One of the things I’m most interested in is how people live their lives according to stories. Whether that means their religion, their culture, the media, their own personal history, or whatever. I like to look at all these things and compare how they work as “story-systems.”

One of the models I’ve been working on for understanding them is this whole connection between fundamentalism and what I like to call “brand identity.” In religion, fundamentalists are people whose interpretations of sacred texts and teachings are usually very strict, and frequently very literal. Not a lot of wiggle-room, you could say.

The “brand identity” of a religion, in this case, is pretty much cast in stone. Like, if you say “Jesus is a space alien,” you’re going to piss off X-number of mainstream Christians, because that concept does not compute with the established tenets of their guiding stories.

I think all story-systems by which we live our life have brand identity. Like saying “Luke Skywalker rides around on his pet unicorn,” that also won’t jive for people who know are really into Star Wars. Or, likewise, the concept that “George W. Bush, and other elements in our government are out to subvert democracy,” is going to immediately piss off X-number of average Americans whose guiding story system is everything they hear and believe on the evening news.

This brings me to Fahrenheit 9/11, which I am off to see in a matter of minutes. I’ve been watching news “coverage” about the movie, and I’ve seen again and again this knee-jerk reaction. Almost as though the fundamentalist American media story-system’s immune system is attacking the item which falls outside of it’s brand identity.

When you have something that falls outside the brand identity of a really serious ideological story-system, you’re going to arouse all kinds of attacks and angry words, like “evil” and “demonic”. Because what doesn’t compute inside somebody’s story-system is going to be immediately lumped into whatever is the negative-archetype in the system. In the case of this movie, most people in mainstream media seem to be levelling words like “slanted, propaganda, irresponsible.” But none of the people saying these things against this movie would ever think to point these same criticisms at George W. Bush himself. Because in their story-system, he’s the hero. He’s the only thing stopping us from these fucking terrorists.

Anyway, I have more to say about this, and I’m sure I’ll have even more to say after I see the movie. Until then…