The Thin Metaphysics of the Steely Age

Triangularism

For years I carried too much metaphysical weight: hiraeth, land‑mysticism, ancestral echoes, perennial philosophy, the ache for unity and eternity. All of it stirred something in me, but none of it changed how life actually works. None of it strengthened discipline, clarified duty, or stabilised a household. It enriched thought, but didn’t improve behaviour. As my wife says, it doesn’t change the price of eggs.

So the Steely Age needs a different kind of metaphysics — thinner, cleaner, irreducible. Something that honours depth without pretending to be a cure. Something that explains the human sense of meaning without burdening life with cosmic architecture.

Oddly enough, the shape of that metaphysics came from Trecco Bay Holiday Camp. There’s a chapel on site — a strange, almost equilateral triangular building with no obvious religious markers. We used to joke that it must be a temple to Triangularism, a made‑up faith with no doctrine except the shape of the building.

Triangularism is a non‑hierarchical triangle of three basic modalities. No ladder, no cosmology, no spiritual ranking — just the minimum structure needed to account for depth, unity, and the human ache for meaning.

1. Universal Soul

There is interiority in conscious beings. Awareness is real. Depth is real. Meaning is real. Humans sense unity and eternity because something in us is capable of sensing them. This doesn’t imply doctrine or salvation. It simply acknowledges that inner life exists.

2. Universal Order

Reality has structure. Not commandments, not cosmic laws — just order. Patterns, consequences, limits. Life works better when we respect how things actually function. Boundaries matter. Responsibility stabilises. Chaos destroys. Universal Order is fit, not fate.

3. Universal Life‑Force

Existence carries vitality. Not a deity, not a pantheon — just the basic energy of life: growth, emergence, momentum. This explains why nature resets us, why silence feels full, why hiraeth feels alive. It does not instruct or demand belief. It is energy, not authority.

These three modalities are the simplest metaphysics that still feel honest. Remove one, and the whole thing collapses. Add anything more, and it becomes burdensome.

Triangularism explains the human sense of depth without pretending to cure anything. It explains the pull of nature without turning it into doctrine. It explains order without moralising it. It explains consciousness without inflating it.

This is metaphysics stripped to the bone — the thin metaphysics of the Steely Age. Enough to honour my spiritual side but not enough to distort a life that I want to be built on clarity, duty, kin, and solid ground.