I always wonder whether the third story will ever be told even though it is being lived. But then, the fact that it is being lived also means that it is being told. It only means that you are not in that audience. There is always going to be a competing demand by something else, and that is why you may never find out the truths you have not yet found. That is why you sink your teeth in wherever you find yourself, that is how and why you become blind, deaf and dumb to reason, to fact and to even the reality that does not conform to your own subjective vision of what is and isn’t.
This explains why we all look at the otherness of the second person with so much contempt. It is all so clear to you, so obvious that anyone who sees things different is simply up to mischief, is being hateful, intellectually and morally leprous… you name it. The truth is just so clear even to your antagonist, and it is just so embittering that you are the only one who sees this material fact.
The thing is, the DNA of self-conscious humanity is itself programmed for metaphysical perfection, but then at the cellular organic level, the laws of nature take effect. To attain perfection, you must compete, you must best, you must outgun the external forces that are in the way. The rub is that each cell recognises itself as the only true existence, and does not recognise a second cell it competes with, as itself and the other cell it knows are the only two things that really exist and everything else is just the same forces of nature they must overcome, the obstacle course and gauntlets they must run through to freedom. This is the reason your own body can actually kill itself off. There have been documented case when an immune system goes on the offensive against a vital organ or function and takes it down. Each cell is only bound by its own existential programming, to keep certain things out, to maintain and sustain certain balances, natures and process at the expense of whatever. At the base level, you exist alone and that is why your predisposition to self-interest overrides a conscientious rectitude.
A conscience is a luxury, and when you divest and deconstruct the nature of man you happen on the primal base of humanity that – WILL shock you. It doesn’t matter if the subject is Abubakar Shekau or Mother Theresa, Sultan Abdulmecid or Joseph Konny. This reminds me of chemistry class in secondary school, lessons in chemical bonding in particular. Given certain proportionalities, an outcome is determinate as long as two or more measurable variables remain constant. Same with human beings… as long as they remain human beings upon this earth and subjected to the same classics of Human Civilisation, they will remain textbook human beings that will shock.
Human consciousness is forged in a 3D reality, but is grandfathered in at the ignition of the human soul. This means that we have so far mastered only the zero-sum duality of quantity and quality in time. When you observe an externality, you have to translate it into your own language and down the road, a lot ends up lost in translation… and that is the third story.
In the multidimensional reality a souls is meant to exist, two things or people can both be absolutely right even when they are diametrically opposed. You are dead wrong on an away pitch but solidly right on the home front – same with the second.
Then also, because no one really understands or is equipped to conceptually understand anything other than the extreme ends of a given spectrum of reality, we absolutely hate the middle ground. The middle is not an enemy of either or against the interest of either, it may even advocate for the interests of either faction but because it is neither black nor white, it will not be tolerated – not even grey areas are acceptable. As soon as any is detected, it will be swiftly eradicated.
Human nature is wound to resist and assault the third story much more violently than resisting the devil himself. We have sayings such as “the devil you know is better than the angel you do not” know to prove that. The first person is yourself – and that really is the only thing that exists, according to Descartes at least. The devil is the second person and the two of you make up the dual reality you were created from. You will gladly accept and suffer the devil – that is what you have been doing all your life, but will not tolerate or suffer or ever accept a third story, even if the protagonist is a literal angel. That is because you are unable to conceive the third dimension beyond this duality – and you have learnt the hard way to be hostile to everything, including that which looks and feels like gold. You know the devil, you have been at the receiving end of his evil all your life… but most likely you have never felt the warmth of an angel. Mechanically speaking, the angel should always be preferable to a devil but to the carnal complexities of humanity, the torture of the unknown – the third story – is preferable.
This is a demonstration of how we subliminally agonise and resist widening our horizons beyond the two stories we know, how restricted the agency to look beyond our comfort zones is, to think outside the box, to remember that the world is not just a binary reality made up of just you and then everything else. There is a whole world out there – that is what Prophet Mohammed (SAW) called “China” the third story. You should be in that audience.
