The Political Mind, G. Lakoff

The Political mind by Lakoff





[Thought: small business owners think of corporate “business” the same “frame” that they think of themselves…as “business men”. How can we change that frame, so that to vote for “corporations” is to vote against their own self-interest.]



Classic: The rags to riches narrative (p. 29).

No American narrative for: The Cheap Labor Trap: “a ladder with no rungs.”



Classic: reinvention of the self.



American Redemptive narrative.



Was Anna Nicole Smith a “Innocent Ingenue” : a sweet, smart woman, trying to make her way in a man’s world—the Marilyn Monroe narrative (p30); or a “Gold Digger”? They are mutually exclusive narratives, “Pick one and it will hide the other.” (31).



The Protective father narrative.



“We live our narratives” (p33).



“My goal as a cognitive scientist and a citizen is to make the cognitive unconscious as conscious as possible, to make reflexive decisions reglective.” (p. 34).



“When you accept a particular narrative, you ignore or hide realities that contradict it.” (37)



“The deep narratives are fixed in the brain: the synapses of the neural circuits characterizing them have been so strengthened that the highly general, deep narratives are permanently parts of our brains.”



“…each word is defined relative to at least one conceptual frame. (reference to Charles Fillmore) Those frames evoke other frames in the system. Understanding involves drawing out the logic of the frame…What cognitive semanticists have found is that we think in terms of systems of concepts, systems that fit together and make sense (43).



“When we apply this technique of analysis [cognitive semantics] to political speeches, interviews, call-ins on talk shows, op.eds.,…certain recurring patterns of thought emerge—general modes of thought based on assumptions about what is the right thing to do….98 percept of it is unconscious [I would say preconscious], unseen, but making sense of what is actually said.”



“Behind every progressive policy lies a single moral value: empathy, together with the responsibility and strength to act on that empathy.” (p. 47). “The ethics of care.” The role of government is protection and empowerment.



Deregulation and privatization do not eliminate government, they only make it unaccountable and take away it’s moral mission. It merely shifts it to corporations, to private sector, and the ethics of profit with not public accountability. (p. 63).



Adam Smith was not a “conservative”62:



Health care is not a commodity. 66



Mythical narrative in conservative thought (p. 68-69)



Biconceptualism (or contradictions in worldview and values); the values of Saturday night (drinking, gambling, etc.) and Sunday morning. 71



The folk theory of moral essences, and conservative moral unconscousious. 79



Why are fundamentalist Christians conservatives: they view god as a stict father. Authority, obedience, discipline, punishment, good and evil. 80.



The nation as family metaphor: 75-82. Strict vs. nurturing (gender neutral).



The brain, primary metaphors (family), and government: a Governing institution is a family. 85-86.



The moral foundations of our society are being changed, transformed into a conservative, strict father, moral system. 91



There are dramatic (characters, plots, etc.) and somatic (emotional) structures and textures of our brains. 93.



Metaphorical thought governs moral thought and action..especially in politics. 94



The moral accounting metaphor: 94 “Well-being is wealth.



Moral Accounting is the basis of the philosophy of utilitarianism—the greatest good for the greatest number. 95 The rail yard switchman example: switch one way, one dies, switch the other way, 4 dies. “Moral arithmetic.”



The Moral Order metaphor: the logic behind the metaphor p. 98. What is natural is good. Natural hierarchies are good. God-man, Man-Nature, Adults-children, Western culture-non Western culture, American-other nations, men-women, Whites-non-whites, Christian-non-christian. The “divine right of kings” ; power and wealth is seen as a sign of morality and purity, hence a deserved social status; the Great Chain of Being..the lion, the most powerful preditors, the “king of beastas” and portrayed as noble. 99



‘Reverse Moral Order” metaphor: the oppressed are more moral than their oppressors.



Morality is Cleanliness metaphor: purification rituals; “wash your sins away.” 100



Morality is Well-being: we feel good when we do good. Prewired for empathy and cooperation.



“The metaphors of morality arise from bodily experiences of well-being.” “They are not ‘mere’ metaphors…The tell us what the heart of morality is”. 101



“Empathy is at the center of the progressive moral worldview.” 101



“Empathy is normal, and it takes a special education (such as basic training in the army), a special heartlessness, or a brain injury, to disengage it.” 102.



