The Power of Three: Ternary Logic, Triolectics, and Three Sided Football

Summary

“If we continue to operate in terms of a Cartesian dualism of mind versus matter, we shall probably also continue to see the world in terms of God versus man; elite versus people; chosen race versus others; nation versus nation; and man versus environment. It is doubtful whether a species having both an advanced technology and this strange way of looking at its world can endure.” –Gregory Bateson, ‘The Cybernetics of Self: A Theory of Alcoholism’ (1971). ​BEYOND THE CARTESIAN DUEL Binary thinking seems to be a plague visited upon mankind, locking our minds into grooves that oscillate between the extremes of yes or no, true or false, love or hate, good or evil, left or right, black or white, communism or capitalism, utopia or oblivion, leaving little room to explore variances on the spectrum between polar opposites. This habit creates false dilemmas when all the available options get reduced down to just two. Entire fields of possibility are left unexplored. When our minds identify with just one pole it tends to create fundamentalist antagonisms towards people and institutions whose thinking centers on the opposite pole. When we ignore the vast terrain of middle ground that lies between, like ignoring the experience of those who live in the flyover states between the coasts, we miss out on many nuanced realms of meaning. The worst aspect of binary thinking is probably the deleterious effect it has on our ability to imagine what may yet be possible. Polarities do exist, and they often exert tremendous tugs at one another, as in the polarities of magnets, of male and female. When the polarities in question are political or religious in nature it animates the animus and people tend to slip into acrimony. The increased animosity between liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans over the past decade or more is a case in point. On some deep level I think they subconsciously get off on this attraction to each other. The foaming mouth of a fundamentalist Christian denou...