The source of things political is always an idea. Ideas can be short-term -- they vanish rapidly. But many ideas are much longer-term. They have staying power which means their impact on people is wider and deeper.

When longer-term ideas are involved newspapers rarely discuss them. They seem to assume either people know about them or aren't interested. Yet editors shape a lot of daily stories on ideas that hover around their desks. In fact it's these ideas as well as "the latest news" that make people grab a paper along with their breakfast coffee.

But it's a big misunderstanding on the part of editors to assume people are not interested in ideas. The contemporary reality is that much of the human race from the depths of society to its pinnacles is looking for ideas to guide them. We may be living in an Age of Information but also in an Age of Uncertainty. Ideas that provide more than information but some knowledge and maybe even a little wisdom are the only light we have in this Uncertainty.

So another reason why editors don't want to stray from their stock-in-trade ideas is that rather than too few there are too many ideas around. A lot of those ideas are frightening, repugnant or incomprehensible to them. Better to stick with the old ideas, keep advertisers happy, and turn those red bottom lines black.

All of us humans now live in "one world." Too many events have sources, connections and effects which go way beyond national boundaries. Many occur in places far away from the home country. CNN can take you right onto the streets of some far-away village. But it can't take you into the ideas behind those events.

Ideas in themselves go nowhere except round-and-round in the head. But when applied they can give direction to people. Longer-lasting ideas give longer-lasting direction to many people. A French psychologist writing around 100 years ago, Alfred Fouillée, called such ideas "idées-force," meaning ideas that move you in some direction.

The current Age of Information and Uncertainty is one where old ideas are crumbling. That means a lot of conventional knowledge and wisdom is getting brittle. Information alone can't fill the ideational vacuum, something ordinary people seem to know better than editors and politicians.

The aim of this column, Vectors, is to look at the ideas behind the events. Each week I shall look at one or more ideas that move people at the top, middle and bottom of societies. Some of these ideas I won't like, some I'll like, and most of them I'll probably simply feel are important. My aim is over weeks, months and years to sketch out a landscape of direction-giving ideas at global, national and local levels.

I have lived and travelled in many countries, speak and read several languages, taught history (Chinese) and sociology (American) at the University of California, Berkeley, for over thirty years. Age, experience and a life of thinking give me a certain legitimacy to take larger views of things, seek out the ideas behind them, write about them.