The Sandwich is a tripartite thing- a thing, fundamentally, of 3 basic, essential elements, without any of which it ceases to be a Sandwich and becomes only half a Sandwich, or something else entirely, which is either nothing at all, or certainly not a Sandwich. These 3 fundamental elements are, I would suggest:
1. A slice or piece of Bread
2. Some kind of Filling, for example Ham
3. Another piece or slice of Bread
This is a definitively tripartite structure- a BFB structure- or more substantively in this case a BHB structure. It contains, in this state, both the necessary and sufficient ingredients to structurally be a sandwich. Like all great scientific theories, and all great scientific designs, Simplicity is of all importance- as Einstein said, a theory should be as simple as possible, but not made simpler. To simplify the Sandwich any further than this basic BFB structure would be to destroy it entirely.
It can of course be added to. The most likely amendment to the above fundamentals would be a bit of spread, fundamentally butter, on one or both of the insides of the pieces of bread, thus giving us the BSFSB structure (if buttered on both pieces), a 5 part structure. Some might argue that at least one side with butter on is so essential to the Sandwich that it is fundamentally a 4 or 5 part thing, but my feeling is that whilst a bit of butter is indeed fundamental this is not so much a part of the fundamental structure of the Sandwich as much as a fundamental ingredient of it. And so conceptually I would argue for a fundamental Holy Trinity of the BFB structure.
The importance of the establishment of this fundamental structure is of course that the greatest fear of all human beings is that there is no true, certain, founding or bedrock principles, rules or structures which underpin their shifting and uncertain existence. Religion, Christianity for example, begins with certain imagined, unprovable assertions- the existence of some kind of all powerful God, his creation of everything etc. until we arrive at Joseph and Mary and the divinely inseminated Jesus Christ, who of course did not have any children and did not have sex etc. To become a Christian you then of course have to believe all of these strange, fanciful fundamental stories, like a child believing firmly in bed time stories- this is called Faith.
Whilst there are 4 protagonists in this rather fanciful, foundational tale there are in effect only 3 of any importance- God, the fatherly, powerful, over-arching one, Mary, the woman whose only real use or importance is for God to have sex with her and her to give birth to a son after which she is redundant, and of course the prodigal son, Jesus who is as pure and perfect and lovely as the driven snow and goes about doing great things until he is butchered and strung up by horrible humanity and powerful non-Christians.
The parallel with the Sandwich is somewhat limited, but it is important to note the importance of 3 fundamental, founding parts of the initial structure- the Father, the Son and classically the Holy Spirit- in which poor old Mary, the woman, is airbrushed out entirely as completely pointless, other than as a baby carrying vehicle for the egotism of man-Gods and male-Spirits.
Anyone who has read the Da Vinci Code now knows that actually there was another protagonist in the original story- Mary Magdalene- who was Jesus's wife, lover and friend with whom they had all sorts of offspring. If one goes down this line of story telling then it still though suggests 3 main protagonists- God, Jesus and Mary Magdelene; God uses Jesus's mother Mary as an insemination vehicle, a bit like an alien, and gets good old Joseph to mind out for her and get a donkey every so often, but these are all a means to an end. The story really starts with Jesus and Mary Magdelene having a good old time in bed, a sexy duo, the amorous couple, but somehow looked over, and made possible by weird old Uncle/Grandad God.
At any rate this is enough to suggest that Christianity, at least, is hot on 3s in its founding myths- The Father, The Son and the Holy Spirit, or God, Mary and Jesus, or God, Jesus and Mary Magdalene. 3 is fundamental, perhaps because 1 is just too lonely a fundamental starting place, 2 is just too 'nuclear couple' or Road Buddy like, and 3 gives a sense of family, or society, without having to spiral outwards into 4, 5, 6 or 10, at which point it all gets a bit much, confusing and a bit Ancient Greece. It seems that the human brain at the present time can just about handle 3 related things, 3 related protagonists, or a structure of 3.
We can see this if we look at geometry. A triangle is, as we know, a thing of 3 points, and it is well known to be a very strong structure. A structure of 1 point is just a point, a bit like a piece of ham. It might be great, but it is just what it is. A two point structure is just a straight line joining two dots- a sort of stick. Again this may be great, but it isn't really a thing, it is a bit like having two bits of bread with no filling. It is only when we reach 3 points that we have a real, interesting, thing, such as two bits of bread with a bit of ham in the middle.
