George Lakoff’s new cognitive science (power of story!) book “The Political Mind” is out today. Subtitle: “Why You Can’t Understand 21st-Century American Politics with an 18th-Century Brain.”
Diane Rehm is interviewing him right now on NPR:
June 2, 2008 Linguist George Lakoff on what recent brain research demonstrates about the power of language to shape unconscious thought… and why he believes anti-democratic forces in this country will prevail unless progressives start using language that can change brains.
I just heard him respond to a caller that, “MERE EDUCATION WON”T HELP. . . Unless you learn how thinking really works, from grade school on, you’re gonna be susceptible . . . you teach people about training and metaphors, that the Father of the Country isn’t “Daddy”, as a normal way of thinking . . .
I’ll add the audio link later tonight when it’s available.
On June 2, 2008, my book The Political Mind will be published. It is a popular introduction to what has been discovered about the brain and the mind over the past 30 years and why it matters for politics. I will be on a book tour during the month of June, and will spend considerable time after that promoting the ideas in the book.
. . .My years at Rockridge have also put me in a position to do some socially useful consulting. For advocacy groups doing full service communications, I’ll have the opportunity to help through Fenton Communications. I will also be available for other progressive consulting work, both inside and outside of politics per se. Since I will no longer be part of a 501(c)(3) organization, I will now be free to work directly with political groups and candidates and on issues of legislation.
The accumulated Rockridge research puts progressives in a position to do the Big Job, namely, seriously challenging conservatives on the major ideas in American political life that they have been dominating in public discourse: the nature of security, government, the market, taxes, foreign policy, freedom, fairness, morality, religion, patriotism, education, character, responsibility, and on and on.
What is needed is a major progressive effort to build a progressive cognitive infrastructure, so that progressive legislators need never hesitate to express their beliefs out of fear that the conservative message machine will attack them for it.
I will be campaigning for progressives to support the development of such an infrastructure.
. . . Our research group is now developing a wiki to make public the work of the group. We hope it will be available by fall. I’ll also be activating my personal website, GeorgeLakoff.com, and updating my Linguistics Department site. The materials on the Rockridge site will continue to be available.
And now he’s describing Scott McClellan as playing out the Redemption Narrative . . .he says to change things for the body politic, we require am “alternative narrative” that gets repeated over and over until it begins to change people’s brains. The conceptual frames that make thinking possible in the first place. We can’t just will ourselves to think a certain way and it’s emotional as well as logical.
Now he’s talking about the differences in how progressives and conservatives see “causation” and he sees Clinton and Obama as opposite types of leaders. Hmmm. . . .
At the end he explained how it isn’t any one frame but working out a whole system of mutually reinforcing frames, that makes your desired change possible.
Apparently, every time one frame in the system comes up in discussion or debate, even when you attack and try to refute it, you wind up activating it in your listeners’ subconscious — and because it connects to all the other frames for that world view, which have been embedded by repetition and actually changed people’s brains, the whole thing gets reinforced all over again, even in the minds of people who might THINK you made the better argument and believe they agree with your politics, rather than the other system.
Frames, or scripts are the esimple, easy building blocks of a whole system of thought. We basically cannot think without frames, so the pseudodebate some sci-blog types have — about framing or not when trying to shape public understanding of evolution, say — isn’t very scientific. Framing makes thought possible, it seems, and there WILL be framing like it or not. The only question is whether you’ll influence it.
Okay, I bought the book on opening day — I’m a sucker for books I want to read NOW.
Here’s part of the jacket blurb:
Re the subtitle — an 18th century brain is what our founding fathers shared, yes? Doesn’t that mean they couldn’t possibly have conceived of some of the ways their words, frames, thinking and decisions would affect us in the 21st?
[...] Putting public library books on hold is “really expensive?” But what about the school system’s fuel usage just for bus transportation, never mind the community cost of books and buildings and teachers? What’s wrong with this librarian isn’t the price of gas high or low, or the state of the economy or education — it’s simply that she has the wrong power of story in her brain. [...]
[...] Talk about Power of Story! More evidence for Lakoff’s new book, that the stories we tell and believe actually change brains as well as minds [...]
[...] Howard Gardner’s “Changing Minds” in all its education brilliance, and Lakoff’s ““The Political Mind: “Why You Can’t Understand 21st-Century American Pol… Why I don’t often use political and religious labels for myself. Why I won’t play party [...]
[...] rumors and even outright lies would logically seem to be a matter of substantive evidence, yet cognitive scientists are proving it’s really not. It’s power of story. And even as I say this and you might believe me, we both will continue to rationalize our own [...]
Coming Sunday in the NYT, this review (not exactly a valentine!)
Geoff Nunberg, another linguist I love, wrote this review for the New Republic, of the clash between Steven Pinker (ANOTHER thinker I love) and Lakoff –
Frame Game