What Is the Third World?

Let us start out mystically, not to say kabbalistically, by pointing out that the number THREE corresponds to the planet Jupiter and according to ancient teachings represents idealism, knowledge at a higher level, a tendency to take long journeys, and religiosity. THREE is also said to be a symbol of optimism, mobility, and expansionism, as well as of the holy trinity of Soul, Body, and Reason. Life in a triangle. Hermes Trismegistus once wrote the famous formula thus: “as above, so below.” Hermes Trismegistus, Master of Masters to the Third Power, is believed to have left behind 1,200 works (numerologically added up, the digits in that figure add up to 3). However, that revolutionary statement is what has endured through the centuries fresh and undiluted. The formula recurs in symbolic form in the six-pointed star – two equilateral triangles one-third superimposed on each other (or interpenetrating each other)… two worlds invading and interpenetrating each other: this one on the bottom and the other one on top… Or us on top and them on the bottom… As you wish. Worlds interconnect, overlap, and remain far away from one another. The inhabitants of the First World carry within them the Second and Third Worlds, while those of the Third World simultaneously have the First and Second on their chest. Or in their dining room, where the television rules. Or in their housing papers. Every third resident of the Philippines is hungry; the third intifada is raging in Palestine; a third front has opened in Mexico (conducting ideological warfare via the Internet); every third German has existential problems; every third doctor in Berlin is unemployed; in Liberia corruption is cubed…