Maybe all that is useful is "more useful" or " less useful".
Whether story or law or whatever, we are dealing with statements - or
packages of statements - that are useful. Are those with more
general usefulness better, truer, etc?
John Holland suggests in his work with complex adaptive systems and
innovation that the general forms first and is a fallback position.
The more specific come into play in specific circumstances but, if
not useful, then an organism falls back to the general. It is the
combination and interaction of these that is valuable and the idea of
more or less true or rigth or better does not apply in this model.
-- Michael McMaster Michael@kbddean.demon.co.uk