The Excluded Third

          Play, play with words, like Laurence Rickels, with his intentional malapropism extras (in parenthesis).
          I'd like to play with numbers and the words they represent, particularly 1, 2, and 3.  I hate to pull an Austin, but I have to say... I know this may seem painfully obvious, but I need to break it down.
          One:  The individual, independence, unison, a whole.  Single, alone, one man for himself?  The beginning, Ace's Fool...
          Two:  Dualism, binaries, complementary balance, a joining of opposites, or a breaking into two (categories).  Yin and yang, traditional marriage...
          We could compile an exhausting list,
          left/right, black/white, good/bad, right/wrong, etc.      
          ...but you don't even have to be a good little lit student to know all about binaries and what it means to challenge them.  The easiest way for humans to divide the world is in this fashion, and much of the world operates this way.  You can look at the excluded third and ask what binary it is challenging.    
          Is the vampire dead or alive?
          In symbolic logic, there is only true or false.  A third option is excluded, the excluded third.  Perhaps, this is why there has been no major breakthroughs in philosophy in recent years  The field is stuck in a binary perception of the world, and cannot see any other possibilities.  I guess it makes more logical sense to exclude, rather than include.
          Playing with numbers, to add and multiply or divide and conquer?  I think it depends on whether you're adding or dividing in the binary step.  Is the symbol of two more represented by an adding 1+1 = 2, or dividing the whole into halves to represent the number two?  Do you see it as a joining of opposites or a division of the whole, into hierarchical parts?  (Both or neither are also acceptable answers here, of course).
          Division is easy, far past number two, but inclusion is the challenge.  Even with just two, most symbols deal with separation, rather than union.  One of the main concrete examples I can think of is traditional marriage (to again pull an Austin) which is pretty hard to imagine, right?
          Deductive logic is pretty straightforward - the answer is contained within the question.  It's harder to  explain or prove anything emphatically using inductive logic, but every premise in an deductive argument is a conclusion from an inductive argument, so, what?
          Waste no more time in symbolic logic, that's what.
          Three is a magic number
          Three:  excluded - "the third wheel," third class,
               included - three amigos, three musketeers,
          Oh no, I think three might need a third category:
          equal parts - body/mind spirit, the trinity, 
               primary colors: red, yellow, and blue
          Flag of Sicily
          What else breaks into or comes in groups of three?
          What about three on the love-seat?
          Threesomes, the topic of my next blog post as Venus Uprising, the love and relationships column.
          Number dynamics for these first counting numbers are sometimes illustrated by legs on a table.
One leg is hard to stand on.  It's possible, but it's lonely and uncomfortable as a specter, and just as phallic.
Two legs fall together.  Three legs is about minimum for a sturdy table.  Four legs is standard, and the number five represents change (this table metaphor isn't working anymore, we need a change).
          Me, I like to play connect the dots.  One point is just a point.  Two points can form a line.  Three points can form a plane, and a two dimensional shape, a triangle.  Four points adds one more dimension to the triangle shape, forming a tetrahedron, a very special pyramid with 4 sides, each one an equilateral triangle.
          One is a point, two is a line, and what can you do with a line?  Go back and forth between opposites or extremes?  There's something to adding a third, to anything.  Like a breakthrough, it can be risky, but well worth the risk if it can be accomplished.  It can be as simple as acknowledging a third possibility, a third choice.