Friday, March 30, 2012

The Number Three

During the year 1965, when I was a middle manager for the DuPont company at the largest plant they had at that time, we were confronted with a threatening and potentially crippling strike. The plant was about a mile in diameter and employed about 10,000 people both wage and salried and supplied a number of other plants with products and intermediates vital to their offerings to the public. So it was imperative that the Corporate folks do something to avert a strike and return operations to its normal efficiency and tempo. We had a meeting of all supervisory personnel, about 200-300 hundred of us and our guest speaker was an Industrial Psychologist. This man, whose name has long been erased from my memory, told us that in order to avert the strife of a strike, we had to change the attitude of the workers. My mind immediately jumped to Madison Avenue with its slogans and posters and the like. But no, he said, we didn't have time for that and it wouldn't be lasting enough so that we might solve this problem and create another one down the line somewhere. He said that we had to change peoples' attitude...theirs, ours and everybodys. And the way to do this was to keep in mind that

Attitude = Experience + Opinion

So we started a program which included representatives from all levels of employees, wage roll, supervisory, and management types. These folks were given information on all aspects of the operation of that plant. And literally what we did was to create an environment which opened up communications, made everyone aware that we needed each other and reduced it to experience as we met and learned to understand and trust each other. In other words we changed people's experience and changed the attitude on both sides actually.

About 4 years later, I joined the Sabian Assembly, met Marc Jones, studied Astrology and learned more than I ever could have imagined about the number 3.

That was over 40 years ago. And DuPont went on from there to develop a program of participatory management and they have continued to be a solid part of American industry. As far as I can see my pension is safe in their hands.

In 1969 I started the study of Astrology the Jones way. After 40-some years I finally began to see that Astrology was as easy as 1-2-3-4. In other words if you can count to 4, I can teach you Astrology. Astrology is not to predict tomorrow's lottery. Otherwise we would all be rich or at least share the wealth. Astrology is an organon, a tool, to help create simplicity from complexity.
And what more complexity could we find than the mind and character of man.

The Greeks who were part of the development of Astrology gave meaning to the threeness of things. We live in a dualistic world that is made up of opposites. The word for this perhaps is dichotomy or cutting in half. The Greeks recognized a third element was needed for greater understanding and they proposed a trichotomy or literal cutting into thirds. And hence the number 3. The Greek mind at least from Pythagoras on was exceptionally tuned to space and geometry as such and they realized that to really understand something there had to be more than just the two opposites. It couldn't just be black and white etc. there had to be a third factor which allowed connection between the two concepts. Today we can see this in our example of black and white as the color gray. As we proceed from the state of white(which is a blend of all colors) to the state of black(which is no color at all) we proceed through shades of gray. So we begin to see what the number 3 means in its general nature. It describes the process as we progress from one extreme to the other. The Golden Mean had very great meaning to the Greeks.

1 comment:

  1. What a fun entry to read after your hiatus.

    Yes, three is a magic number and I'm quoting from School House Rock - Three is a Magic Number
    "Somewhere in the ancient, mystic trinity
    You get three as a magic number, the past and the present and the future. Faith, Hope and Charity. The heart and the brain and the body, give you three as a magic number."

    I had fun thinking about other "threes" such as: earth, sea, sky * ideas, ideals, ideology * birth, life, death * gaseous, liquid, solid * animal, vegetable, mineral * to name a few.

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