It's your favourite narrator again. This time, I have a book story for you. It all started in the beginning.
In the beginning, there was no way, no rule, no time worth mentioning. Of course there were many ways and many rules and many times, just all too simple, all too primitive and forgettable. We couldn't know better, because better never existed, yet. Better had to be thought out, imagined, conceptualised, invented, experienced, refined, experienced again, improved upon, perfected, opposed, vanquished, almost forgotten, before reemerging again, and again, in that order. Then better became a tradition worth saving, until it had to be forgotten, again. Then, better became a jest, a chant, a complain, a bedtime story, a joke and a myth, in that order. For many millennium, the myth captured the hearts and minds of a vast majority of all populations through thousands of generations, as thousands of better stories emerged. All until one monk decided to pick one of the versions, his preferred one, and copy it identical on dozens of sheets. One of these sheets made its way into a book. The book had captured thousands upon thousands of similar sheets coming from dozens upon dozens of different monks. And without anyone knowing about their single origin, approximately half of the book was telling stories about better, stories having evolved differently from one another. The other half of the book came from another story, one about worse, which had similar origins. After the book raised to prominence, probably because it was a preaching tool, and let's be honest, there were not many books around, the world ended up being sliced in two equal parts: one believing in better, the other looking for worse.
People started to fight each other about the book and its strange meanings. Everyone had an opinion. Only few people recognised the true origins of most of the stories in the book. These people kept to themselves and never talked about what they knew. Instead, they started exploiting the people who believed in the book, and made loads of gold in the process. Their offsprings are still in the business. Then, another book was written, one about a man and his many friends and foes, explaining his personal vision and his own understanding of better and worse. That book became an ever bigger hit. The man's followers started to tell about how that other book was really the sequel to the first book, so they ended up putting both books into one, which was not an easy task. The resulting book being way too big, they had to edit it. One clever next generation monk decided to edit the dual book in a really original way: instead of just throwing out random parts of both books, he decided to choose which parts to keep and which parts to bury, according to his own personal preferences. The resulting version of the book was not only slimmer, it had been custom made. Obviously, that next generation monk was being pedantic, but one had to admit he really had an eye for consistency. So the new book became a much greater hit compared to the first version, even if it's still all about better or worse, or better and worse. By the way, quite a few books in many languages started to pop up here and there, always about a man and his vision about better and worse. Many of these books gathered immense attention and lots of hard core fans. Armies of fans actually, and these armies of fans are still fighting each other until this very day.
Evidently, many generations of scholars from the whole planet created an industry about explaining the true meanings behind the very muddy significance of better or worse, while some pushing it to the point of explaining how things can both be better and worse at the same time. And of course, many more armies were continuously rising, again and again. In truth, never some few books about only two things ever created such turmoil. Then some geniuses came up with a not so novel concept: just to repeat stories about what other people say about one book or another, so no need to read any book. A bit like in the old times, before books happened, and stories started to vary wildly. Then other geniuses came up with this gem: instead of making the stories about a book about a man about better and worse, why not make this all about the man, because in the end, who cares about better or worse, really? So, many new stories about the same man started floating, including some about his second coming. And bam! It all became a huge hit, again! Many huge hits actually, as they not only made new stories about the man or his second coming, they drew comic books about him, cartoons, movies, TV shows, songs, even music genres, and of course, many more books. Not to say the previous books were forgotten, but you know, they had to make it all new, because why not.
In the line of previous geniuses that came before, some new genius even pushed it much further: instead of competing with other stories about anything else than the man, why not outlaw all other stories we don't wanna know about, because you know, we want the man to occupy all the shelves in libraries. So they started burning the other books, until the only books remaining were all about the man, or another, depending on reader's location. Anyway, as things went down, some people started complaining: what about better and worse? Well, not enough people cared for better or worse anymore. Talking about the book was still popular, especially if you could quote it, but either reading the book went out of fashion, or people just lied about having read a book about a man about his vision about better or worse, or better and worse.
The end of fascination for better or worse started to spread everywhere, and soon, only stories about the man were in fashion, while some outsiders started a new trend, as they not only got uninterested by stories about better or worse, they also got fed up about stories about any man, and decided to move on. What these folks really wanted were stories about themselves. They individually started to imagine a world where they were the one everyone talked about. Of course, they often lied about loving the stories about the man, so they could appeal to more people and broaden their following, or just avoid getting cancelled. But hey, who cared anyway? And just like that, caring ended up being scrapped and dumped at the same depot they buried better and worse in. Right now, the world is still split in two: one half pretending to care about better or worse but only interested in stories about the man, while the other half is pretending to care about stories about the man so they can really tell all and show all about themselves to others who couldn't care less. That's a serious pickle we find ourselves in. And guess what's coming next? Robots pretending to be people pretending to care about stories about the man so you end up buying stuff they sell. Good night folks.