Lakoff - September 21, 2004 Because of Kos, Don't think of an Elephant went to #9. Love to bloggers. James Dean - special guest. His brother ran for president First, questions. Q: The process by which certain inferences are overridden - nation as family doesn't really mean you understand relations to children. How does this work cognitively? Comes from neural theory of metaphor. You're learning with primary metaphors - relationships between two domains. Affection is warmth. You learn this when you're a child - connections. Registered in amigdula (feeling of affections); feeling of warmth elsewhere in the brain - you reinforce connections between the two. Neural circuitry between the two which cements metaphor. If there's neural inhibition between the two, you won't develop the connection. This is the neural mechanism for contradiction. Each perception inhibits the opposite one. Mutual inhibition between the two. Metaphor: I gave him that idea. Still have the idea after you gave it away... even though the metaphor is about physical objects. Know about target domain - the ideas - you know their properties, you know that they can't be actually lost. I can't learn the inference that i've lost the object. It's inconsistent with the target domain. Thus, that piece of the mapping is not learned. You know citizens aren't children. You might map them, but the literal bit wouldn't come through because of the inconsistencies with the target domain. STRATEGIC INITIATIVES A strategic initiative - case where you have a specific proposal... but what you're really trying to get done is something else. 3 types: Multi-domain Slippery slope Wedge Not mutually exclusive. Conservatives used to try to get rid of social programs one at a time. Get rid of a program for disabled. Then they figured out how to get rid of them all at once - tax cuts... starve the beast. If you have Republicans controlling Congress, there's no money for things like that. Create a huge deficit and then there's no money. [This is multi-faceted, multi-domain] Liberals tend not to have really good strategic initiatives. The most effective one they ever had was an accident - endangered species act... then you had to protect habitats... then pollution, property tax, clear-cutting... This one act had very broad effects over many areas. The Republicans noticed that and are trying to get rid of that. Slippery slope initiative. Example: partial birth abortion. There are almost no partial birth abortions. They don't care about this. What this does is allow them to get a particularly gruesome image of abortion out there, which lets them move closer and closer towards getting rid of abortion. What you're really trying to do there is get rid of all abortions. Take prescription drugs (medicare bill). It was a big give-away to drug companies. Conservatives hated it; Gingrich argued that it was a good thing. Gingrich pointed out that it was the first (and necessary) step in getting rid of medicare. It set up private health accounts. Allowed HMOs to compete with Medicare but not vice versa. It was a slippery slope initiative to slowly erode Medicare. There's a cost: that cost is $500B. Getting rid of medicare is part of getting rid of social programs. This is the one that people think has worked. If we want to get rid of them, we need to get rid of this one. Many Demos and press didn't see it as a slippery slope; Ted Kennedy did. Abortion. Wedge issue. It's purpose is to drive a wedge in the minds of Catholics who are Democrats. Catholics who are against abortion but are otherwise liberals. If you listen to the pro-life movement - we're in favor of life, period. (But also in favor of the death penalty.) Not that they're logically in favor of all life. Not in favor pre-natal care or sex education, not in favor of condoms in schools, not in favor of post-natal care, not in favor of public health care for children. They're only pro-life with respect to abortion... not in favor of life with the full spectrum. If you look at strict father morality - who would need an abortion: 1) young woman (teen) who has had sex outside of marriage and doesn't want to have the baby. This is a child who has done something wrong, has sinned and should pay the cost; the father should make the decision about the child (girl's life); 2) career woman who wants to delay child birth. There, whether the husband gets to control. The young woman has done wrong by attracting the man; women have the responsibility. You'll notice this around strict fathers around the world. Conservatives debate on issues that are gray - whether or not a woman's life is at stake (when she's in a family). Abortion itself is an issue that is strategic. New Apollo program. Progressive strategic initiative out there. Much more than Kerry has proposed. Money into the development of alternative forms of energy. Put development funds into the technology - could scientifically resolve foreign oil programs. What makes this strategic: - 1. it makes jobs (4M - not exportable - installing and fixing windmills, solar converters; require skill; have to be done in a single place; distributed around the world). - 2. it's also for health (asthma epidemic - coming from air pollution). - 3. Foreign policy initiative (we don't have to worry about middle east oil) - 4. Can use military for terrorism, not oil. - 5. Third world development initiative (for every dollar spent on foreign worlds, it would be worth 6x that. export the technology - give people elsewhere jobs. they wouldn't have to ruin their ecology, borrow money) - 6. Global warming initiative Most of Clinton's issues were single faceted (extend the hospital stay from 24 hours to 48 hours). Abortion Rights. You've framed it around abortion. Abortion contains the word abort - you've stopped something, failed. Once opened up rights, question of who has rights. Does the fetus have rights? Worse. You're saying that anything that has a right is something good. Right to vote: voting is good. Opens up criticism that these people think abortion is good. If you form a compound, you take the two frames and you blend them together in a single frame. Rights is one frame; abortion is not seen as something good (maybe something necessary), but not something good. As soon as you blend them, you lose the ability to separate them out. Internal contradictions. This should be a freedom from (gov't control), not a freedom to... opens up lots of confusion. ONTO MORAL POLITICS 5 favorite phrases of conservatives: Free enterprise, smaller government, individual responsibility, strong defense, family values. Jointly evoke a strict-father morality. Only make sense when