A dance club, on Buitensingel Street, in Cape Town, South Africa. (also Club Unity)

Formed by a group of top DJ's who decided to break out of the system of clubs and create the best club this side of the Equator. This unique inception led to a club which lives up to its name:

Unity offers "the state of being one; oneness"1 both with the music and the crowds; developing an experience of "Concord; harmony; conjunction; agreement"1 until the (not so) early hours of the morning. The thoughtful layout and construction of the club leads to "Such a combination of parts as to constitute a whole, or a kind of symmetry of style and character"1 unique to this little pocket of bliss up on the god-knows-how-many'th floor.

"The properties of it are derived from its unity, which is fourfold; unity of interest, unity of title, unity of time, and unity of possession"1

1Liberal quoting from Webster 1913 for effect.
Note: If this all seems a little silly to you, you OBVIOUSLY haven't been to Unity.
UNITY was also a promotion company headed by Ed LeBrun until August of 1999. UNITY began throwing raves at various places in Greensboro, NC (USA) in 1991. Many of these parties were thrown in an automobile trim shop and became know as the Trimshop Parties. A few were held at an old train depot, which became a civic gathering place later. There are no more raves there, now.

By 1994, UNITY had forged a permanent partnership with a new club in town, called Babylon, and threw all their events there. For five glorious years, safe, quality parties were held there.
Much like the Unity mentioned in Phycon's node, there was an everpresent sense of belonging, acceptance, and community at the UNITY parties thrown in NC.

Unfortunately, UNITY's leader was murdered in 1999. Proving that one man can make that much of a difference in the world, when Ed died, so did the life that was driving the party scene in Greensboro.
Also, the name of the spacecraft from Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, it travels for 40 years at about 1/10th light speed until it is disabled by an unknown person/persons. It crash-lands on Chiron/Planet, but it's passengers manage to escape the spacecraft in the Unity's colonizing pods. The ship is later found on Planet's surface in Alien Crossfire.

The ship's official name if United Nations Starship Unity. It was launched in 2060 and reaches the Centauri system in 2100.

Unity is small sect of Christianity based in Unity Village, Missouri. Created and developed by Myrtle and Charles Fillmore in the late 1880s, Unity attempts to address peoples' spiritual needs through collective, silent prayer and communion with an omnipresent god.

Unity's Mission Statement, as quoted from their website (http://www.unityworldhq.org), is as follows:

Unity School of Christianity is a center of spiritual light for people of the world. We are dedicated to letting this light shine so brightly that people become more aware of their spiritual nature and express it in their daily lives. We address physical, mental, and emotional needs through affirmative prayer and spiritual education. We serve those who seek inspiration and prayer support as well as those who use Unity teachings as their primary path of spiritual growth.

Though Unity identifies itself as Christian, a few elements distinguish it from most mainstream denominations and non-denominational fundamentalist sects so prevalent in the United States. Firstly, it does not conceive God as a specific entity, nor does it recognize the corporeal being of God in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Unity conceives God pantheistically; that is, God (often referred to as "The Universe") exists everywhere, and everything that exists is a part of God. As such, every person has some part of God inhabiting him or her, and God is referred to as "Mother and Father God."

Secondly, prayer is not seen as beseeching a higher power for a boon; rather, it is visualizing a desirable state of affairs and claiming it for one's own. The idea is that by voicing or writing down some need or desire makes it more "real," thus motivating the person praying to shape events around him or her. This reshaping of events creates a good environment in which the desirable state of affairs can come about. To put it simply, "The Universe helps those who help themselves."

Thirdly, Unity does not claim exclusivity of correctness in its doctrine. Many mainstream and fundamentalist Christian sects use the Bible verse John 14:6, "Jesus said to them, 'I am the way, the truth, and the light. No one comes to the Father but by me,'" to assert that church doctrine regarding belief in Jesus as Messiah as the only correct way to receive the rewards of heaven. Unity, however, tends to view all religions and viewpoints of God as but spokes on a wheel, the hub of which is enlightenment and oneness with the Universe. Services often include a mix of New Age thought, traditional Native American spirituality, and words from the New Testament. While most Christian sects deify Jesus of Nazareth, Unity tends to view him only as a wise teacher, with none of the qualifications of godhood beyond what everyone else has.

Because of the simliarity between the names Unity and Unitarianism, the two are often confused. Some Unitarians may hold a few of the same beliefs as adherents of Unity, but the heterogeneous nature of Unitarianism seems to dictate that some Unitarians will also vehemently disagree with Unity's doctrines.

I've been thinking a lot about unity today.

My mother was a lovely, intelligent, good, selfless person. She had enormous heart, and worked hard for 35 years as an SSI rep at the Social Security Administration doing important work to help people who needed help. Disabled and impoverished people in our community were able to get food, clothing, and health care because of her. She had an ongoing, positive impact and I will always admire her for that. She deserved better than to die of cancer just 18 months after she retired.

She always wanted everybody to be happy. She hated war and conflict and wanted the people of the world to unite.

Sadly, she was raised by a family that treated her as an afterthought, so she grew up thinking that certain levels of neglect and abuse were just par for the course. Despite all her heart and her intentions, she just couldn't see certain types of evil because they had been constant background noise her entire life.

