Is ONE = THREE?
We humans have had a strange tendency to divide the process thinking into a finite number of stages. From Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief, we repeatedly seek to make sense of complex human experiences by organising them into neat, comprehensible frameworks. But by doing so, are we limiting ourselves to the framework or theory is?
Consider a three-stage assessment of one’s relationship with God. First, “there is god”. Something that we inherit from the history, passed down by one’s family, society, or culture. Then there is a place where we think “there is no god”. A stage of questioning. A fine stage and a very important one indeed. And then people say that there will be a stage where we accept God again. Something is very poetic and satisfying about this arrangement of our mind. We begin with a belief, reject it, and eventually come back to something very similar to our original thoughts, the journey appears complete and the circle seems closed. But is that it?
Take money, for instance. A person might begin life believing that money does not matter much. As he gets older, he realises the influence of money over comfort, freedom, security and social place. Money becomes important, perhaps more important than one would have liked to admit. And then, with experience and having earned a lot, he may reach a point where money no longer occupies his mind in the same way. He may still value it, but might not consider it as the measure of a life well lived.
What could one call these three stages? A simplified, indifference-obsession-indifference? If so, is the indifference of the third stage same as that of the first? The first person may not understand what money can do. The third may understand its value all too well. One is indifferent because the question has barely occurred to him; the other may be indifferent because he has spent considerable time investigating it. Or should we call it indifference-obsession-immaterial?
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However, the outward conclusion may look identical. The understanding behind it need not be. Perhaps, then, one is not three after all. Yet this raises a more fundamental question. Why must the journey end at three?
A person might move beyond indifference and obsession into a fourth stage, where one recognises that their relationship with money changes according to their responsibilities. A fifth, where one questions whether their understanding of wealth was shaped by the society around them (which is in my opinion most likely the case). A sixth, where one reconsiders the very essence of security in the first place. And maybwe beyond that, into stages for which we have not yet found names and not had the necessity to look for answers.
Perhaps the same pattern appears in our understanding of love, ambition, happiness and even our own identity. We begin with assumptions, encounter contradictions, and construct new understandings. Those understandings, in turn, become assumptions that may one day be challenged. What we call the end may simply be the point beyond which we have not yet travelled and its just circles with neither an obvious end nor a definite meaning. And yet, we repeatedly simplify these journeys into three stages, five stages, or some other finite number. We give them names, arrange them in sequence and tell ourselves that we have understood the process.
Of course, simplification is not inherently a mistake. We need frameworks to make sense of complexity. A map is useful precisely because it leaves out much of the area and highlights what’s necessary. The problem begins when we forget that it is a map.
Perhaps the three-stage model of human thought is not wrong, it’s simply incomplete. The third stage may be a thought development, or a meaningful solution, or even a return to an earlier belief. But it doesn’t mean that the journey has ended. For me, this is where the confusion begins. Is returning to the original thoughts, an evolution to superior stage of understanding or a decision to stop questioning?
So, is one equal to three? If we are speaking of the conclusions we reach, perhaps they can be. If we are speaking of the understanding that produces them, then its far less certain.
But I suspect the more important question lies elsewhere. Who decided that three was the end? Why not four, five, or a hundred? Why not “n”. Maybe one is three. maybe it’s not. Or three is simply where we have stopped counting.
