Triadic Logic: The Thought Process for Peace
Namely, a sign is something, A, which brings something, B, its interpretant sign determined or created by it, into the same sort of correspondence with something, C, its object, as that in which itself stands to C.
-Peirce, Charles S. (Charles Sanders) (28 April 2015). The New Elements of Mathematics. Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. ISBN 978-3-11-086970-5. OCLC 1013950434.
George Lucas based The Force on his readings in Taoism, and he named Luke Skywalker for the skill we acquire and cultivatewhen we engage the Tao, the primordial aspect of being. As we all know, if we can attach our soul spigot to this Source, the Death Star, in whatever form we encounter it, is toast. Star Wars, Matrix, The Holy Bible, and other heroic tales settle this skill on one character, creating in us this idea that there can be only one. There can be as many as we want. In fact, I think we have all experienced it in its infinite facets—seeing a sign is the starting point, engaging the sign is the next part, trusting and noticing more signs is the goal. It can be a universal sign or symbol such as a black cat or blood on the moon (company soon) or a sign specific to our story such as an echo of something a loved one said, for example. We engage them intuitively for problem-solving, emotional support, creativity, and healing. That is, if we allow them meaning.
When we allow signs to mean something to us, we are activating a timeless relationship between living beings, inanimate things, and the creative forces beyond five-sense perception. (Hence, The Force.) It takes a little courage and humility. It is the quintessence of “reading too much into it.” Whatever that “it” is, we awaken it to our presence by reading into it. The universe wants us to engage it, rather than leave it to its lonesome, as we in the west have done for three centuries. It wants us to play.
We find it difficult to play. We think the world is dark and scary, fixed and hopeless. It isn’t. It’s entirely malleable if we know the right moves. We get the right moves by engaging triadic logic, physics and math’s term for The Tao, The Force, The Promised Land, The Holy Grail, The Holy Trinity—in general, the thing we’re not supposed to know about, much less engage.
For the ancestors, it was mysterious and sacred. It still is, but today we have the internet and podcasts to remind us that Science is kind of over. Now, we can see why awe is the only appropriate response, and that wonders truly abound. Science no longer edges out either poetry or spirituality. We have glimpsed the duality, and the duality is a matter of surfaces and depths. We are cleansing the windows of perception and seeing the world as it is, infinite, in the words of Blake. Th’ (preserving the perfect iambic pentameter here) eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, as Alexander Pope called it, is within our grasp. Many of us hold it already.
For so long, our myths, poems, stories, and ancient books have been interpreted for us. This has glazed them with out-of-reach-ness on one hand and WTF-ness on the other. We’ve evolved, though. It’s uncanny. We can pick up these old texts and recognize the science driving the great mystery: the fact of a metaphorical universe that requires metaphorical, symbolic, and storytelling language for talking about it, and that by talking about it we are actually talking with it. (Quietly, the poet says, BAM!)
We easily engage triadic logic by telling a story and writing a poem, making art, improvising music and dance. At first, we’re self-conscious and focused. Then, we relax and loosen focus. We feel it take over. We enter flow. The old books and rites and the Star Wars franchise are all about the metaphysics of flow. In flow, we’re bringing primordial juice to the parched and weary world. This juice is a corrective force for balance, justice, and beauty. I call these the priorities of the universe. Anything obstructing these gets taken down— slowly if we humans just wait for the arc of justice to bend, quickly if we know that we are the ones who bend it, and possibly instantaneously we bend it using triadic logic. We can see why we have been schooled in bivalent logic. Bivalent logic traps energy and meaning in a closed system. Think about it: if the Age of Reason was a good idea, the world would be a better place. Without triadic logic, we can’t actually “think” our way through problems. Triadic logic is the mind that solves the problems, balances the ecosystem, and heals the world.
The Empire loves bivalence because in bivalence, one thing is always better than the other, and one thing is always true while the other is false. Bivalence eschews paradox: we can’t have two (or ten) gymnasts doing routines on a single balance beam. We can, however, have two hundred gymnasts doing two hundred routines on two hundred balance beams. This is triadic logic. It allows for space. It balances each of us on our balance beams and guides our thoughts, words, and action toward bringing balance to the whole. We don’t need certainty nearly as much as we’ve been led to believe. What we need are respect, belonging, understanding, and compassion—all facilitated through triadic logic. The only thing we lose by engaging triadic logic is hate, anger, fear, and war.