of
    thought, from which by analogy we understood all other causal
    relationships; However habitual and indispensable this fiction may
    have become by now-that in itself proves nothing against its
    imaginary origin: a belief can be a condition of life and nonetheless
    be false. (Will To Power)
    One would have to know what being is, in order to decide
    whether this or that is real (e.g., “the facts of consciousness”); in
    the same way, what certainty is, what knowledge is, and the Iike.-
    But since we do not know this, a critique of the faculty of knowledge
    is senseless: how should a tool be able to criticize itself when
    it can use only itself for the critique? It cannot even define itself!”
    (Will To Power)
    Tbe assumption of one single subject is perhaps unnecessary;
    perhaps it is just as permissible to assume a multiplicity of subjects,
    whose interaction and struggle is the basis of our thought
    and our consciousuess in general? A kind of aristocracy of “cells”
    in which dominion resides? To be sure, an aristocracy of equals,
    used to ruling jointly and understanding how to command?
    My hypotheses: The subject as multiplicity.
    Pain intellectual and dependent upon the judgment “harmful”:
    projected.The effect always “unconscious”: the inferred and imagined
    cause is projected, follows in time.
    Pleasure is a kind of pain.The only force that exists is of the same kind as that of the will: a commanding of other subjects, which thereupon change.
    The continual transitoriness and fleetingness of the subject.
    “Mortal soul.” Number as perspective form. (Will To Power)
    Continual transition forbids us to speak of “individuals,” etc;
    the “number” of beings is itself in flux. We would know nothing
    of time and motion if we did not, in a coarse fashion, believe we
    see what is at “rest” beside what is in motioll. The same applies
    to cause and effect, and without the erroneous conception of
    “empty space” we should certainly not have acquired the conception
    of space. The principle of identity has behind it the
    “apparent fact” of things that are the same. A world in a state
    of becoming could not, in a strict sense, be “comprehended” or
    “known”; only to the extent that the “comprehending” and “knowing”
    intellect encounters a coarse, already-created world, fabricated
    out of mere appearances but become firm to the extent that this
    kind of appearance has preserved life-only to this extent is there
    anything like “knowledge”; i.e., a measuring of earlier and later
    errors by one another. (Will To Power)

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    1. Thanks for that compilation
      of philosophical quotes, Mark 🙏

      “My goal is that they may be
      encouraged in heart and united in love,
      so that they may have the full riches of
      complete understanding, in order that
      they may know the mystery of God,
      namely, Christ, in whom are hidden all
      the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. 
      I tell you this so that no one may deceive
      you by fine-sounding arguments.”
      ~ Paul of Tarsus

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