Storytelling and Threes

Have you ever wondered

 

• What the three little pigs, the three blind mice, Goldilocks and the three bears, the Three Musketeers, the three wise men and the Three Stooges have in common?

 

• Why the three-act structure is the dominant approach to screenwriting in Hollywood?

 

• Why three bullet points are more effective than two or four?

 

The Rule of Three works in stories due to the presence of the concise, memorable patterns that I mentioned above.  But even if that wasn’t the case, the number three has been used so widely throughout some of the most memorable works from our childhood, it’s likely that we are preconditioned to respond favorably to elements grouped in threes.

 

From Brian Clark, How to Use the “Rule of Three” to
Create Engaging Content at http://www.copyblogger.com/rule-of-three/

Julie Knows Threes

See Julie Paschkis’ blog of  August 15, 2014.  She writes about threes in storytelling, which is one of my themes in Chapter 9, “Threes in Art and Popular Culture.”

There's Wisdom in Threes

New and ancient philosophers have presented many of their best ideas in threes. Benjamin Franklin said, “There are three faithful friends: an old wife, an old dog, and ready money.” And this: “There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one's self.” Buddha said, “Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.” Contemporary author and philosopher the late Stephen Covey said, “There are three constants in life...change, choice and principles.”  

“The principles of living greatly include the capacity to face trouble with courage, disappointment with cheerfulness, and trial with humility,” said Thomas S. Monson, a religious leader. Ancient Druidic wisdom contained in Celtic Triads includes, “The three foundations of learning: seeing much; studying much; and suffering much.” Confucius said, “Wisdom, compassion, and courage are the three universally recognized moral qualities of men. There are three methods to gaining wisdom. The first is reflection, which is the highest. The second is limitation, which is the easiest. The third is experience, which is the bitterest.” From a Chinese proverb, we learn: “Tell me, I will forget. Show me, I will remember. Involve me, I will understand.” 

Plato noted that “Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.” Franklin and others divided humankind into three groups. Franklin said, “All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are movable, and those that move.” Plato came at it from a different point of view when he said, “There are three classes of men; lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, and lovers of gain.” Leonardo da Vinci saw a world where there are “three classes of people: those who see, those who see when they are shown, those who do not see.” Similarly, Niccolo Machiavelli writes in The Prince, “There are three classes of intellects: one which comprehends by itself; another which appreciates what others comprehend; and a third which neither comprehends by itself nor by the showing of others; the first is the most excellent, the second is good, and the third is useless.” 

From Threes, Chapter One, “The Wonder of Threes”

An Economist's Big Three

Here we are at the beginning of another school year.  What an appropriate time, then, to share the opening of economist and CATO Institute scholar Arnold Kling’s essay published in 2007.   

“Education is an example of an issue where free-market proponents were betrayed by the Republicans during the Bush Administration. In fact, on the domestic issues that I consider important, my take on the Republican Party in the 2006 elections was, “With friends like you, who needs enemies?” This essay lays out what I would like to see on the agenda, and how I will be keeping score.

“I start by taking seriously the forecast of economic historian Robert Fogel, which is that our economy will be increasingly dominated by education, health care and leisure. Therefore, the focus of the free-market agenda should be on limiting government’s encroachments into those areas. The encroachment comes from public education, government spending on health care, and government management of retirement savings.

“The goals of the free-market agenda should be:

1. Increase the proportion of children who are schooled outside of the public school system.
2. Increase the proportion of health care spending that is paid for directly by consumers.
3. Limit the fraction of people’s lives where they collect Social Security.”

A Holiday from Labor

Matthew Maguire, a machinist, first proposed the Labor Day holiday in 1882 while serving as secretary of the CLU (Central Labor Union) of New York. Others argue that Peter J. McGuire of the AFL (American Federation of Labor) proposed a Labor Day in May 1882, after witnessing the annual labor festival in Toronto, Canada. Oregon was the first state to make Labor Day a holiday in 1887. By the time it became a federal holiday in 1894, 30 U.S. states officially celebrated Labor Day. Following the deaths of a number of workers at the hands of the U.S. military and U.S. marshals during the Pullman Strike, President Grover Cleveland reconciled with the labor movement. Fearing further conflict, Congress made Labor Day a national holiday in just six days after the end of the strike. 

The September date originally chosen by the CLU of New York was preferred over the more widespread International Workers' Day (May Day or May 1 in more than 80 countries) because President Cleveland was concerned an observance on the latter date would be associated with the nascent Communist, Syndicalist and Anarchist movements that, though distinct from one another, had rallied to commemorate the Haymarket Affair on International Workers' Day.  John L. Lewis started the CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations) trade union, in 1932. The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 required union leaders, including leaders of the CIO, to swear they were not Communists. That provision in the act was later found to be unconstitutional. The CIO merged with the AFL to become the AFL-CIO in 1955. 

See Threes, Chapter Eight, “Threes in Business and Technology” for more.

 

Three Types of Attitude

Anything, we are taught, can be accomplished with the right attitude.  Attitudes, though, come in varying degrees, particularly when they are part of a relationship with another person. 

 

There are three categories of human attitude, writes Meera Seshadri.  The first category includes those who have a ''You're right, I'm wrong'' attitude.  The second category has an ''I'm right, you're wrong'' attitude.  The third group believes in ''You're right, so am I.''

 

Those under "You're right, I'm wrong" category are generally subservient and agree easily with views of other people.  Those who belong to "I'm right, you're wrong" category are often vocal and vehement.  They often embark on 'sparring sessions' with everyone just to prove what they believe is universally true.   

 

Those who believe "You're right and so am I" are the most prudent, pragmatic and wise.  Though they are prepared to assimilate good points from other people (and even acknowledge another’s good qualities), they live life on self-dictated terms.  Being good listeners, they respect other viewpoints but finally do what they deem to be right.  They never take devious routes to attain success, nor do they pull someone down so they to climb the ladder.  They are so confident of themselves that they don't bother proving their skills and intelligence before others.   

 

From Threes, Chapter Five, “Threes in Psychology and Sociology”

Lucy Time and Hawking Time

In Luc Besson’s movie, Lucy, starring Scarlett Johannson, Lucy delivers a soliloquy on the meaning of time. 

She explains, in part, “Humans consider themselves unique, so they've rooted their whole theory of existence on their uniqueness. ‘One’ is their unit of ‘measure’—but it’s not. All social systems we've put into place are a mere sketch: ‘one plus one equals two,’ that's all we've learned, but one plus one has never equaled two— there are in fact no numbers and no letters….Time is the only true unit of measure, it gives proof to the existence of matter, without time, we don’t exist.”  Others have glimpsed time.

Stephen Hawking (1942—) is one of the world's renowned theoretical physicists.  His view of time relies on earlier thinking by Newton and Einstein. Hawking visualizes time as three arrows: the thermodynamic arrow, the cosmological arrow, and the psychological arrow. The concept of these arrows helps explain why we see time as moving forward and what this flow of time actually is in terms of the expansion and contraction of the universe. These arrows help distinguish the past from the future, and they give time a direction. 

“In our current state of the universe, all these arrows are pointing in the same direction, however, this will not always be the case, according to Hawking. The thermodynamic arrow is derived from the second law of thermodynamics, which states that in any closed system, disorder (entropy) always increases with time. Take an example of a glass falling from a table. The glass begins in a state of heightened order; it is all in one piece. As time passes, the glass hits the floor, and shatters into many pieces, increasing the disorder, or entropy, tremendously.

See Threes, Chapter Four, “Threes and Science” for more.