One vs All
Life feels super messy right now. Voices and noises are everywhere, stoking fear. I’m like a street dog—yelping at a backfiring muffler on one side and getting kicked on the other.
Recently, I heard a family member say, “I hate democrats.” Ouch. I couldn’t help but wonder: how did they get there? And more broadly, how did we—as a nation that once reeled from assassinations and upheavals—become so locked into sides? Left vs. Right. Christian vs. non-Christian. Us vs. Them. We rarely see how much that weakens us on so many levels. And, frankly, this is a very lazy and simplified view of humanity.
It’s tempting to believe we’re just watching red and blue robots duke it out—mechanical, pre-programmed, no real winners, just endless blows exchanged like one of my favorite childhood toys. But beneath the noise, something deeper is at stake. We’re not only debating tax rates or border policy—we’re questioning who belongs and who doesn’t. Whether it’s book bans in schools, healthcare access for trans youth, or the dignity of asylum seekers, the divide is no longer just ideological. It’s existential.
Are we building a nation for only one kind of person? Or are we brave enough to build it for all kinds? That’s the question that haunts me. And I’ve realized the terms “Right” and “Left” don’t help me answer it anymore—they oversimplify, they distract. Maybe it’s time to shift the frame: to stop choosing sides and start choosing values. Not Right or Left—but Oneness or Allness.
The universe is endlessly expansive. Stars collapse into new suns. Galaxies stretch farther than our eyes can hold. Have you read any of Dorothy Cannon’s books? Even here on Earth, the diversity of life is staggering—plants, animals, cultures, languages, religions, and human faces forming an infinite mosaic. Nothing in creation repeats itself exactly. Change and variation are not accidents—they are the law of survival. To imagine a world of sameness is to deny the very structure of existence. Why would we choose to oversimplify and limit that world?
America’s beginning was a paradox. On one hand, European settlers carried with them the logic of monoculture: stripping Indigenous peoples from their lands, enslaving Africans to work the fields, and privileging whiteness, Christianity, and male authority as the standard of belonging. The soil of the new nation was too often tilled by exclusion and watered by blood.
And yet, its founding documents carried radical ideas for their day—claims of liberty, conscience, and equality that, though written narrowly, contained the seeds for wider interpretations. Even in the 18th century, there were voices imagining broader freedoms: Quakers who rejected slavery, Baptists and Deists who argued for religious liberty, women who pressed against the edges of silence. America’s contradiction is that it has always carried both forces at once—Oneness narrowing the circle, Allness pressing it wider.
We see this paradox in every era. The same nation that justified slavery also produced abolitionists who risked everything to end it. The same Constitution that silenced women birthed suffragists who refused to stay quiet. The same Reconstruction that gave us the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments also gave rise to Jim Crow violence designed to strangle them. America has never been one story—it has always been a contested garden, some sowing sameness, others sowing plurality, with the harvest unfinished.
We see it still. Today, school boards in Florida and beyond ban books about Black history, queer lives, and immigrant stories. Texas passes laws stripping transgender people—especially kids—of healthcare and dignity. States across the country roll back reproductive rights after Dobbs, as if half the population’s autonomy were optional. Politicians campaign on promises to “close the border” and cut off asylum seekers fleeing violence, echoing the exclusion acts of the past. Christian nationalists proclaim America a “Christian nation,” denying the religious freedom this country was built to protect.
And yet—all across the country, parents defend inclusive curricula, doctors stand with trans youth, congregations welcome immigrants, and communities resist censorship. The same clash continues: Oneness trying to contract the circle, Allness demanding it widen.
The soil itself warns us. Farmers know monocrops exhaust the land. One pest, one drought, and the whole crop is lost. Diversity in planting makes survival possible. The same truth appears everywhere. In business, companies thrive on many ideas and perspectives; sameness kills innovation. In sports, no team wins with only one kind of player—you need speed and size, offense and defense, different skills working together. In faith, even within Christianity, countless denominations show that no single path holds all truth. Diversity is not weakness. It is resilience.
The 20th century carried the same struggle forward. Immigration quotas favored Northern Europeans while excluding Asians, Jews, and others deemed “unfit.” Segregation walled off schools, buses, and neighborhoods. McCarthyism demanded conformity of thought.
Yet Allness rose again. The Civil Rights Movement dismantled legal apartheid. The 1965 Immigration Act reopened America to the world, reshaping its face. Women’s liberation, Stonewall, and the fight for gay rights widened the rows for a harvest not yet fully seen. Each act of Allness worked like compost, taking the rot of exclusion and transforming it into the possibility of new life.
And when we look at history honestly, the gifts of diversity are everywhere. Jazz, blues, and gospel—born from the pain and creativity of Black America—reshaped global music. Immigrants carried recipes that became the kitchens of entire cities, from tacos to dim sum to pierogies to pho. Indigenous traditions of ecological stewardship hold wisdom we desperately need in the face of climate change. Queer communities gave us art, literature, and models of chosen family that teach resilience and love. Religious diversity has deepened our understanding of the sacred: Buddhist mindfulness practices, Jewish traditions of justice and memory, Muslim poetry and architecture, Hindu philosophies of interconnectedness, Indigenous spiritualities of land and ancestors. America’s true genius is not homogeneity—it is polyphony.
Complexity Within Groups
And we should be honest: no group is all one thing. Not all Christians can be lumped into the political right, just as not all non-Christians can be lumped into the left. Within every tradition, every community, every party, there are voices that cling to Oneness and voices that open to Allness.
Christianity alone spans fundamentalists who want to legislate belief, liberation theologians who march for justice, contemplatives who seek silence, and progressive churches that welcome LGBTQ families. The same is true across every subgroup. The question is not what label you carry, but whether you give space for all people—or only for a few types.
Final Contrast & Call
That is why I resist the language of Right and Left. Those categories keep us stuck in shallow battles. The real divide is between Oneness and Allness. Oneness is monoculture: brittle, fearful, easy to topple. Allness is compost: messy, alive, and resilient. Every step forward in American history has come from widening the base, not narrowing it.
Our future depends on whether we remember that lesson. A narrow structure always collapses under pressure, but a wide one stands firm. When we build on Allness—on the strength of many voices—we create something stable enough to last.
