Threeing

Threeing is a three person solution to relational confusion. At the core of this solution is a voluntary practice in which three people take turns playing three different roles; initiator, respondent and mediator.  Through this role playing, a clarity about relationships emerges, and an ease. This clarity and ease can be cultivated by practice and developed into healthy sustainable relationships.

Our tendency is to view any three people interacting together in classic dramatic terms, but the structure of Threeing is not a narrative structure. The three do not interact dramatically following a story line to an ending. Rather, the three interact recursively, following a circuit that balances relationships. To understanding the process of Threeing, narrative expectations must be abandoned.

In a sense, Threeing can be described as a ‘yoga’ of relationships. When you learn Threeing, you stretch your capacity to relate in three different roles. Just as Yoga can prevent back pain and mental malaise, Threeing can prevent relational confusion. Just as practicing yoga can keep a person healthy and thriving so the practice of Threeing can keep relationships healthy and thriving.

The texts on Threeing below go from theory to practice to instructions to speculations to projects. Threeing grows out of my work with video and is folded into my work on interpreting ecosystems with the Earthscore Notational System.

Part I: The Theory of Threeing

1. The Three Person Solution
2. Preventing Seven Problems
3. Peirce and Work

Part II: The Practice of Threeing

1. A Demonstration Program for Training Workers
2. A Method for Teaching Sustainability

Part III: Instructions for Verbal Threeing

1. Organizing the Ten Lessons
2. The Ten Lessons
   Lesson Number One
   Lesson Number Two
   Lesson Number Three
   Lesson Number Four
   Lesson Number Five
   Lesson Number Six
   Lesson Number Seven
   Lesson Number Eight
   Lesson Number Nine
   Lesson Number Ten

Part IV: Instructions for Non-Verbal Threeing

1. The Yoga of Threeing

Part V: Speculations

1. Gender and Threeing

Part VI: Proposals

1. A Tricultural Tournament
2. The Earthscore Program for Artists
3. The Hall of Risk

Building the Relational Circuit
The Relational Circuit as a ‘Sign of itself’
The Relational Circuit Revisited
The Performance Profile for Threeing References