Cogrity
The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms. - Socrates
Because language informs idea through its usage, we must endeavor to develop a more complex definition of unity. We must develop languaging that represents our commitment to individuality in conjunction with tribal consciousness. Until now we have taken pleasure in the simplistic idea that unity equals many people acting by a single, uni-vectored impulse. We love the heart-warming tale of Come From Away, a musical in which an entire town puts aside their differences and bands together in hospitality to 7,000 passengers stranded due to closed US airways on 9-11. We have nursed such Disney-esque moments and even dangerously romanticized world-wide unity as being built of similar fiber. Unfortunately, this definition requires us to wait for others to gather on one side of our boulder-like problems and agree to push together in one direction. Such uni-vectored unity has never been evidenced for long because people can only set aside their differences for a short length of time. So confining our definition of unity to the same-side-of-the-boulder model causes us to perceive our situation as hopeless.
We must acknowledge that we have been trying to take on graduate level problems of coordinating our shared humanity with a kindergartner’s understanding of unity. Moving forward, we must seek an understanding of unity that encompasses the intricacy of Black Elk’s vision of many people groups moving together as one. We want to rewrite and perform our own ballet with individual dancers retaining their self-expression in multi-various glory. Then, accessing a Deininger moment, we want to witness the design of our collective entity emerge and clarify, for the dance to coalesce and grow broad-scale coordination of movement.
If we can accept it, the crux of our division is not our differing belief systems, but simply a lack of coordination between the diversity of our forces. Addressing disunity does not require changing oppositional convictions. In his farewell speech, President Obama noted:
Understand, democracy does not require uniformity. Our founders quarreled and compromised, and expected us to do the same. But they knew that democracy does require a basic sense of solidarity—the idea that for all our outward differences, we are all in this together; that we rise or fall as one. i
We can allow for each other’s differing ethos as long as we understand that we are part of an overarching unity whose health is symbiotic with the health of its individual people-cells. Instead of viewing our primary differences as the death of our unity, perhaps we can learn to see them as its very fabric. As we grow to understand unity as the coordination of antagonistic forces, we might begin to name our oppositeness without fear, and the places of our significant polarity can grow to house great power. We must begin to envision a unity that Deininger-like gathers our diverse vector forces for consolidated effort and robust action. Then our varying or even oppositional motivations can become an integral part of our new definition
An example of this is the unity within the human body. Muscles do not function by becoming alike in their impetus and direction—doing so would end the overall capability of movement. Instead, in a marvelous picture of functional cooperation, each muscle pulls in its own direction, but the sum total of the vectors accomplishes walking, running, throwing, or jumping. Without the opposition of individual muscles, coordinated movement would cease. So the human frame exemplifies a unity, which I term cogrity, that both edifies the push and pull of the individual cells and incorporates the vitality of each seamlessly into a greater whole:
cogrity | ˈkōgrədē |
noun
the readiness of opposing forces to coordinate a shared action
complex integrated unity
healthy function of the human body both reflecting and contributing to the health of individual cells; a state in which all bodily systems coordinate to correct imbalance and combat disease.
healthy coalescence of the collective body of humanity both reflecting and contributing to the health of individual people-cells; a state of functional unity capable of coordinated action and equipped to counteract division.
verb [with or without object] cogrify
Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote, “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” We must fight to develop terms for unity that convey the equal importance of the one and the many, and moves beyond a merely intuitive to a rich complexity of meaning. Then, as language informs idea through its usage, we can push our currently shallow thoughts into deeper waters.
i. Obama, Barack. Elle. 10 Jan. 2017, McCormick Place, Chicago, IL. https://www.elle.com/culture/career-politics/news/a42023/barack-obama-farewell-address-full-transcript/?src=socialflowFB. Accessed 1 Nov. 2017.