To believe in the Sandwich, and its 3-ness, requires no faith what so ever in supernatural myths, Spirits, Holy Fathers, ancient fanciful stories or anything of the like. Sandwich Theories is based entirely on the immediately graspable empiricism of the physical, symbolic and sensory existence of the Sandwich- both as a thing and as an idea. We do not know where it came from (actually we do it was purportedly the 4th Earl of Sandwich, but where did he come from? etc.) but regardless of its non-fanciful genesis the Sandwich does not rest on its founding history- it is a thing in its own right, regardless of the exact details of its birth and evolution.
'Two's company, Three is a Crowd'. This was a mantra of the 20th Century which believed, romantically, in the sad little nuclear couple in the suburbs sending the kiddies off to school, shopping on Saturday and church on Sunday. This was the mantra of a kind of ideology of the Socio-pathic Duo, sucking the life out of each other in some kind of private fortress against the world. This Duo-istic romanticism has of course resulted in nothing but mental break downs, divorces, children brought up on strange domestic fantasies reflected in Walt Disney Cartoons, and the development of the energy sapping, Socio-pathic 'Rom Com' movie genre.
Such 'Duo-ism' has also resulted in the cultural worship and fear of 'the Individual'- as either a lonely Socio-pathic depressive/criminal/gay to be feared and destroyed at all costs as a threat to the fantastical romance of Duo-ism, or on the other hand as a distant, creative genius to be applauded but only as a kind of God or dream of freedom and not something that we mere mortals might be able to achieve- we weaklings need the romantic Duo to survive.
Christianity (pre or post the Da Vinci Code) is of course somewhat to blame for this romantic sickness- it promotes the idea of Joseph and Mary, or Jesus and Mary, as an essential, isolated, nuclear item in the history of humanity- at all times with the creepy, somewhat authoritarian Uncle/Grandad character of God looming over them- who in the first instance has actually been shagging someone else's wife.
If the reproductive, nuclear Duo is in part a product of 20th Century bureaucratic, capitalist and Christian efficiency and control then there is however another kind of Duo not so infected by this bovine nature- the creative, adventurous Duo. From the birth of literature in the guise of Don Quixote and Sancho Panchez the male adventuring Duo has become etched into the cultural memory. Crick and Watson, the inventors of DNA, or something very clever and scientific, are a more up to date example of the adventuring male Duo. Johnson and Boswell are another example of male, journeying companions. But the male-male Duo has tended to suffer from being a bit dick-heavy, and prone to ambling around, or exploring the natural world, or technology, making money and generally keeping one another company in their boyish enthusiasm or loneliness. For this reason the Male-Male duo is, in the 21st Century, lacking a sense of the Avant-Guard. It also tends, like Holmes and Watson, to suffer from 'Leader and Side-Kick' syndrome, and the inevitable status competition between most men either leaves one or the other in a state of subordination, or else creates an unsolvable problem and constant battle.
While there are examples of Male-Female duos most of these tend to be made out of gender stereotypes, with either the man being portrayed as particularly, classically masculine and the woman somewhat dripping over him whilst also fighting him (Indiana Jones for example). Or on the other hand the woman is turned into a kind of dry, male character, for example in detective movies- think 'Mulder and Scully'- almost devoid of femininity beyond the hair and some things sticking out of her chest beneath a shirt.
At any rate the point is only here to arrive back at the number 3. The Three Musketeers, for example. Except that they soon acquire a 4th one, a sort of leader/kid, who then rather messes the whole thing up from the point of view of 3s. But the modern structure is, like the Sandwich, fundamentally one of 3 parts. Reflecting the Sandwich the perfect grouping is, it would suggest, perhaps one woman (the filling), and two men (the bread). Once established they can of course swap positions, and it may turn out that one man is more often the filling and he has the woman and the man at either side of him.
This may sound like innuendo, but the concern is with creative and adventurous threesomes rather than with sexual ones per se. It might of course be the case that a sexual threesome is both creative and adventurous, but I digress. The point is that, in the modern world, if 3 people cannot ride out together, into the world, like a Sandwich, to create, live, be, explore, together, and if there cannot be at least one woman, as an equal, in that party, then they might as well forget it; 3 men is like some kind of Cowboy movie, dick-heavy and smoking the guns, making chit-chat about girls, guns and gangster movies whilst secretly dreaming of an end to their loneliness. 3 women is like some sort of witches' cavern, hippy moon-cup brigade or 1990s Sex and the City Lad-Woman horror show. And Duos are like being stuck in an endless Rom-Com or Socio-pathic, 20th Century relationship, neurotically sucking the life out of each other whilst pumping romance-steroids into the dying carcass. Beyond 3 and you've got the makings of some kind of adolescent gang, political party, football crowd, or church, and the least said about all of those the better.
Viva the 3 Amigos! And Viva the Sandwich, fundamentally a thing of 3.
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