We are at a global action impasse and Triadic Philosophy solves that problem in the nick of time. Whether it will save the world is less the question than explaining what this means.
Pataphysical is a word that points to the absurdity of life when there appears to be, as Sartre said, no exit. Pataphysical is, I contend, how nonviolence deals with a situation that requires urgent action, necessary change, even revolution.
Deridda understood this as a problem of achieving the unprecedented. Nozick linked it to the impossibility of another holocaust.
Triadic philosophy argues that democracy contains all exceptions and is, therefore, the answer to the current global conundrum.
Another way of putting it is that we should understand and move through the pataphysical.
Truth
The best approach to pataphysical is to say we need to explain what to do when the need for action is clear but no action seems possible. That is precisely our situation now. We are awash in seductive diagnoses of our problems. If only our reason could prevail. But it cannot and does not.
China, the dominant nation, is a dictatorship that manifests all the characteristics of one including the attempt to idolize Mr. Xi. China is in the anomalous position of achieving the benchmarks of the Paris accord while ensuring that carbon will perform its lethal task ahead of schedule.
The US is embarked on a suicide run in the direction of our fossil fuel past. Two economies with one genocidal purpose.
Democracy
In a democracy each individual is sovereign. Each individual represents the eternity of options which guarantees that only nonviolence will save us from overrunning each other in a mass rush to end it all.
This is why democracies have laws and constitutions.
It will be clear that Triadic Philosophy juxtaposes an emphasis on universal values and the inference I find suggested in the pataphysical.
My thinking also has an origin in the immortal writing of Dostoyevsky.
Not a piano key
Dostoyevsky in “The Underground Man” states that a man will do anything, even the most outrageous actions, to show that he is a man and not a piano key.
This is the simple and underlying truth of the paraphysical within Triadic Philosophy. It is not an embrace of absurdity for absurdity’s sake. It is the affirmation that there is a point at which we must say no. When that no is spoken it is best that it be the no of individuals, not of bleating sheep.
The US-China declension of our future deserves a universal no. Said in 7.6 billion ways.
