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Human minds are joined together by story, not by DNA. If there is no story, no myth, then there are no human qualities at all – full stop. Qualities, believed since Plato’s time to be eternal (good, evil, justice), in fact, have no independent existence; they are rather symptoms of something, alone, that is real: human story. Aristotle (or perhaps his students) did not understand the significance that Plato created a story of Socrates, not a philosophy. Significantly, Aristotle’s work (his students’ notes) did not replace Plato’s story with new story – and this fact has to be critically faced. Aristotle did not even for a moment accept that Socrates’ method – the Socratic method – was, itself, a story of searching his friends for clarity, for love, for friendships, for joys. Aristotle, or his students, completely misunderstood the teachings of Plato and Socrates. Socrates’ path to joy was the act of story making about men – to cause the young men he loved to fall in love with his stories – Socrates’ story of finding confusion, then clarity, then love, then justice, in other men.

Since Aristotle did not have a story to tell, he promptly set out to comment on mere things that had no independent existence. If there is no story, then there is no existence. Aristotle has been honored in the early modern age only because he seemed to catalog for medieval man all the knowledge they lost in the Dark Ages. Rome could tolerate Aristotle since he had no story to tell, and thus nothing to oppose the power story of Rome.

There is no independent existence of good or evil, there are only human stories of good that form our conceptions on that quality. Some of these stories may have been events, even “historical” events. But in the moment after any historical human event, they instantly are translated into story. Every human event must be translated. Immediately after any event something strange happens: story. After a serious accident, no one tells exactly what happened, each party merely tells its story, even the witnesses try to reconstruct fragments of what they remember from story. There is no objective reality about any event on earth.

Human reality, in fact, did not exist before there were stories made by men. That’s a large statement. I insist that humans, alone, can conceive of the qualities of good, evil, or justice; but these concepts exist only in the context of a story, and each story has different good and evil scenarios. There was no good, evil, or justice before there were men with stories to tell.

I will ask my reader to note the connection. Human experience with good and evil has always been connected to a story of good and evil. Evil does not appear by itself, and it does not go away without a human resolution (in story). Show me your concept of evil, or good, or your idea of love, and I will show you the story where they were formed. This is how I make proof of Story Theory. Still, there is a great prejudice for the claim of earth over our minds.

Dr. Johnson, who kicked his foot against a rock, to prove the existence of pain – proved nothing. It proved only that he told a story of his pain in the act of kicking the rock. First, pain has no information if we do not accept to sense it (a phenomenon that takes some mastery of how the mind works, but not unknown in techniques of mind discipline). Second, his companion (Boswell), and the reader, could feel nothing of Johnson’s pain and could only accept the testimony of the rock-kicker. In both instances we have examples of mere story.

Dr. Johnson did not prove the reality of physical phenomenon, he merely told the story of an untrained mind that accepts the sensation of pain, and convinced his companion of such a proof of pain, and thus a story of supposed reality of the human. Pain, as any other physical phenomenon, is, at best, a strong suggestion – a suggestion we chose to accept. I am not a master, but I have proven in experience that there is pain only if it is feared, anticipated, and accepted. The only reality is the story the mind makes.

We have many accounts of military pilots shot from behind while flying; their minds focused on combat, and never realized any pain until they saw their own blood. A master will tell us that only a common, untrained mind must live with pain, or any other story of physical phenomenon. There is the appearance of much pain on earth, in so far as our experiences of earth limit our dominion over our perceptions. More powerful stories (on other planets) can allow our minds even greater dominion of conceptualizing. This is the force and gift of story.

This book attempts a search for honesty in human conceptualizing. Western philosophy is not honest since it cannot address or understand its own words and concepts. Any text that attempts to construct truth with a discussion of isolated words and terms (without story) is a dishonest species of propaganda. Only a text that has story can portend to be the starting point of any human ideal, any human joy, any human achievement, any human justification, or finally, any human truth.

Western men have spent many fine words, many delicate speeches, on the value and praise of honesty. I will test if the love of honesty is so pure.

Chapters 2 - 14 continue in Chandos Grid