E pluribus unum. Ex uno plures.
From the motion of celestial bodies to a self-organizing cosmos found in a puddle left by a receding tide, we observe a universal principle at work. Value emerges neither from rigid uniformity nor from chaotic fragmentation. Instead, it arises from the mutually constraining balance between unity and diversity.
As above, so below.
Unity, or more appropriately, unifiedness, is the degree to which the elements of a system cohere and seem to relate. Diversity is the degree to which aspects of a system can function independently and express characteristics of difference. We refer to the mutually constraining balance as ‘organic unity,’ following a great sage.
To better understand this latter concept, we can examine scenarios of imbalance. A society with excessive unity but insufficient diversity may enforce conformity and obedience to an oppressive degree. A society with insufficient unity but excessive may be unruly, chaotic, and thus unpredictable and destructive. When a system is organically unified, unifying properties and diverse elements coexist not in stasis, but in a harmony that enables self-organization.
This principle is manifest across every domain of understanding.
Still, we must never forget that value lies in the subject’s breast. So, the idea that value supervenes on systems of organic unity means that we are more likely to find organically unified systems valuable. Perhaps this disposition is evolved. It doesn’t mean that value is an essence that inheres in things. Nor does it mean that a given person will always find an organically unified system valuable in every case.
Scientific Theory
The most enduring scientific theories demonstrate this balance clearly. Theories of limited scope fail by focusing too narrowly on isolated phenomena, while those that attempt to explain everything without coherence collapse under their own complexity. The orbiting bodies of the Heliocentrists eventually replaced the epicycles of the Geocentrists. A genius polymath expanded the theory even further, as his mechanics explained everything from planetary motion to ballistic curves.
A great psychoanalyst’s theory attempted to explain virtually all human behavior, mental illness, dreams, art, religion, civilization, and even anthropological phenomena through a single framework centered on unconscious sexual and aggressive drives. While it offered some valuable insights, the theory became so expansive that it tried to account for everything from individual neuroses to the origins of society—often in ways that were unfalsifiable and lacked empirical support.
Something similar can be said of a theory that attempts to explain all of history, politics, culture, art, and even human consciousness through the single lens of class struggle cum dialectical materialism. This totalizing approach forced complex phenomena into cramped reductions, which were also unfalsifiable.
The theories that advance our knowledge successfully unify disparate observations while respecting the full spectrum of natural phenomena. They reveal underlying patterns that connect the behavior of distant galaxies to the interactions of subatomic particles, creating frameworks that are both comprehensive and precise.
Artistic Expression
In art, we find the same principle at play.
Works that impose mechanical repetition sometimes lack vitality and fail to engage the spirit. Those that embrace pure randomness overwhelm the viewer with disconnected elements. Most enduring art achieves something more subtle: it brings together diverse forms, colors, and emotions within a unified vision that allows each element to contribute meaningfully to the whole. Such works invite contemplation precisely because they honor coherence and complexity in harmony.
I realize there are many exceptions. Some admire monochromatic fields of color on giant canvases, while others love chaotic abstraction, errant motion, and randomness. One suspects that many appreciate these forms not so much for their deviations from organic unity, but rather for their transgressive novelty as modes of artistic expression. Admittedly, with art, value subjectivity is most salient.
Cultural Vitality
Cultures that resist all change eventually stagnate, while those that abandon continuity with their past lose coherence and meaning. Thriving cultures maintain core values and traditions while adapting to new circumstances and incorporating beneficial influences from other traditions.
For our own order, we have called these twin phenomena the Fractal of Unanswerable Questions and the Fractal of Unquestionable Answers. Tradition is a force of coherence and unity, and progress is a force of novelty and diversity. We discover the power of mutually constraining balance under the Blood Moon.
In spiritual matters, religious movements that demand absolute uniformity of belief and practice often stifle genuine spiritual development. Yet those that offer no shared foundation or guidance may fail to provide the support and direction that seekers require. A spiritual community must cohere, even as its members explore different dimensions and progress at different rates.
If our spiritual order is to endure, it must nurture our flourishing. Such requires combining shared principles and practices with the recognition that our siblings may take different spiritual paths on their way to becoming the greatest aspirational self.
Morality
Our understanding of ethics also reflects an organic unity. Moral systems that are overly rigid cannot account for the complexity of individual circumstances, let alone those of a society. Yet those who embrace relativism offer no basis for making necessary distinctions between right and wrong.
Mature moral reasoning requires the practice of virtues (and eschewal of vices) that can guide action across different contexts while remaining sensitive to the peculiar circumstances of time, place, and accidents of birth. (Recall that Yetzer Harah and Yetzer Hatov exist in mutually constraining balance.)
Our Order
Consider an organization founded on these insights—a gathering of individuals diverse in their fundamental orientations toward existence, their approaches to ultimate questions, and their methods of creating meaning in their lives. Yet these same individuals unite in common commitment to the essential dimensions of human flourishing.
All are seeking answers to the question: How are we to live?
Such a community, symbolized perhaps by the siblinghood’s simple grey garments, represents neither the dominance of any single perspective nor the absence of core convictions. Instead, they embody the balance. The order would model pluralism, the idea that solidarity can emerge when diverse people come together in syncretism.
As within, so without.
Social systems reveal this pattern with particular clarity, so it bears repeating: Authorities that enforce absolute conformity suppress the pluralism of human perspectives and needs. Yet those that provide no common framework dissolve quickly into conflict and disorder. Embedded in our Mission, then, is a commitment to realizing a society of mutually constraining balance between freedom and order, community and individuality—rooted in the Law of Consent.
Organic unity stands out throughout the world because it reflects something essential about the nature of valuers. Neither the false unity of forced sameness nor the false diversity of aimless fragmentation can sustain what we need most deeply. Only in the proper relationship between unity and diversity do we find the conditions for our flourishing.
The human being, after all, is the best example of organic unity next to the All.