Most of us were trained to divide the world into opposing columns: mind versus matter, fact versus feeling, truth versus opinion. It is tidy, reassuring—and wrong for almost everything that matters. Binaries are excellent for switches and stoves; they are disastrous for culture, science-in-practice, love, identity, and politics. What we need is not a new opinion; we need a new interface for thinking. Triadism is that interface: a diagrammatic way to see reality as a feedback loop between three inseparable layers—the subjective, the intersubjective, and the structural.
The Binary Illusion
We inherited an elegant mistake: the fantasy that there is a clean wall between the one who sees and the thing seen. Stand outside, measure carefully, and you will reach pure, context-free truth—so the story goes. But try describing color without a perceiver. Try measuring anything without tools shaped by culture, language, and habit. Even when we aim at objectivity, we are using subjective attention and intersubjective methods to stabilize structural patterns. The wall was never there.
The Triadic Loop (in one diagram)
Subjective is the inner renderer—perception, affect, cognition. Intersubjective is the shared layer—language, norms, rituals, institutions of agreement like peer review or courts. Structural is the pattern layer—systems that endure: incentives, infrastructures, laws, ecological constraints. None is primary. They braid. They co-produce what we call “reality.”
Why We Keep Reaching for 1/0
Binaries are cognitively cheap. They save energy. They grant instant certainty and social belonging. But they flatten loops into lines and amputate nuance. “Objective versus subjective” is not an endpoint; it is a lazy exit. When you install a triadic lens, the anxiety of taking sides is replaced by the craft of tracing loops. Agreement stops being a victory; it becomes a maintenance practice.
How Triadism Changes Everyday Thinking
1) Science without the myth of view-from-nowhere
Science is often sold as pure structural truth. In practice, it is a triad. Subjective attention (what questions we find interesting) meets intersubjective methods (standards, statistics, replication norms) to stabilize structural regularities (laws, models). The triumph of science is not purity; it is disciplined looping. When we forget the loop, we drift into dogma; when we honor it, we improve the craft.
2) Identity beyond either/or
“Who am I?” in binary thinking is a choice between fixed essence or pure performance. Triadism reframes identity as a live interface: subjective felt-sense, intersubjective recognition, structural affordances and barriers. Change any layer and the others reconfigure. This is why personal growth stalls when the environment won’t budge—and why policy that ignores interior life cannot hold.
3) Politics that measures what actually loops
Most political fights pretend that structural reform alone will fix the world, or that individual responsibility will. Triadism demands both—and the shared agreements that make either possible. Policy is not a decree; it is a redesign of loops between incentives (structural), narratives (intersubjective), and habits (subjective). The question is not “Who’s right?” but “What new loop will keep holding when no one is watching?”
Coherence over Certainty
Binary thinking worships certainty. Triadism values coherence—patterns that remain stable under pressure and perspective shifts. In practice, that means asking: Does this belief or model continue to hold across personal experience, shared scrutiny, and system behavior? When it fails, where does the loop break? Coherence is humbler than truth-claims and far more useful.
From Arguments to Diagrams
Arguments try to win a line. Diagrams try to reveal a loop. If this sounds abstract, try it right now with any stuck topic in your life. Replace the urge to assert with the urge to draw.
A quick exercise
- Pick a stuck belief. “Social media is ruining attention,” for example.
- Map the subjective layer. How does your attention actually feel during/after scrolling? What emotions co-occur?
- Map the intersubjective layer. What norms (reply time, visibility pressure) and design rhetorics (“for you”) are in play? What stories your circle tells about “being online”?
- Map the structural layer. What incentive systems (ad markets, ranking) and device affordances (infinite scroll) drive behavior regardless of intent?
- Trace the loop. Draw arrows. Where can a small change cascade? (e.g., notification batch windows → altered felt-state → new group norm → less engagement → ranking shift)
Notice what happens: you stop preaching and start designing. You move from blame to levers.
Language as a Design Tool
If perception renders and culture coordinates, language is not a label—it is a design instrument. The phrases we choose install defaults in other minds. “Users” versus “people,” “content” versus “speech,” “resources” versus “forests”: each term rearranges the triad. Triadism asks you to speak as if words adjust loops—because they do.
Installing the Compass
To keep from sliding back into either/or, carry a simple compass. Before you declare, diagram. Before you conclude, test coherence. Before you optimize, ask which layer you’re starving.
What Triadism Is Not
- It is not relativism. Coherence fails or holds; the loop answers.
- It is not a dismissal of facts. It is a refusal to pretend facts travel without vehicles.
- It is not a rejection of clarity. It is clarity about where clarity lives.
Living as an Interface
When the binary loosens its grip, daily life becomes less of a courtroom and more of a studio. You are not the judge of reality; you are a designer of loops. In your relationships, you will hear not just content but coordination. In your work, you will optimize not just tasks but the ecosystem they depend on. In your learning, you will stop hunting for the perfect take and start building models that can survive contact with the world.
We were raised to choose sides. The invitation now is to choose layers, to move among them with fluency, and to compose arrangements that hold. Draw first, argue later. If you must pick a side, pick the side of the loop.