it
all started with three - asking the question, which is the simplest number
that is complex at the same time?
one is simple ONLY. two is slightly more complex, yet very close to simple
only. basically, two simples
together. three adds another element - more complex, yet still rather simple.
four? four is two times two -
two slightly complex ones together. but it does not carry the peculiar complexity
of three within it. OK, you
can say, three plus one is four. but that does not add much to what three
by itself is already. what about five
then? OK, five is two plus three. is that not rather complex? yes it is, but
it does not offer anything
essentially NEW to what we already have. this is true if you go further down
the line. it gets more complex
and loses simplicity, without adding anything essentially new. if you want
something very BASIC, yet
complex, it seems that you are stopping at three. before three, too simple.
after three, nothing new gets
added, expect unnecessary complexity.
so three it is.
two is a very seductive number, because it seems complex, or clever, and yet
it is more of an expanded
simplicity (one plus one) rather than something that is truly complex (not
so easy).
anyhow, these are numbers only. what is the broader, or deeper MEANING of
one? of two? of three?
by way of analogies: one is a whole. one-ity. un-ity. all inclusive. no distinctions.
a pool. a seed. a UNI-verse.
how do I experience such unity as a living person? how do I become one? a
seed? how does all integrate
where distinctions fall away? I go inward. I go down. something like the peak
of the sexual act. or something
like being a baby. pure oneness. everything is me. me is everything. such
unity also comes with darkness. in
the dark there are no distinctions. and slowness - no better, stillness. a
darkness, a silence, an eternal
stillness. no time. no space. the beginning is the end. the end is the beginning.
birth equals death.
and two? what the fuck happens with two? two comes after one. it is one plus
one. two wholes? two
universes? but that does not make sense. if one is ALL, there cannot be two
“ALL’s”. so the closest way of
having two one’s, is to split the whole. two is a splitter. two tries
to be whole, but can only come close to this
by breaking the original (true) whole in… two. and how do you keep these
two from become one big whole
again? they need to resist each other. they need to be DISTINCT from each
other. they cannot be friends in
any way, because that will create more one-ness than two-ness. to be truly
two, these two need to be
mutually distinct. in fact, there is only one solid way for them to remain
this, and that is for them to be
OPPOSITES. polar. negative and positive. female and male. dark and light.
no grays. absolutely DISTINCT.
so what the hell is a third element gonna do with this? what is the meaning
of THREE? what the hell indeed.
first you had a perfect whole. then a perfect polarity. but three? can three
things be polar to each other? no.
poles are diametrically opPOsed. linear. this end and that end. but three?
it’s all skew now! well, indeed. the
third element introduces true complexity in its most basic form. it’s
easy to go mystical about ONE. it is also
rather easy to jump around the war-making of two. but when the waltz enters,
mm, what is this? it does not
want to show itself clearly. you keep looking at it, it keeps seeming rather
simple, and yet it is not.
so in geometry you have a circle (one). circles can be big or large, but that
is about it. then you have a
square (the oppositional two). squares can be manipulated a bit more than
circles, but those 90 degree
angles remain. when it comes to the triangle, however, the angles can shift,
the size, and therefore the
shape to certain extent. the whole form becomes more wobbly (complex). but
this: the most stable
structures are built with triangles. not circles, not squares. but ok, let’s
leave it at that.
there is thus a little storyline here: one, two, three. wholeness, splitness
and what-is-this-ness.
on to character.
the character of each of these flows from their meaning. the character of
one is inward, is slow, dream-like,
sleep-like, is proceeding from the dark, from the beginnings of things, from
the soils, the seeds, is
generative, general, is like a child, is playful (things are not distinct),
is creative, is spiritual, mystical, healing
and universal. the character of two is indeed oppositional, is distinguishing
itself from the rest, is looking
upon (objective), is reflecting upon, is AWARE of all in its distinctiveness.
