All Part of One, One Part of All

All Part of One,
One Part of All

A personal Shibboleth for Life and Living

Sum Haiku:

each a part of one
everyone a part of none
no such thing as some

The greatest good for the largest number,
The least harm to the fewest.

Although my little motto seems like a simple variation on, "One for all, and all for one," from The Three Musketeers, it is actually a bit more than what might first meet the eye, or mind. It's fairly obvious what the Musketeers intended by their pronouncement of camaraderie, whereby one bore allegiance to all, and all were allegiant to the one, including fighting when necessary.

There's probably a French translation that is more profound than my meager explanation, but the general idea is that the one is responsible for, and both protective and representative of the other two. Likewise the two should watch over and be forever responsible for the one. It's a nice male-bonding thing, suitable for women, and symbolizes the very epitome of loyalty among friends.

In my own homespun version, the suggestion is made that everyone on planet Earth is part of one community. And that we subsequently bare an allegiance to that community, like it or not. It's something we inherit by virtue of being born, especially those of us who live relatively comfortable lives. To some extent, it's a play on the Eastern schemata of becoming one with everything or, at a minimum, the recognition that the individual is inseparable from the continuum of existence. Likewise that the whole of humanity, of all living things, of all that exists, is an extension, a refection of a single consciousness.

A hologram, when reduced to its most basic elements, is composed of separate images, each a complete (and miniature) encapsulation that contains the entire picture of the whole. Another way of describing this is in terms of information. That's how astrophysicists like to think of the universe, as a collective of data, formulas, laws and the like.

The long sought, but as yet undiscovered unified-field-theory, which would explain the four known forces of the cosmos in a single equation, is expected to be somewhat akin to a hologram. This is to say that the smallest pieces of existence, the realms both of genetics and the quanta, will contain all the information that comprises the macro realm of the galaxies, if not the entire universe itself.

Just as time that runs infinitely fast is indistinguishable from time that has come to a dead stop, the information contained in the one, whether large or small, is inseparable from the characteristics of the other. That is what the one equation is intended to qualitatively quantify. Stuff that's not only a mouthful, but a brainful as well. Such ideas also comprise the basis of fractal geometry.

It was long believed that Black Holes were so destructive that any and all information that got pulled into such a cosmological phenomenon was lost forever. Even if spit out the other end, such as via a worm hole or another dimension, there was still a factor of loss involved. Such a destruction of information had always thrown the scientific community into a tizzy, because it suggested that enough Black holes could not only strip the cosmos of irretrievable structure, but would one day consume the whole McGillicutty, as they say. Well, as the Irish say, that is. The good news is that the theory of information-loss has recently been scrapped. Information, it seems, is just too integral to existence itself to be swallowed up so easily.

The ironic twist to the whole affair is that one can't be part of something. Nor can something be part of us. You are it. It is you. Without parts. The schism that forces us to use language in such a way that we are compelled to describe a single process as possessing constituency, does not necessarily diminish our appreciation for the concept -- provided we remain aware that such divisions are solely the consequence of limited verbal skills. All of this sort of adds new meaning to the exclamation, "I can't put into words, how much you mean to me."

The phrase, one part of all, does not refer to us as being one part of a total of parts. Rather it should be read as one, part of all. More over, the one is part of all there is.

Accordingly, all part of one, does not mean all of us as individuals are part of the one. Rather, that all of us collectively are part of the one. And since any important, relativistic truth is self-reflexive, the exact opposite of its definition is also true.

All of which is an elaborate way of saying that no matter how the shibboleth is read, interpreted, or defined, its asseveration is singular and without contradiction.