Boethius, The Consolation 3.35

“I cannot but agree with that,” I said, “for it all stands woven together by the strongest proofs.”

Then she said, “At what would you value this, namely if you could find out what is the absolute good?”

“I would reckon it,” I said, “at an infinite value, if I could find out God too, who is the good.”

“And that too I will make plain by most true reasoning, if you will allow to stand the conclusions we have just now arrived at.”

“They shall stand good.”

“Have I not shown,” she asked, “that those upon the things which most men seek are for this reason not perfect goods, because they differ between the highest themselves; they are lacking to one another, and so cannot afford full, absolute good?

“But when they are gathered together, as it were, into one form and one operation, so that complete satisfaction, power, veneration, renown, and pleasure are all the same, then they become the true good. Unless they are all one and the same, they have no claim to be reckoned among the true objects of men's desires.”

“That has been proved beyond all doubt.”

“Then such things as differ among themselves are not goods, but they become so when they begin to be a single unity. Is it not then the case these become goods by the attainment of unity?”

“Yes,” I said, “it seems so.”

“But I think you allow that every good is good by participation in good?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Then by reason of this likeness both unity and good must be allowed to be the same thing; for such things as have by nature the same operation, have the same essence.”

“Undeniably.”. . .

—from Book 3, Prose 11

I have been wandering about this world for quite a few decades now, and each year I still hear people telling me that we are now more “One” than we ever have been. I see it in politics, I see it in religion, and most of all I see it in advertising. All of those thousands of years of human existence were about division, or so I’m told, but now we’re just about to get it all together. People were stupid back then, but we’re much smarter now.

But there is always a catch: “We can only do this if we get rid of all the radicals and extremists who are part of group x or y. They are the last ones standing in the way!”

So when I quietly sigh, or even just lower my head in silence, I obviously come across as the stubborn and hopeless cynic, that fellow who just can’t go with the flow of the newest thing. I know, my head is screwed on wrong.

Yet in my own defense, I do wonder how a unity can ever exist for the sake of some, but at the expense of others. Back in early 1990’s, I would get blue in the face claiming that people of one group were no less human than any other, and now, twenty years on, I get blue in the face arguing that a completely different group are no less human than any other. The fashion of what is “One” seems to change, while some are still always excluded.

I suggest that unity, a genuine sense of “One”, is far deeper than this. Who I am, and who you are, and what all things are can surely only make sense by something bigger than the norm of mob rule.

Absolute love does not admit of hatred, to any degree. Complete acceptance does not allow for rejection, in any way. Enlightened tolerance does not encourage intolerance, at any level. This is true for a fairly simple reason: nothing can be fully one as long as it remains separated.

Lady Philosophy has argued that the highest and most perfect good must include all other lower and imperfect goods within itself. It isn’t just a matter of adding things together, some matter of consensus built from the bottom up, but of seeing that they all emanate from and participate in a single source, and that what makes one thing different from any other thing is precisely that it isn’t any other thing, that it isn’t absolute.

Now what is it that joins all things together, and admits of no exclusion, leaves nothing behind? This is Being in and of itself, not this or that aspect, but the whole ball of wax.

All things are good by their very being, but they are better by being bound together, and they are most perfect by being completely “One”. By definition, it suffers no division, and it permits of no exclusion.

Am I still looking for that Unity we all say we are working toward? Am I still searching for God? Aren’t they really the same thing, that whole ball of wax? 

Written in 9/2015