[3] The Three Powers
The Three Powers (of Humanity) is a Frame using the third systems shape of the Semantic Ontology Framework (SOF): [3] The Trinity, which lays out the three types of motion in a system — Source, Cycle, and Drive — as the three main phases of system development. The Three Powers identifies the core human capacity that should rule all value, virtue, and action in each phase of system development, or each type of motion, wherever it occurs in a system.
Origins: The Genesis Creation Story
The Three Powers is based on the Genesis creation story sacred to three major world religions: Islam, Judaism, and Christianity.
God said, “Let’s make humanity in our image, after our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky, and over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” God created humanity in his own image. In God’s image he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them. God said to them, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Yahweh God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate and keep it.
Genesis 1:26-28, 2:15
In the story, God does three main things that imbue man with three capacities or responsibilities:
- He creates humanity in his own image.
- He charges humanity to be fruitful and multiply (as he has done with other animals).
- He gives humanity dominion over creation.
His first action, as a creative act of authorship, gives humanity our Source capacity: to be a creator in the image of The Creator. This authorship of God gives man the co-creating authority inherent in the next two capacities. His second action, is a direct command that establishes core human work and the Cycle of our days and lives: to be fruitful in a way that fills the Earth with our influence. Finally, His third action relinquishes (“let”, v.26) a gift of space to use the capacity of our authority over creation as its caretaker, the inevitable out-working of the proceeding two capacities (Drive).
In the frame, then, we name these three capacities derived from God’s three actions: Creativity, Fruitfulness, and Sovereignty:
Creativity
Let’s make humanity in our image, after our likeness.
God created humanity in his own image. In God’s image he created them; male and female he created them.
Fruitfulness
—
God blessed them. God said to them, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth..
Sovereignty
Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky, and over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.
…and pacify it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.
Yahweh God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate and keep it.
God’s invitation to the divine community for the creation of man, “in our image, after our likeness” is a formula also used in Gen 5:1, 3. In that context, it’s the formula is again used concerning God’s creation of Adam, the first human, but also Adam’s ‘creation’ of Seth, “a son in his own likeness, after his image” (v. 5).
Creativity
Our core identity is
to be creators whose
lives are defined by
producing good
rather than by
consumption.
Fruitfulness
We work to express
our identity in the
fruit of our spirit,
soul, and body in a
way that benefits all
who experience it and
so that it will evolve
and grow as it spreads.
Sovereignty
Our species is
uniquely powerful, so
we have a destiny to
reign over our world,
not to destroy or
exploit it, but to bring
it holistic peace.
Media
PNG Limited to console 
SVG with clickable links.