the world is turned into THINGS
and bodies and kept as such by drawing strict lines around them. everything
is fighting everything else to
stay atomically autonomous. even better if they can fly away from each other,
GROW, compete, expand,
explode, exhilarate. this is the world of the adolescent, arrogant, self-assuming,
specializing, spatializing. oh
and then comes number three and what the fuck. that third line of the triangle
confuses the linearity of the
square. it opens a PERSPECTIVE between the two polar positions. the blind
black and white is now confused
by a grey that is telling the two polarities that they actually have some
things in common, without fusing
them back into a black WHOLE. three brings RELATION. polars can do one thing
very well: fight. but in a
triangle, there is a mix-up between fighting and being one. it is called relating.
in short, things are not so
simple anymore. this is the land of the mature, having been both the child
and then the adolescent, maturity
asks for something less easy, less seductive, less stark. it introduces a
character that can never be quite
defined, even as it is not fuzzy at all. it is more like a character that
HAPpens. you cannot pinpoint it. you
have to walk along with it to get to know it. to keep knowing it. in fact,
this is more than knowing. it is
relating. number three is the world of ongoing relationships.
so, INNER, OUTER, IN-BETWEEN. child, adolescent, adult. subjective, objective,
relational. that’s the story.
------
three are a very few. if I need a classification system for a huge bulk of
items or elements, I will have to throw
many things in to each of the three baskets, which is not very helpful.. so
how to subdivide? the most logical
would be to take each one and subdivide itself in three again. so you have
nine - 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3,
3.1 ,3.2, 3.3. better. you can go on and subdivide again - 27! but for the
purposes of a show, that’s too
many.
so nine then.
by the way, the primary THREE can be applied to so many things, apart from
numbers and geometry -
primary colours, primary feelings, and, yes, primary body parts (instinctive
(the lower genital body), sensory
(the head and mind), moveable (the heart, lungs and its extensions - arms
and legs)) and so on.
but ok, how to give character and meaning to those nine parts?
if one is inward, then subdividing it would result in three elements that
are all inward - like this: 1.1 would be
the inward looking inward. 1.2 would be the inward looking outward. and 1.3
would be the inward looking at
relating - or better, the inward that is relating. similarly, number two,
the outward, can be subdivided into
the outward looking inward, the outward looking outward and the outward that
is relating. and then the
relating looking inward, looking outward, and finally, the relating that is
relating. whooodeblygoogleduk.
yes, very abstract. but it’s not difficult to start filling it in with
analogies to the point where it becomes an
accessible storyline.
the inward
what is the inward looking inward? it can be translated (for instance) as
me experiencing myself as a whole.
me going inward and staying there. or me in the process of healing (going
inward in order to become whole).
it is me experiencing myself and the world in the most unified way possible.
as in sexual ecstasy or a primal
scream. looking at human society, there is a whole part of it that clusters
around this 1.1. - the world of
healing, of medicines, of psychology.. all geared towards restoring the whole.
and the sexual “industry” of
course, even though healing and the concrete oneness achieved in sex are supremely
private (inner) matters
and is best achieved privately.
when the inward starts looking outward (1.2), the world around it is recognized,
but not quite as DISTINCT
from the self. it is more like the self is projecting its own unity on the
world. a baby does this supremely
naturally, but there are social extensions of this, the most obvious of these
being the arts. what is the arts, in
essence, other than projecting oneself onto the world, resulting in the expression
of one’s experience of the
world, or in visions of imagined, or “better” or the worst of worlds.
what is art other than Playing with reality?
the arts does not bring the world to us in its breathtaking distinctiveness,
no, it brings various guises of
UNITY to the world, because it proceeds from within. the aesthetic is a subjective
lining of things, turning
them towards some sort of universal, showing the world in its ORIGINality.
