To be aware of 'some-thing' is to attribute oneness to it. A lighthouse constructed by the mind from a pixellated universe is conceptualized as a one, yet a colourblind individual may see something else. What to some might be no more than a loose aggregation of buildings may be conceptualized by others as the oneness of a village. To some, the grouping of various lines drawn on a page can be seen as a face, whereas others perceive a different grouping as flowers in a vase. There may be little public dissension about attributing oneness to a particular apple, or flash of lightning, or warning hooter, but attempting to attribute oneness to the opinions within a political party, or to a country in the midst of a civil war, or the bits of a body blown to pieces by a land mine is a different matter. Such uncertainty exposes the realization that 'one' is simply a modelling concept.

One is a conceptualized ontological model of an entity attributed to it by a perceiving awareness. One is a numerical model of intrinsic relatedness about an aspect of reality which is perceived as integrated. To be a 'one' is to have a form attributed to it by an awareness. From the chaos of perceptual noise, one is the primordial conceptual label which the mind first allocates.

There is the ever-present seductive allure of familiarity, which seems to suggest to the awareness, that entities have an intrinsic formal oneness which becomes apparent whenever they are observed. When perceiving a lighthouse for the first time for instance, there is the strong sense of uniqueness that is associated with the perception that inclines us to attribute an intrinsic oneness to the entity which pre-existed before our perception of it... and was just waiting there for us to discover it. This is to forget that we have been structuring aspects of reality into categories since birth or earlier and have come to subconsciously classify our perceptions with such proficiency that we are no longer consciously aware of the process. One only needs to find oneself in an alien environment to realize that entities which seem to be utterly obvious to the natives, are virtually invisible to the foreigner, until a learning and modelling process is encouraged to develop. When first learning to fly an aircraft it comes as somewhat of a surprise to discover that recognition of all the familiar entities of houses, roads, power lines, rivers, towns and mountains from several thousand feet above the ground, is not at all straightforward. Looking thru a microscope for the first time, and trying to work out what is supposed to be what, from some verbal descriptions or line drawings can be quite baffling. A boundary line drawn in black and white on a diagram does not easily translate to the boundary between different shaped and shaded cells. And camouflage of course, is designed to ensure that the intrinsic oneness of an entity is not allocated at all.