connected to that morality. In theory, people who are poor will rebel simply because of their poverty. In the US, that is not true. People vote not in their self-interest but in their values. Is it possible for a nurturant model to overcome it? Yes. The fact is that most people are not 1-sided; we're raised to know both models. Can the progressives activate the nurturant model in most people and take the country back? Progressives try to move to the right... they end up activating the models of the right and they lose touch with their base. Howard Dean activated the base. Single women didn't vote. 20 million didn't vote the last time. 70% of them are Democrats. Hispanics rarely vote. In Texas, tried everything... couldn't get the Hispanics to vote. In Hispanic culture, you do not get a sense of pride from voting. You don't get respect for voting. Most registration drives don't understand this. .... What is a militant? Strict father means to a nurturing end. Think about bullies... Bill O'Reilly. Does the bully get to control the conversation? If so, there's no point in engaging. You have to be very skilled at techniques to battle the bully: 1) martial arts - use force of other guy's attack to throw him; turn the other guy's frames against him. takes a lot of practice to do this. acutely embarrassing works really well. communicative judo. 2) reframing - never accept the frames... have reframings ready and always reframe, which will infuriate 3) activate the nurturing side (very hard with folks like o'reilly... hey bill, who do you really care about? do you have a family? how do you see your responsibilities to them?) ask about personal nurturance. you may or may not get to politics. get him to reveal a nurturing side. if he succeeds, he'll stop yelling at you. then you've won the communicative framing battle. 4) embarrass him - laugh at him, laugh in his face... rename what he's doing. don't try to win, but try to hold him off and make him look silly. and infuriate. Reframing is usually the way to go. People usually believe that the person on the offensive is right (psychology). Bias that the person who is asking is usually right. You can reframe by asking questions. The person who is calm and in control is usually seen as right. .... Model Citizens and Demons Hillary - goes against everything in the strict father model. She doesn't do mommy; she doesn't do cookies. She's not subservient in any way - voice, stature, anything. Is Cheney the villain or Bush? [Depends if you think that Bush is smart?] Most liberals thought that because he talked about compassion and education that he was a moderate conservative. They think Swartzenegger is moderate. Conservatives picked a few issues that made them appear not as bad as the really bad guys... If you knew anything about his history, you'd know that he's not a good character. Hillary isn't a real model citizen, although she's a demon. Obama fits the model citizen. ... Framing wars. Example will be on Rockridge site. Term paper due last day of classes. The other two assignments - in parallel, together. November 16 for turning these things in. Draft to hand in first - 28th of October of framewars and Luntz for liberals. You might have a strategic initiative. Framing wars - max of 10-12 pages. Write up what you find. .... "balance" is to let corporations do whatever they want man's needs are about nature. those are the values you start with. the liberals have the environmentalists, the experts on their side. to get rid of them, they have to argue for a "common sense approach" (means we don't need experts) junk science industry... anyone who disagrees with us are junk scientists. also, division of the EPA -> split into two parts (pro-business and pro-nature... part that wants to exploit, and part that wants to protect) .... from a progressive perspective, liberals have moved into the center in order to win elections. both sides hate the term liberal from many different directions. hard to rebrand that one. .... Two models of Christianity. There's *nobody* that believes in a complete literal interpretation of the Bible. "The Lord is my shepherd." ::giggle:: "Our father who art in heaven..." don't mean daddy. There are people who believe in a literal interpretation of some parts - which and why is key. To understand the Bible, understand the metaphors. At Yom Kippur, you sing out loud some of the metaphors: God is a father; God is king; God is a lover; God is a shepherd.... If you take the category of father - what are the properties of father. You have someone who has authority in the family (a king); you have someone who loves you (a lover); you have someone who protects you (a shepherd); you have someone who raises you (a vineyard keeper); you have a watchman (a guard); somebody who made you (a potter); someone who shapes you (a smith); someone who leads the way (a helmsmen); metaphor of a chosen people... You as a Jew are supposed to fix the world. God as a father gives rise to all of the other metaphors. God is the infinite - the all powerful, the all knowing, etc. Strict father Christianity. People are born bad and have to be made good. That means that they have to be rewarded/punished (heaven/hell). However.. then Jesus comes into the picture. Redemption through Jesus - part of moral accounting. As Jesus suffers, he builds up moral credit. With that moral credit, he can pay off your sins. He has suffered enough for all humanity for all times. Catch: born-again. Accept Jesus as savior and from now on, follow God's commandments. The way you know is through the minister of your church; the minister tells you what it means to follow God's commandments. Nurturant Christianity. Central concept is grace: metaphorical nurturance. God's grace is an expression of God's love... God is love. Presence of God, closeness of God. Spiritual filling for moral growth. God's grace is a healer. God's grace leads you to be happy, fulfilled. Entails God's protection. Grace cannot be earned. God gives it to you unconditionally (like nurturance). But it has to be accepted, actively. Only through receiving God's grace do you know how to interact with others. To act morally, you must receive God's grace. You have: 1. A view of a nurturant morality on top of Christianity. 2. spiritual life as connection to other people. 3. community service. You get God's grace, but giving it is in service to others. You owe something to others for receiving God's grace - moral accounting. Christ delivers to you God's grace. Conservative Christians know the relation between their religion and their politics; liberals are not organized. There are more liberal Christians.