and 1.3 then? how does the inward start to RELATE? it finds relation amongst
people and things without
leaving the inward stance. in other words, it finds the INNER connection between
things, how all is related in
the DARK, in their beginnings, at their core. so from pure subjectivity, the
story moves to the projection of
that onto the world, and then how all is connected - subjectively. the act
of relating to all from within is the
spiritual act. this is the true mystery of spirituality: the relation that
goes on in the dark, where the eye
cannot see. the lingering unity in all that outwardly seems to be completely
disparate. this is not an abstract
IDEA of how things are related, it is relation that springs like a prayer
from a concrete inner core, from the
here and now, a here and now that loses its time and its space. complicated
indeed, yet very real. just like
spirit (breath) cannot be touched, and yet is concrete (air).
the outward
so here we enter the great split. childhood dissolves. enters the fast growing
adolescent. but at first (2.1) it is
the outward looking inward. or in other words, it is the upper body (senses,
mind) looking at the WHOLE of
the world out there. it is scanning the scene. like it is just escaped from
the womb, and now, for the first time
can SEE, standing on top of the mountain of reality.. oh waw! what a spectacle!
I am not alone (ALL-ONE)!
look at this whole in front of me! now socially, the discipline of looking
at this whole in front (opposite) me, is
called reflection. it has grown into the academic pursuit called philosophy.
philosophy orders the world as
distinct from me, to form a meaningful whole. it treats the world as a body.
it gets to map this body, so it can
go over into the next step, and that is to run all over it.
hence, 2.2. - the outward of the outward. this is now the outgoing awareness
of all being distinct, running to
MAKE it all truly distinct, by exploring all its myriad details and varieties,
naming them, describing them
(giving them lines, definitions, so they become NOT-ONE, but EVERY-THING).
what a glorious and cold
adventure is this not! (it is very cold when you move so fast, never trapped
by anything warm like a unifying
soul). this is the point (or million points) furtherest removed from total
unity. it is the most sensorial and
material. socially, this is the dimension of the scientist. the Knower of
things - in their quantitative aspects,
not their qualitative. in their lightness, not their heaviness. atomistic
world. the world of complete DISINtegration.
gosh, who is gonna save us! enters 2.3. - how the outward starts to relate.
the outward can only relate that
which is outward. so from the philosopher, to the scientist, if you bring
these two together, they give birth to
the technologist. the MAKER of things. bringing things in relation to things.
the philosopher could only map
things into a whole. the scientist could only use this map to run all over
and collect things. it is now up to the
technologist to turn the world into something inhabitable. a mechanical order.
getting the gears to grind. one
thing hooked into another, becoming the objective relational tangle that is
called technology. the adolescent
is finding its identity, its place in the world. but only that. this is a
great achievement - it has emerged from
childhood, it is no more in the dark; it has navigated the world, conquered
territory and built a home for
itself; it can survive. but survival is not yet living..
the relational
and so the complication of complications enters. 3.1. relating to the inward.
when the inward entered relating
(1.3), unity was still the starting point, and the goal (spirituality). but
now relating is the starting point. and it
looks at unity IN the world of relating. just like the mountain-top adolescent
were looking for unity in the
outside world (2.1), the relating adult is now, firstly, trying to map the
world of relations. because you see,
once it has built its house, once it fought for its place in the world and
found it, things settled in. what now?
he or she now for the first time see its neighbour not as an adversary (no
need for fighting anymore, survival
is secured), but as a relation. it’s on to the finer details, the more
complicated stuff of daily living. when the
adolescent arrives at adulthood, it does so because he or she is RE-MINDed
of its childhood, the days of its
unity. the thing is, adolescence burns a hell of a lot of energy. it moves
so fast. and that leads to tiredness.
the only way to restore energy is to go into the dark again. yet it cannot
go back being a child again, even if
it tries. the big outward adventure has changed it forever. the womb is gone.
