The Prodigal Son Asks How

In this video from his speech to the national endowment of the humanities Walker Percy talks about the dyadic and the triadic modes of being in terms of understanding what science can and cannot address. There are no cats in this 50 minute lecture given by an old, mumbling man, just some clever common sense if you are patient enough to listen carefully to his words.

Dyadic and Triadic

Maybe a good way to think about the difference between the dyadic and the triadic is a little story.

A Jewish son pauses after he realizes he’s coveting the slop he’s feeding to the pigs and asks “How did I get here?” 

The dyadic will explain the laws of physics by which the man walked from his home into this far off country. The dyadic will explain how his levels of blood sugars have dropped causing his brain to register the pain of hunger making even discarded food look desirable.

Almost all of us know, however, that this isn’t the question the man is asking. “You walked” or “you haven’t eaten for a couple of days” are not the answers he’s looking for. Why is this Jewish boy attending to the welfare of hogs? What has driven the lad to wish to eat the food discarded by other human beings?

He doesn’t for a moment consider the idea that he is simply a smarter hog.

The dyadic world talks about the physics of his walking and his blood chemistry. The triadic world engages the demand “give me my inheritance!” and what that simple sentence has meant for him. One has governed the other. The triadic governs the dyadic. 

The Vain Hope of Science

There are many attempts today to reduce the triadic to the dyadic. To attempt to reduce “give me my inheritance” to blood chemistry but I doubt it will come to anything.

“God is dead” has no meaning in the dyadic world. We attempt to leverage the dyadic to control the triadic world for triadic ends but we cannot see what we are doing.

A strong consensus of scientist and climatologists assert that our CO2 production is upsetting delicate climate equilibrium and will dyadically result in weather patterns that will dyadically produce disruption in the mechanisms we depend upon to support large human populations. There will be storms and drought. Most future watchers believe that we are devastating the biological systems we need to sustain us in our dyadic world.

Can we stop it? What is getting in our way? It isn’t the dyadic, it is the triadic. There is no political mechanism by which we can arrive at the place where the nations together seriously address the climate change challenge.

In the dyadic world we know that bombs and explosives kill people. It would seem dyadically simple to not build them or use them. It is for triadic reasons that Putin invades Crimea. It is for triadic reasons that the West is concerned about Russia swallowing Ukraine but not so concerned as to put its own armies there. Again, the triadic governs the dyadic.

The Great Desire

Our great desire, then is to employ the dyadic to govern the triadic. To, in our own hands (and not our enemies) find the power to convert the triadic in others into the dyadic. This has always been the desire of the fallen triadic. “If I can use the dyadic to have dominance over the other triadics I can (for my own triadic reasons) configure the world as I please!” Note CS Lewis’ observation in The Screwtape Letters.

If I can make Putin my pawn. If I can win the hearts and minds of the people of the world over to my view of the dyadic climate change crisis, THEN I can save the world.

But again, of course, the triadic triumphs because the only world worth saving is the triadic world and the only value that can be seen is seen through triadic eyes.

We might pause to ask “how did we get here?”