And because her family had raised her to think she didn't deserve much, she married an emotionally abusive (and sometimes physically abusive) narcissist. A man who was highly intelligent, educated, handsome and who could be so, so charming and caring when it suited him ... but he could instantly turn cold and cruel and rageful when that suited him. And his life was centered around what suited him.

She loved him anyway; she saw the good in him -- his wit, his generosity, his artistry -- and focused on that. The problem was, in order to do that, she constantly minimized the ways in which he hurt other people.

She also felt a great deal of empathy and sympathy for him; they both grew up without fathers, and they both suffered for it, I think he even more than she. I think she knew he'd been through terrible things and wanted to protect him, because that was her nature. And because he was a narcissist, he was able to exploit her good nature so that she prioritized his feelings and well-being above anybody else's, including hers.

I cannot remember a time when I got along with my father. He was frequently a domineering asshole to me but acted like Dad of the Year when other people were around (standard narcissist behavior, that, but at the time it was just upsetting and confusing and made me doubt my sense of reality). I grew up listening to his self-aggrandizing stories, his tales of How Everything Is Terrible and People Are Out To Get You, his weird paranoid conspiracy theories (those have actually been handy for fiction). If I stepped out of line, he came down on me like a drill sergeant. If he was in a bad mood, my mom and I just had to tiptoe around him, because while he wasn't likely to try to hit us, we knew that was still on the table.

When he lost his job and his private practice wasn't successful, he just quit working entirely. A gentleman taking early retirement from a world that didn't properly respect his wisdom! Even though he was only 49 and he'd racked up a pretty big chunk of debt opening his private practice. My mom with her high school diploma and SSA job was stuck paying off his champagne taste in office equipment for the next decade.

But my mother smiled and persevered, like she always did, because she was determined to make her marriage work, even if she couldn't find a way to demand that her husband step up and go back to work. I'm guessing that the prospect of being a single mother in an isolated town where she had no friends or family for support was utterly terrifying, so looking on the bright side and staying positive seemed like her best option.

If he was cruel to me, if he baited me and I reacted in anger, if he threatened me, she was always quick to tell me that he was my father and he loved me, that he was just having a bad day, that I should rise above and forgive him and focus on the good in him. Over and over and over she told me this. We were a family, we only had each other, and we had to be happy together. Unity.

He sometimes apologized, later. Sometimes tearfully. He could be so contrite, sometimes, and his apologies made the situation about him and his sad feelings. My mom and I had to be unified in patting his hand and telling him it was okay, that he was still a good person. There was never any suggestion that he should actually work to stop acting like a terrible, selfish jackass and stop hurting us. 

So these days, when I see calls that two groups should end their conflict and shake hands and learn to get along ... but I also see that the conflict is going on because Group A has been harming Group B, and Group B is fighting back against that abuse? I want to see how Group A plans to acknowledge the harm it's done and change its ways first. Otherwise, that call for unity just sounds like a call for abused people to sit there and smile and take it.

U"ni*ty (?), n.; pl. Unities (#). [OE. unite, F. unit'e, L. unitas, from unus one. See One, and cf. Unit.]

1.

The state of being one; oneness.

Whatever we can consider as one thing suggests to the understanding the idea of unity. Locks.

Unity is affirmed of a simple substance or indivisible monad, or of several particles or parts so intimately and closely united as to constitute a separate body or thing. See the Synonyms under Union.

2.

Concord; harmony; conjunction; agreement; uniformity; as, a unity of proofs; unity of doctrine.

Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity! Ps. cxxxiii. 1.

3. Math.

Any definite quantity, or aggregate of quantities or magnitudes taken as one, or for which 1 is made to stand in calculation; thus, in a table of natural sines, the radius of the circle is regarded as unity.

The number 1, when it is not applied to any particular thing, is generally called unity.

4. Poetry & Rhet.

In dramatic composition, one of the principles by which a uniform tenor of story and propriety of representation are preserved; conformity in a composition to these; in oratory, discourse, etc., the due subordination and reference of every part to the development of the leading idea or the eastablishment of the main proposition.

In the Greek drama, the three unities required were those of action, of time, and of place; that is, that there should be but one main plot; that the time supposed should not exceed twenty-four hours; and that the place of the action before the spectators should be one and the same throughout the piece.

5. Fine Arts & Mus.

Such a combination of parts as to constitute a whole, or a kind of symmetry of style and character.

6. Law

The peculiar characteristics of an estate held by several in joint tenancy.

The properties of it are derived from its unity, which is fourfold; unity of interest, unity of title, unity of time, and unity of possession; in other words, joint tenants have one and the same interest, accruing by one and the same conveyance, commencing at the same time, and held by one and the same undivided possession. Unity of possession is also a joint possession of two rights in the same thing by several titles, as when a man, having a lease of land, afterward buys the fee simple, or, having an easement in the land of another, buys the servient estate.

At unity, at one. -- Unity of type. Biol. See under Type.

Syn. -- Union; oneness; junction; concord; harmony. See Union.

 

© Webster 1913.

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