Why wisdom often comes in threes

[Sultan Al Hind]

@Carl-Richard what u type look like philosophy wisdom . So it is not from philosophy?

[Carl-Richard]

50 minutes ago, Sultan Al Hind said:

@Carl-Richard what u type look like philosophy wisdom . So it is not from philosophy?

I don't understand the question.

Edited April 27, 2023 by Carl-Richard

[Zedman]

So much talk lol. Check out my ancestors symbol for God

[Carl-Richard]

@Zedman Lol you ok?

[Zedman]

@Carl-Richard  Yeah I am ok. Was trying to tase you. It is true tho. 3 is important so much so ancients recognized it across the globe.

[Danioover9000]

@Carl-Richard

On 2023-04-16 at 7:26 PM, Carl-Richard said:

Arguably, a central aspect of wisdom is holism. More specifically, it's the ability to see different aspects of life and how they're all interconnected, whether it's your mind and your physical body, other people's happiness and your own happiness, your finances and your life opportunities, your habits and your successes; the list goes on. Since I'm particularly interested in psychology, I have mostly realized this through learning different theories from psychology (and of course with a bit of help of other people I admire, particularly John Vervaeke, Bernardo Kastrup and Jordan Peterson, as well as my own experiences). I will present some of those theories here:

 

Plato: "the monster, the lion and the man"

Let's start with Plato's three aspects of the psyche: the monster, the lion and the man. The monster represents the more primal survival instincts, for example the need for food, sexual reproduction or safety. The lion represents the mammalian instincts of connection and social bonding. And lastly, the man represents the self-aware rational mind; the intellect. For Plato, in order to perturb self-deception and achieve wisdom, you must balance all these aspects of the psyche and give them life, not neglect or repress them. You'll see that many of these principles (promoting balance, avoiding repression) are common to all the theories I'm about to the present.

 

Freud: "id, superego and ego"

Next up is Freud's three aspects of the psyche: the id, the superego and the ego. The id is again the primal instincts, the fundamental driving forces of your survival, and it cares very little about higher moral responsibilities. The id just does what it wants to do. The superego is analogous to the voice of conscience, which tells you how you ought to act, and it's peculiarly often experienced as your mom's voice nagging you to do the right thing. You can ponder why that is (hint: it's highly socially conditioned). The ego is the thing that mediates between the id and the superego. It's the self-aware center of the psyche, and it chooses what it wants to listen to; the id or the superego (or at least it thinks it does). Similarly to Plato, Freud proposes that in order to avoid psychic conflict ("neurosis"), you must learn to balance the different psychic structures.

 

Self-determination theory (SDT): "competence, belonging and autonomy"

Not many people are familiar with it, but self-determination theory (SDT) is similarly a powerful theory of the psyche with three components: the need for competence, belonging and autonomy. SDT proposes that in order to achieve optimal motivation for a given behavior, you must address all these three needs. The need for competence says that all organisms have a need to express their innate capacities (for example their physical strength or agility), as this is in line with ensuring the survival of the organism. It's again about primal survival instincts. The need for belonging represents how your needs (psychological or otherwise) need to be supported in a social context (again, this is obviously about social needs). Lastly, the need for autonomy says that a given behavior must be in line with the individual's own wants, feelings and values. It's the more self-aware, rationally oriented part of the psyche.

 

Modern neuroscience: "the Triune brain"

The second last one is often the least expected, but modern neuroscience has its own version of this three-part split of the psyche, represented by the structures of the brain. It's called the "Triune brain", and it's of course a vast over-simplification of how the brain actually works, but there is still value to talking about it: the reptilian brain, the limbic system and the neocortex. The reptilian brain (a.k.a. the basal ganglia) takes care of lower-level survival functions like basic motor movements, the limbic system takes care of complex social emotions, while the neocortex takes care of the intellect. According to modern neuroscience, proper functioning requires an integration of functioning across brain structures. Deficits in one structure lead to deficits of the whole, which can happen when development is impaired (as the different brain areas experience different "growth spurts").

 

The biopsychosocial model of health

To hammer it all home, you've probably heard about the biopsychosocial model of health. It's the most condensed summary of the point I'm getting at: life consists of multiple parts, and you must tend to all of them to live a healthy life. This approach to health is foundational to fields like health psychology, and it's a growing approach in various other health fields.

 

Summary

You might have noticed a trend of three levels of ascending complexity: biological, social, psychological. These different theories provide different perspectives on how the human psyche is structured and how the different parts need to be tended to in order to secure proper functioning and health. Whether you conceptualize it as avoiding psychic conflict like Freud, or promoting optimal motivation like SDT, or achieving wisdom and avoiding self-deception like Plato: it's all pointing to a common lesson about life. You don't have to subscribe to any particular theory to discover this lesson in your own life, but it often helps to get some pointers from the outside, and arguably, it will always follow the principle of holism (which often comes in threes).

   Yes, the triangle and patterns of threes is a pretty powerful pattern in nature too. Nice post.