Tonight's book club discusses George Lakoff's
Don't Think of An Elephant. I'll post a summary in the extended entry. People can post their reviews of the entire book or what they thought were the most interesting parts in the comments. Discussion branches off from the reviews / insights.
I find it difficult to write a summary of a book that is already a summary of a series of books. Don’t Think of an Elephant is quite short, and if you have been reading the lefty political blogosphere on a regular basis you have probably already read most of the ideas it contains. I think it took me about two hours, maybe less, to read the entire piece, because I was able to skip large sections when it became clear I had already read them. And I don’t mean I had already read summaries of them—I had actually read that exact order of words before. So, since most people here are probably familiar with the basic premise, I’ll keep the summary short and sweet.
The book is, in short, about the conflict between two mega-frames: the “strict father” frame, which invokes the conservative worldview, and the “nurturant parent” frame, which evokes the progressive worldview. (Personally, I was a little dubious of the nurturant parent frame for the progressive worldview when I first heard about it a few months ago, but after reading the book I feel much more comfortable with it.) These are the two dominant frames within contemporary American politics. In the realm of politics, a “frame” is the political value and idea that is invoked, consciously or unconsciously, by language. In other words, a frame activates a way of thinking about the world that is already present in a person’s mind. As Lakoff writes:
Q: So all I have to do to reframe my issue is think up some sound bit-worthy terms and use them in place of conservative terms?
A: No! Reframing is not just about words and language. Reframing is about ideas. The ideas have to be in place in people’s brain’s before the sound bite can make any sense. (p. 105)
A conservative frame evokes the ideas within the strict father world worldview, while a progressive frame evokes the ideas within the nurturant parent worldview. Now, everyone already understands the strict father and nurturant parent worldview, although 35-40% of the electorate is firmly entrenched in the “strict father” worldview and another 35-40% is entrenched in the “nurturant parent” worldview. The side that wins is the side that is best able to evoke their worldview in the remaining 20-30% of the population through proper framing. As I quoted
the other day from the Rockridge Institute’s website::
There are clear distinctions between the
Nurturant Parent (NP) family and the
Strict Father (SF) family. The logic of the models are contradictory, but we all have both models present in the synapses of our brains--either actively or passively.(...)
What determines how we vote is which model is active and dominant for understanding politics at that time.(...)
Our goal is to activate the progressive model in the non-aligned voters. Activation is done through language--by using a consistent language that reflects and activates progressive values. The same language that rallies a base activates the same worldview for those in the middle.
Conservatives have already figured this out. What they have learned about winning elections is that they have to activate the Strict Father model in more than half of the electorate. Fear is a good way to trigger the strict father model, making it active in our minds, because fear reinforces the basic ideas that the world is a dangerous place and that strict discipline is therefore needed for safety.(...)
There is a myth that voters are lined up in a left-to-right line, and that to gain the support of swing voters, you must move to the center. When progressives move to the right, they lose in two ways, setting up a self-defeating double-whammy:
1) Moving to the right alienates your progressive base.
2) It actually helps conservatives because it activates their model in swing voters.
Notice that conservatives do not gain more voters by moving to the Left. What they do is stick to their strict ideology to activate their model in swing voters by being clear and consistent in policies and messages framed in terms of conservative values.
A frame is not spin or propaganda. As Lakoff writes:
Q: The notion of reframing sounds manipulative. How is framing different from spin or propaganda?
A: Framing is normal. Every sentence we say is framed in some way. When we say what we believe, we are using frames that we think are relatively accurate [in terms of representing our beliefs]. When a conservative uses the “tax relief” frame, chances are that he or she really believes that taxation is an affliction. However frames can also be used manipulatively. The use, for example, of “Clear Skies Act” to name an act that increases air pollution is a manipulative frame. And its used to cover up a weakness that conservatives have, namely that the public doesn’t like legislation that increases air pollution, and so they give it a name that conveys the opposite frame. That’s pure manipulation.
Spin is the manipulative use of a frame.(…)
Propaganda is another manipulative use of framing. Propaganda is an attempt to get the public to adopt a frame that is not true and is known not to be true, for the purpose of gaining or maintaining political control.
The reframing I am suggesting is neither spin nor propaganda. Progressives need to learn to communicate using frames that they really believe, frames that express what their moral views really are.
This is one of the keys to the entire idea of framing: progressives are so weak when it comes to using frames to articulate their beliefs that they do not even know how to talk to themselves about what they believe. We are unable to use short frames to evoke our own ideas, and instead resort to convoluted “hypercognition,” where long descriptions of simple ideas are required to explain our beliefs (read here: Al Gore and John Kerry). Because we have not invested the billions of dollars in think tanks and studies to learn how to talk to each other and evoke our beliefs in short frames, conservatives are far, far superior at framing than are progressives. Because of this, we are unable to evoke our frames in the minds of voters, end up reinforcing the frames of our opponents, and lose because their frame is dominant in the majority of the population.
Lakoff says that we must make the required infrastructure investment in think tanks, books, and language development that are required in order to better evoke our values to ourselves and to the 20-30% of the country that swings from one frame to the other. He notes that right now conservatives are able to invoke their entire worldview in just ten words: Strong Defense, Free Markets, Lower Taxes, Smaller Government and Family Values. However, progressive have a lot of work to do before they can reach that point:
We progressives have a different ten word philosophy, but it won’t be as meaningful yet because it will take us a while to get our values, principles and directions out there. My nomination for a ten word philosophy versus theirs is the following: Stronger America, Better Future, Broad Prosperity, Effective Government, Mutual Responsibility.
He is right—these terms do not have much meaning for us yet, even though terms like “stronger,” “better,” and “future” are definitely progressive. Personally, I’d like to see “free expression” in there somehow, but ten words in not much space. Either way, we must work long and hard before any such ten-word frame can usefully evoke our set of beliefs. Reading Lakoff is a great way to start. Talking to each other is a great way to continue.
Update: I'd like to add my favorite quote from the book, which I beleive is an excellent analyogy for the problems we as Democrats currently face:
The idea of hypercognition comes from a study in Tahiti in the 1950's by the late antrhopologist Bob Levy, who was also a therapist. Levy addressed the questionof why there were so many suicides in Tahiti, and discovered that Tahitians did not have a concept of grief. They felt grief. They experienced it. But they did not have a concept for it or a name for it. They did not see it as a normal emotion. There were no rituals around grief. No grief counseling, nothing like it. They lacked a concept they needed--and ended up committing suicide all too often.
In this analogy, progressives are Tahitians, and our beliefs are grief.