We are hardwired for empathy..mirror neurons.



Conservative often us the fear framework; Progressives use the empathy frame, responsibility and hope. 105



Morality is care vs. morality is Obedience to Authority. (nurturing parent, strick father model).



Why is “manliness” a political issue: It “fits” with the “strict father” metaphor (106).



Scooter Libby: he was loyal to the authority (GW) and therefore virtuous. 107



The existence of two different models of family, in the presence of the primary metaphor of a Governing Institution is Family, gives rise to two very different ways of conceptualizing governing institutions, including different moral worldviews and modes of thought. “These arise unconsciously.” 107



Progressive Christianity has a nurturing parent model for God;



A conservative fundamentalist Christian “might well have”…”God as a strict parent threatening the punishment of eternal damnation for violating God’s commandments…” 108 (is there research on this?)



There are evangelicals who are environmentalists; conservatives who believe in environmental controls. (biconceptualism)



One may support coal mines to support jobs, or to protect corporate profits. “Reasons matter” 110



“Democracy is too important to leave the shaping of the brains of American’s to authoritarians.”



“A New Consciousness”



“A deep ecological consciousness is also a spiritual consciousness: it encompasses our deepest connections to the world and to each other, if is fundamentally moral, it acknowledges gratitude, and it evokes aw every day. Real reason is emotional, and an ecological consciousness has aw as it’s central emotion.” 123



Prototypes and Reagan’s “Welfare Queen” who drove a Cadillac :160 Reagan used the welfare queen myth while campaigning in the south. What made this possible were strict father framings: morality requires discipline; discipline in the market leads to prosperity; a lack of honest prosperity means laziness, lack of discipline, and immorality. To be against Welfare was to be against good white taxpayers supporting lazy uppity blacks.



Immigrants are the new “welfare queens”. 161



The conservative “bad apple” frame: Libby, Abu Ghraib, Enron (Lay), why does the bad apple frame work? It’s the Hero-Villain narrative, and more difficult to discuss systemic, ideological, or institutional villains, e.g., a “captured regulatory system” and privateering. 165-167. [“Government, socialism, are ideological villains]



Causation: The strict father model, “responsibility” is focused on the individual, reward and punishment. The nurturing parent model requires that responsibility be shared, that problems can be individual and/or systemic. For example, what is the cause of crime: bad people in the conservative frame; in the progressive frame bad people AND systemic issues of culture, discrimination, and lack of education. 188



Direct causation, and the primary metaphor of Causes are forces, is easy to understand [it’s “experience near”]; systemic causation is more diffuse and difficult to understand [experience far].



Cognitive semantics. 197



Political psychology: J.T. Jost , “Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition,” Psychological Bulletin 129, no. 3 (may 2003), 339-375. Politicial conservative personality was marked by a need for authoritarianism and dogmaticism (or an intolerance of ambiguity, the epistemic and existential needs of a conservative person included a need for closure (in order to avoid uncertainty); regulatory focus (in order to cultivate discipline), and terror management. Or “conservatives show a higher personal need for order, structure, and closure. 198



Evolution selects groups on the basis of in-group competition, not competition—whether ants, biological films, or human beings.”205 (reference to H. Kern Reeve and Bert Holldobler)



The concept of 19th century “self-interest,” “utility,” and universal rationality is central to economic theory and political theory. Market’s are persons, with a “invisible hand”. Well being is reduced to economic utility. 206



Democrats put themselves in an untenable position when they argue from utility when they are really motivated by empathy. By arguing within the frame of the utility narrative, they fail to trigger empathy and the moral narrative, and they set themselves up for criticism from conservatives, who are specialists in the narrative of utility. 207



They set themselves up for being a “special interest” themselves, courting voting blocks. 209



Foreign policy metaphors: Nations are persons acting out of self-interest to maximize it’s military “strength”, economic “health” economic, and military “influence”. This rational action model “excludes culture, religion, national identity, social and political structure, the nature and level of development, etc.”210



Nation as Person includes “Adult and Children States, where maturity is industrialization”. Thus the nonindustrial nations are seen as “developing” or “underdeveloped” nations. …”that they should take the advise of the adult/industrialized nations as to how to develop (accept “free market” economics) or face “fiscal discipline” from the IMF and World Bank.210



Nation as person is related to national “competition,” and this competition is a zero sum game. John Nash: revolutionized “zero-sum game theory” with the “Nash equilibrium”, or the application of non-zero sum game strategies. 211



In literal models, “there are no alternative interpretations of the facts being modeled—no alternative framings.”