yet it needs something of that
old unity to make itself sustainable as an adult. and so, typically third-dimension,
the complicated dance
begins of RELATING one and two. and here, with the mapping of the whole of
the web of relations that the
adult finds itself in, we have given a name to this mapping. it is called
morality. how do I behave within a
web of relations? what are the overall guidelines in this complicated part
of life? from morality, the study of
ethics has sprung, and from that, the social institutions of law-making, jurisprudence
and defending these
laws: policing, and on the extreme periphery, a defense force. this is also
the terrain - socially and physically
(the heart) - where EMOTIons first spring forward in full force. the child’s
emotions are completely self-
(inner-) centered - the eMOVEments of drawing all and everyone into its (w)hole.
and that of the adolescent
whirl outwards, slashing a path open for itself. in either of these, the motions
of emotions have but half
strengths. it is only from the heart-centre that the dynamo of feelings can
run full diameter. and in 3.1, it
does so inwardly. it is the domain of the first true tears, the first felt
sadness of being someone, yet someone
vulnerable in this world. building a home is one thing, but finding yourself
SHARING a limited space with
others is another thing. it is the ancient cell realizing it has to start
working together and combining with
other cells in order to survive. it is the profound trauma of hitting one’s
limits. it is the birth of ubuntu.
but being a good neighbour does not bring food on the table. or new materials
to maintain the house. the
world of relating is now moving outward (3.2) to find relation in the outward,
objective world. it is about
relating THINGS within the web of relations. it is about carrying water to
drink, not only for yourself, as the
whole village needs to drink. how do we organize (relate) this? who is doing
the carrying? how long will the
river keep flowing? how much can we consume today, tomorrow, in a decade?
enter the domain of the
economist, the dealer, the distributor. economy is not about accumulation
or competition. economy is about
RELATING goods and services. it’s about getting them into a flow that
can sustain the community. it is not
about money, just as philosophy is not about language. these are only arbitrary
means to facilitate the main
business at hand: RELATING materiality.
it is important to retain the perspective of the WHOLE story up to this point.
each episode, from 1.1 to 3.2,
where we are now, forms a flow of natural consequence. in broad terms, you
cannot RELATE before you did
not have unity and then diversity. you cannot go in-between things, if you
have not gone in and then out
first. and - here is a big crux - you cannot go out first, before you have
not gone in. the subjective always
comes naturally first, just like a tree always proceeds from being a seed
first. first the darkness, then the
light. first the slowness, then the speed. first the healing, then the fighting.
first the child (PLAY), then the
adolescent (GROW). and so, when it comes to the economist, look how much is
needed BEFORE you can start
economizing: you need to be a helpless, but unified, baby first. then you
need to play and create, then you
need to find spiritual connection with the world. then you need to properly
reflect and map the outside world,
then go and explore it in all its crazy details, then only can you start making
things to survive with. then you
first need to map the world of relations, become an ethical being and ONLY
THEN can you start distributing
goods within the web of relations - relations between humans but also within
all of life and the environment.
because reality itself is now become one universe of relationships. this is
the NATURE of a basic complicated
way of looking at all of reality. not just as a whole, not just as material
distinctivenss, but as a living web of
relationships, where nothing is ever finally outlined, and yet at the same
time, also never just formless and
arbitrary. in short, adulthood does not come cheap. and within a society,
it is not only the order of
development that is important, but also how all these 9 elements keep informing
and sustaining each other.
put in concrete terms, the economist, the business person, in order to do
his or her work properly, needs to
rely on the insights and practice of the healers, the visions of the arts,
the facilitation of the connecting
spirituals, the mental maps and wisdom of the philosophers, the hard work
of the scientist-collectors, the
ingenuity of the technologists, the crucial moral frames of the ethicists
and then on its own advanced
capabilities of balancing this delicate yet robust flow of material goods
and services. whenever any of these
elements are missing or being weakened, the whole edifice of life is effected
and might not live its full
potential.
