Some days ago I was asked if I knew of the record label HMV. I couldn't recall
having heard of it before I saw the 
magazine/book/whatever the asker was reading. There was a familiar picture of
a dog listening to an old gramophone. Instantly I knew the 
letters meant His Master's Voice and the dog was Thomas Edison's dog,
listening to a record his master had made before he died to comfort 
the dog. I cannot tell where I have read the story originally. Only when I saw
the dog did I connect all the pieces - the label wasn't 
enough. What is significant is how quickly I remembered the story. 

We humans live by stories. People talk about information age but I think that
much more than information, truth or facts we are moved by 
stories and narratives. In that respect we haven't gotten too far although the
ways of spreading these stories have became manifold in 
the last 30 or so years. We used to make sense of the world by orally told
stories. Then came along books, the press, tv and the 
internet with all their capabilities. I don't think they've really gotten us
nowhere. Stories such as the one about the dog and his 
deceased master still move and influence us. 

We interpret the news according to the general narratives current in our
culture and sub cultures we belong to.  "USA is bad" is one 
national myth that we cherish. For some it has basis in their life, they have
perhaps marched against Viet Nam War or for Salvador 
Allende. Even these people have before been influenced by the socialist
stories and views of world. For others, mostly the young today 
it just is so. The leftist youngsters (me included) of today have perhaps
heard that USA is Iraq for the oil, big US companies are 
benefitting from the war and so on. 

How do we know? We have been told so and we spread these stories. They are not
stories because they are false, but  because they a) are 
not based on our own experience or to some direct source of information b) are
used to give meaning to actions which by themselves are 
morally neutral. Thus it is almost equally valid to say Bush is a hero for
dismantling the dictator in Iraq and for  
saying he's a criminal for medling in the affairs of a sovereign country. When
we know that USA is bad we choose to disregard the 
positive stories about it. 

Propagandists and populists use the way we interpret the world by stories for
their advantage. Tell a story people want to hear and they 
will believe it. This is because the causes and effects in our globalized
complex world are so complicated that we cannot easily 
comprehend them more than the caveman could comprehend the natural world
around him 20.000 years ago. Meaning is what makes us human:
 the ability of our brains to attach interpretations to arbitrary signs. It is
the human disease - love it or hate, you're stuck 
with it. That is also why it is so important to support the developing of
critical literacy in our schools. There more we are aware of 
this tendency in ourselves and the use that is made of it by journalists,
propagandists, advertisers, you name it, the better we will be 
able to judge for ourselves. Not based on stories alone anymore. .