”’Externalized’ costs are outside the model.” Frames oversimplify reality. Frames stylize the facts, simplify and thereby cast a shadow on facts not noticed by the model. 218



The “cost” of pollution, was traditionally outside of the business model as an “externality”…something that taxpayers must pay to clean up, pay to filter water, costs to the health care system, etc.



The “cost” of gasoline includes “hidden costs” outside the Commercial Event frame”, ten’s of billions of dollars in subsidies to oil companies for exploration, billions of dollars a year for Coast Guard and Navy protection of oil tankers, billions of dollars a year in military costs to protect the operations of American oil companies abroad. 219



“Infrastructure costs are outside the model, while taxes are not”: “taxpayers put together their common wealth to build an infrastructure for everyone to use, especially in doing business. Highways, communications satellite system, the Internetf, the educational system for training employees, the banking system for making low cost loans available, the judicial system for adjudicating contract disputes, the SEC for making the stock market possible. 219



The model contains no cost for using the model itself” : the cold war, zero-sum model of Mutual Assured Destruction, created a arms race that was extremely expensive, and the current abundance and spread of fissionable material. 219



The model is taken as defining reality: “When you are applying the model, you are not only using all the metaphors defining the model but also the metaphors fitting the model to the stylized facts; that is , to a model of reality that is also not literal.” 219 [the financial crisis and the quant].



“The model is taken as defining what it means for a human being to be rational…it is often seen as natural for people to act so as to maximize their self-interest (or profit) and unnatural for them not to. Those who profit most are therefore seen as doing what comes natural, and those who profit much less are seen as irrational, unnatural, lesser beings who don’t deserve much no matter how hard they work.” 220



non-zero sum solutions…win-win situations. 221



Good summary of “real reason” , reflective vs. reflexive thought. 223



Cognitive bias:

Reflexive biases that effect Reflective judgements:



1. Optimism bias: Generals of war, policy makers, 35% of americans who think they will be in the top 1% of income earners.

2. Fundamental attribution error: people tend to overemphasize personality, character, or essence based explanations, rather than situation based explanations: Everyone has an “essence” (liberal, Islamofacist, conservative) that governs their behavior, rather than situational causes. Fits into the Hero (good)-Villian narrative.

3. The illusion of control: people exaggerate the control they have over important outcomes.

4. Reactive devaluation: a proposal is worth less because another side has offered it.

5. Risk aversion: a gambler refusing to cut his losses: the “cut and run” metaphor.

6. The salient exemplar effect: citing a well-known example of a rare phenomenon tends to make people believe the phenomena has a high probability.

These biases are based on the reflective [preconscious] unconscious use of metaphor, framing, prototyping, etc. 227-229



The Power of language, and the power of language in politics.n 231



“Don’t think of an elephant”: you can’t do it because you cannot consciously control your own neural system [which produces the image as you hear the word, just like questions, assertions, and words automatically produce frames for interpretations. To activate a frame is to activate a worldview—a word activates a whole system of frames and metaphors.



“The more that system is activated, the stronger its synapses become, the more entrenched it is in your brain—all without your conscious awareness. That is why the conservative message machine [echo chamber of Fox news, wall street journal, talk radio] operating over 35 years, has been so effective.” 234



The frames and narratives of the word “tax relief” p. activiates the “Rescue from Affliction” metaphors and narrative: “…those taxed are victims” the government is the villain, and opponents of taxation are heroes. Thus, “tax relief” makes sense in conservative worldview.

“…there are contexts in which “tax relief” does’t make sense. Suppose you are thinking from a progressive worldview, in which the role of government is to protect and empower citizens—to make possible highways, communication systems, public schools, the banking system, the stock market, the courts, and in addition to protect us not just by the use of force, but in the areas of health, disasters, clean air and water, civil rights, consumer protection, and so on. From this perspective, taxes make possible our freedom to, in the case of empowerment.” So in what sense is paying taxes an “affliction” we need relief from?237



“It is possible to understand taxes as making the good things in America happen and to literally feel good about contributing to the good of the country.” 238