and yet, this is not the full story yet. there is 3.3 still. the mind-boggling
relating of the relating. how do you
relate the world of relationships? why do you need to-do that? is the village
not already at peace with itself
and well-fed? is adulthood not complete once the inner life and outer life
is well taken care of? what is this
3.3 then? does it not cancel itself out? these questions are asked by a mind
that seeks simplification, that
had enough of complicating things. I mean, well-working morals and a true
economy (being economic, not
cancerous) are pretty demanding acts in itself - give us a break! why adding
“the complication of the
complicated” on top of it?? and yet, as we have seen, each time the splitting
power of two hits limits.
oppositional energies do not last. fights bring fatigue. self-assertion brings
loneliness. and a missing middle
brings depression. a village well-fed can have all the richness in the world,
but something will be missing.
what fucking something. well, I cannot fucking say exactly what. that’s
the whole thing. why not die at the
end of adolescent? why not be a hero? why not fly towards the sun until you
burn away completely? why not
grow until you fall over and crash? why not keep it simple and pure - you
are wrong and I am right for
evermore, until one of us kills the other? there is no simple answer to this.
my god, that is again the point.
entering adulthood from such adolescent bravery is not a pure logical choice.
it is not even a seductive
choice. the seduction lies on the side of simplicity. not on that of the complicating
number three. fuck number
three! and also fuck not. does not this sound like our relationship with..
politics?
ja hey, that is the one thing still missing in this story. politics and politicians.
what about this: politics is that
thing we are seduced to think we do not need, and yet we keep finding ourselves
being embroiled in, even
calling for it. the simple answer to this is that we are beings with hearts.
not just genitals and minds. we are,
so to say, three dimensional beings. ok, there are ways NOT to accept this,
but I am accepting it. and as I
am doing it, I must admit that all of reality is three dimensional. nothing
very different about us humans. so
being three-dimensional, we are going to arrive at being moral and well-fed,
and still missing something. in
fact, chances are we will not arrive at being moral and well fed at all without
that final category, the one of
relating all relations. and that is called leadership.
now, “lead” is not a very apt word. it feels too much like walking
in front and the rest just follows. by lack of
another word, I will try to redefine leadership is a kind of heart-pump. how
does the heart lead? not like the
mind, coming from top down. no, it’s there, there at the middle of things.
it does not only pump material
stuff (blood), it also FEELS the whole, and in that way, directs all its actions
and decisions. again, this
directing is not about pointing this or that way, it is about the ability
to sense all the relating parts as they
operate together in ways not one of those parts can do by themselves. it is
not the origin of things (one), nor
is it the control of things (two), it is the dynamic core of things (three)
which treads this complicated but
simple path of relating earth and heaven, the fast and the slow, the concrete
and the abstract with each
other. it is at once very humble and very powerful. and it is not either of
these. it is fucking… complicated.
yet simple. it is what you can never satisfactorily describe.
the best way to understand the character of politics is through stories. because
relating the world of
relationships equals a story - immediately. politics (of the individual, the
family, the village, the country, the
globe, the planet) is one very particular thing and yet it is all things at
the same time too. it is this one thing
that ensures that all these nine categories actually coordinate and work together.
it is the flow of the flow. it
is that thing, at the end of the narrative, that gives us happiness. not the
“they all lived happily ever after”
happiness, but the happiness of the fullest of meaningfulness and the sense
of the whole as more than the
sum of its parts. it is the heart that keeps beating after the mind has died
and the seeds lying fallow. it is our
final sense that we are alive, that we ACT-ually ARE. never fixated. always
unfolding, and yet also, marking a
certain fullness. yes, after 3.3, there is no more. this is the end.
------------------------------------
To summarize
it is also helpful
to draw this graphically. if one is low, two is high and three in the middle
(like the heart is in
the middle of the gut and head) and it follows that one comes first, then
two, then three, a simple graphic
can be drawn like this:
subdivided into
9, it looks like this:
from here on,
the field is open to make more specific applications, for instance the flow
of a performance.
so let’s look at performance.
looking at the graphic outlay, some things become clear: