That’s how I first thought of this concept, I guess 😛

I DID consider naming it something less “clickbait-y” but didn’t because I couldn’t think of a better name, or a better reason to change 🤣

In any case, I will cut to the chase immediately (🌚) -

the one & one we’re talking about here are individuals who are connecting - the people we usually call I and You, or the One and the Other, and the third thing we’re referring to, is the relation between them.

💡Technically, the other is also ‘a one’ - the outside of my boundary could be the inside of another’s boundary :)

Where there is a one and an other, there is always a relation between them

“Wait!”, you might argue - going by our understanding of relations (defined through intersecting experiences), why should there always be a relation between two individuals?

To be frank, there are several grades of looseness in the way we have defined relations - for example, I could argue that any two people who are alive at the same time must have intersecting experiences owing to the connected nature of the world we live in.

On the other hand I could also say that unless the individuals in question are actually combining their interaction sequences through communication, it would not be sensible to talk about them having a relation.

Honestly, these scenarios both fit the definition, and the transition between them just requires individuals to discuss events that they have both observed/experienced!

For the purposes of our discussion however, I think it would be useful to define close relations - this could be on the basis of our desire to maintain them (through conversation) ; viz: If I want to talk to you, we have a close relation 😛

🌺Or more precisely, the more I want to talk to you, the closer a relation we have!

Another equivalent way to think of this would be on the basis of the distinction between you ****and they - the more I refer to someone as ‘you’ (as opposed to ‘they’), **the closer our relation.

The statement about relations I believe to be true in general (and loosely 🌚), but understanding what a loose statement means requires context and I think that would be furthered if we consider close relations to start with 😁

The key points here are these -

Because both I and You ultimately experience things inside our own boundary, our perception of each other and our relation is also something internal to each of us.

However, the interactions between us can actually be said to happen outside of both of us (in the sense that a third person could sensibly claim to have observed our interactions)

This relation then, is the third, somewhat independent entity that emerges from the interactions between two individuals. In fact, the relation IS what these individuals would say they “know” about each other - we cannot have access to another’s internal state, but having a shared experience (the relation) for which each of us have corresponding and interlocking internal states is the next best thing 😁

What this does is that it allows us to see relations as the way to gain information about things outside of us - this perspective is considered to be useful in a wide range of situations starting from knowing a friend/spouse, to practical learning modules in school and college, as well as ‘work experience’ (or the allied ‘work experience in a related 😉 field’) 😛