The Threefold Braid

Happiness, harmony, and prosperity are three necessary elements of flourishing.

Apr 16, 2025

If you desire the Threefold Braid,
Avoid initiating harm against the innocent,
Join others willing to do the same,
And lock arms in solidarity.
You will be a country.

Happiness, Harmony, and Prosperity are a threefold braid. Together, they represent combined elements of a flourishing community in which each strand strengthens the others.

Happiness encompasses fulfillment, virtue, and life-meaning;
Harmony embodies peace, cooperation, and pluralism;
Prosperity includes not just material abundance but opportunity.

Woven together, they create a resilient whole. Yet, if any strand is missing, the braid can unravel, leading to instability.

Happiness Without Harmony or Prosperity

Imagine a person living a life of virtue and meaning. She might be an artist devoted to a craft, yet she is trapped in a society torn apart by conflict and scarcity.

She can only retreat into her art for so long.

Without peace or cooperation, chaotic forces besiege the artist. Her neighbors distrust each other, and violence visits in frightening bursts. Without opportunities to prosper, her talents nourish her spirit, but her body thirsts and starves. She cannot access the resources to sustain her work, much less share it with others. Fulfillment becomes a flickering candle, vulnerable to the storms of discord and want around her. Over time, isolation and deprivation erode her sense of purpose.

Happiness alone cannot endure.

Harmony Without Happiness or Prosperity

Picture a peaceful community where cooperation and pluralism thrive, but Happiness and Prosperity are absent. This society might resemble a tightly knit village that avoids conflict through conformity and sacrifice. Yet its people are unfulfilled. Their lives are devoid of meaning. They coexist, but their virtues are hollow—routine acts of compliance rather than expressions of purpose.

Without Prosperity, opportunities are scarce. There are no avenues for growth, innovation, or personal ambition. The village may be tranquil enough, but it is stagnant. Eventually, suppressed desires and unrealized potential will breed resentment, threatening the fragile peace.

Prosperity Without Happiness or Harmony

A wealthy city buzzes with opportunities. Prosperity reigns here, but Happiness and Harmony are missing. Citizens enjoy material abundance—careers, technologies, luxuries—but they lack fulfillment or virtue in community. Life feels empty, as people chase status but find no meaning. Without Harmony, cooperation dissolves into cutthroat competition for treasure and status; pluralism gives way to division, and predatory groups vie for dominance.

The city’s wealth becomes a glittering façade, masking distrust and alienation. Prosperity alone makes for brittle souls. Economic shocks or social unrest will ruin the town, as there’s no shared sense of belonging or peace to hold it together.

The Braid’s Secret

Happiness, Harmony, and Prosperity are interdependent. Any two without the third create a fragile circumstance, prone to collapse or dissolution. Flourishing requires weaving all three—fulfillment rooted in meaning, peace built on cooperation, and abundance grounded in opportunity.

Only together can they form an enduring braid.

The braid’s secret begins in the epigraph: The more people are willing to renounce the initiation of harm against the innocent, the more likely we can coexist and experience the strength of the Triune Braid in communities we fashion together.