the fallacy of "one"...

The Western tradition has a long and complicated history with the number "one". Western, post-Latin/post-Roman cultures in Europe and the Mediterranean were so dependent on the primacy of the number "one" that "zero" (or "zed" if you're un-American... I jest) wasn't even fully incorporated as a number until after the twelfth century! As Americans, we are philosophically indebted to this Western dependence on both the number and the concept of "one", but what you may never have thought of was how much this conceptual dependency has shaped our culture, our values, and our way of life. I hope to explore this concept a little. Some will surely read this and accuse me of far too much leisure time. Others may peer deeper and, in seeing a legitimate critique of Western values, accuse me of sinister machinations. (I should be so lucky as to become a banned writer that some might take me so seriously!) Yet others still may see what I've written and understand that my attack on "one" is a valid attack on a cancerous falsehood, eating away at our cultural integrity. Allow me to be more direct.

- One has become a symbol of rootedness. For so many of us, we have one home town. One home. Sometimes this is a matter of fact. Some people will die within a hundred yards of where they were born (figuratively and, in some rare cases still, literally). Their narrow geographical experience is not to be judged, perhaps admired in some respects or pitied in another. But, indeed, many of us have lived in more than one home in our lives. Even more than one city. Some in more than one country. Yet we still limit ourselves to a belief that we have but one home! This can cause us to remain loyal to provincial particularisms that limit who we are able to be. By abandoning the "one" of "home", we abandon our "rootedness" to a single place... we can allow ourselves to be more open to the rest of the world (anywhere from new and unknown neighbors, to distant and foreign cultures).

- One has also limited our sense of family. True, a human being can only have one pair of biological parents - but they are still a pair. No human has been spontaneously or - as the phrase goes - "immaculately" conceived. Even in biology, nature shows us the fallacy of "one". But we think of ourselves as having one family, usually that of blood-relation. But how deceptively conventional this kind of thinking is! How often have we said, "He is like a father to me" or, more colloquially, "My brother from another mother"? We have families of our own choosing, all as important as the families not of our choosing, and even here this is no one family. The limitation of family that "one" creates is similar to that of the home: it lends our frame of mind to artificially constructed loyalties: a father abuses his children and, as the saying goes, "But what are you going to do? We're a family." We might be better served to think of our family as much larger than our kinship, but to see a mother and a sister in every woman, a father and a brother in every man. We must be broader than our narrow loyalties!

- One has affected our sense of self, especially in relation to the "other". We say, "I am an individual" or, more appropriately, "I am just one man." But this, too, is an artificial convention. Do we know - truly know - that we are simply one? Might we be closer to being "zero" or anything other than "one"? And in such a non-"one"-ness, might we be more than ourselves? Perhaps closer to something more infinite? Of course we are! But we must abandon, first, the fallacy of "one"! Easier said than done.

- We cannot lie to ourselves and say that this concept of the "one" has not destroyed other relationships as well. Let us not forget what it has done to marriages in the modern (or "first") world! What am I talking about? Divorce! Our growing innate skepticism with "one" has destroyed conventional marriage! But it is good that it be destroyed. Conventional marriage is predicated on "one"! One husband, for one wife. Indeed, "two shall become one flesh" - if ever there was a wrong-headed denial of reality! It is a shame that Paul never learned proper arithmetic, that he should not have been so deluded as to repeat the falsehood that two are made one - or worse yet, that three may be one! No, the weight of responsibility that is placed on the spouse - to be the primary (if not the sole!) provider or satisfaction, comfort, fulfillment for the other - is a crushing weight, one deserving of the discard is has so richly earned, as evidenced by the present divorce rates... and even more by the drop in registered marriages! There is no healthy relationship which is predicated on "one". This is true for non-married couples and, yes, homosexual couples as well. The "one" is a relationship cancer, even among our "best" friends - as though any of us had but one of those.

- But what of the so-called "Ideal Marriage", this laughably ill-conceived marriage to an eternal God? Can this relationship be the refutation of my criticism? Is this where the "one" retreats to, but not one step further? Hardly! One god can no more satisfy the insatiable human being than can one parent raise her, one lover fulfill her, or one home hold her. Let there be many gods, or none at all! But what of this "One God"? No, he does not exist - even to his followers. The reverent Jewish adherent holds fast to a "burning bush", but does she not also deify her Torah? Is not the Pentateuch an immanent extension of her unnamed and unthinkably transcendent YHVH? And in between, was there not a Temple of stone and cedar, and also a Talmud to mediate? But the Christian is no better. What Christian is a monotheist? He is a tri-theist as he has not one god, but three (and a poorly understood third god at that!). The Catholic is the only half-honest Christian, since she admits - even if not admitting - that she is still a polytheist! The dutifully literal Muslim, he may come closest of all to the non-existent monotheist, but his Prophet smells too much like a Christ for me.

- But we should not give our philosophers a pass either. The "first principle"? The "unmoved first mover"? An "absolute" or an "essence"? "The meaning of life? "The truth?" What are these claims, questions and systems if not products of the great artificial convention called "one"? We cannot fix a single moment in time or a single point in space. There are many meanings and no truths. "Facts" are constructed, agreed upon. We have moved, thankfully, beyond the narrow dogmatism of "foundationalism". What more might we be able to achieve once we have moved beyond the "one"!