Wells triplet
From Neoredemptive
A pattern for exploring cultural phenomena highlighted by David Wells in his various books. The pattern works by taking an adjective and combining it with three separate suffixes:
- -ity: The state of the culture being characterized by the adjective.
- -ization: The processes which drive the culture to take on the properties of the adjective.
- -ism: Doctrines and patterns of thought which lend credibility and legitimacy to the properties and processes so-described.
The triplet (or trichotomy) can be easily applied to many traits we would us to describe our own culture; e.g., "modern", "postmodern", "industrial", "secular".
An essential insight to the triplet is that it implicitly calls into question which of the three are cause and effect of each other and how the three interplay as a culture transitions from being characterized by an antonym to indifference to the adjective in question.
