Open Source Democracy | Page 3

patterns of nature, but to describe and influence
the courses of politics, economics and power. In such a world, stories
compete solely on the basis of their ability to win believers; to be
understood as real. When the Pharaoh or King is treated as if he were a
god, his subjects are actively participating in the conceit. But he still
needed to prove his potency in real ways, and at regular intervals, in
order to ensure their continued participation. However, if the ruler
could somehow get his followers to accept the story of his divine
authority as historical fact, then he need prove nothing. The story
justifies itself and is accepted as a reality.
In a sense, early civilisation was really just the process through which
older, weaker people used stories to keep younger, stronger people
from vying for their power. By the time the young were old enough to
know what was going on, they were too invested in the system, or too
physically weak themselves, to risk exposing the stories as myths.
More positively, these stories provided enough societal continuity for
some developments that spanned generations to take root.
The Old Testament, for example, is basically the repeated story of how
younger sons attempt to outwit their fathers for an inherited birth right.
Of course, this is simply allegory for the Israelites' supplanting of the
first-born civilisation, Egypt. But even those who understood the story
as metaphor rather than historical fact continued to pass it on for the
ethical tradition it contained: one of a people attempting to enact social
justice rather than simply receive it.
Storytelling: communication and media
Since Biblical times we have been living in a world where the stories
we use to describe and predict our reality have been presented as truth
and mistaken for fact. These narratives, and their tellers, compete for
believers in two ways: through the content of the stories and through

the medium or tools through which the stories are told. The content of a
story might be considered the what, where the technology through
which the story is transmitted can be considered the how. In moments
when new technologies of storytelling develop, the competitive value
of the medium can be more influential than the value of the message.
Exclusive access to the how of storytelling lets a storyteller monopolise
the what. In ancient times, people were captivated by the epic
storyteller as much for his ability to remember thousands of lines of
text as for the actual content of the Iliad or Odyssey. Likewise, a
television program or commercial holds us in its spell as much through
the magic of broadcasting technology as its script. Whoever has power
to get inside that magic box has the power to write the story we end up
believing.
We don't call the stuff on television 'programming' for nothing. The
people making television are not programming our TV sets or their
evening schedules; they are programming us. We use the dial to select
which program we are going to receive and then we submit to it. This is
not so dangerous in itself; but the less understanding and control we
have over exactly what is fed to us through the tube, the more
vulnerable we are to the whims of our programmers.
For most of us, what goes on in the television set is magic. Before the
age of VCRs and camcorders it was even more so. The creation and
broadcast of a television program was a magic act. Whoever has his
image in that box must be special. Back in the 1960s, Walter Cronkite
used to end his newscast with the assertion: "and that's the way it is". It
was his ability to appear in the magic box that gave him the tremendous
authority necessary to lay claim to the absolute truth.
I have always recoiled when this rhetorical advantage is exploited by
those who have the power to monopolise a medium. Consider, for
example, a scene in the third Star Wars movie, Return of the Jedi. Luke
and Hans Solo have landed on an alien moon and are taken prisoner by
a tribe of little furry creatures called Ewoks. In an effort to win their
liberation, Luke's two robots tell the Ewoks the story of their heroes'
struggle against the dark forces of the Empire. C3PO, the golden

android, relates the tale while little R2D2 projects holographic images
of battling spaceships. The Ewoks are dazzled by R2's special effects
and engrossed in C3PO's tale: the how and the what. They are so
moved by the story that they not only release their prisoners but fight a
violent war on their behalf! What if the Empire's villainous protector,
Darth Vader, had arrived on the alien moon first and told his side of the
story,