December 1, 2013

Thank you, PCIntern! Outstanding allegory...

A professor from Virginia Tech wrote there are two basic ways to communicate knowledge (or "meaning&quot : "maps" and "stories."

So, to make something memorable requires a good story. Think, "Hansel and Gretel." Parents can't feed kids and are forced to abandom them in the forest. Kids, being human, don't want that and leave bread crumbs to get back. Birds eat bread trail. Kids get lost and find witch's cottage...etc." The details may not be the same on each telling, but the basic elements are the same.

Complicated things require maps: Owners manual for a car, a map showing the location of towns, roads, bridges, etc. Almost no one can memorize all the details required, hence they must be written down and referenced. The thing is, until the advent of smartphones, no one could carry around a reference library with them.

OTOH: Hear a good story ONCE -- as a kid or as an adult -- and we don't forget. That's why Karl Rove and his ilk were so quick to attack Joseph Wilson through Valerie Plame: No way could the truth get into the public mind before their twisted version of reality -- Saddam Hussein and Iraq were behind 9-11 and planned to use WMDs.

In the case of the assassination of President Kennedy, the story that the "specialists" wanted heard first and loudest was that Oswald did it alone. Seeing what's happened to the country in the intervening 50 years, the fact the "Money trumps peace" crowd get ahead, shows the effectiveness of their story and the magic bullet theory on which it's based.

The assassinations of President Kennedy, Dr. King, and Sen. Kennedy hold so much information, they each require library shelves to hold all the information known and written about them. No mind I know can hold, let alone cross-reference, all the information known about each of them. It's why discussion and sharing of ideas is so important: The free sharing of information, ideas and perspectives why democracy works.

Putting the complex into a story form requires an artist or an expert in information science. Edward Tufte comes to mind.



Another guy who grokked it was Mark Lombardi. We talked about him on DU, way back when.

In the cases of the assassinations of America's liberal, progressive and DEMOCRATIC leadership, the story line we are told by the corporate press is "lone nut." Those who study the maps, with all their faults, soon see there is a lot more to the stories.

Thanks for sharing your charts and story with us, PCIntern. Those who care about justice and democracy will remember.