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The Political Mind: Why You Can't Understand 21st-Century American Politics with an 18th-Century Brain | 
 enlarge | Author: George Lakoff
Publisher: Viking Adult
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95
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Rating:  18 reviews
Sales Rank: 8444
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 4.1
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.1 x 1.3
ISBN: 0670019275
Dewey Decimal Number: 320.01
EAN: 9780670019274
ASIN: 0670019275
Publication Date: May 29, 2008
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Product Description
In Whats the Matter with Kansas?, Thomas Frank pointed out that a great number of Americans actually vote against their own interests. In The Political Mind, George Lakoff explains why.
As it turns out, human beings are not the rational creatures weve so long imagined ourselves to be. Ideas, morals, and values do not exist somewhere outside the body, ready to be examined and put to use. Instead, they exist quite literally inside the brainand they take physical shape there. For example, we form particular kinds of narratives in our minds just like we form specific muscle memories such as typing or dancing, and then we fit new information into those narratives. Getting that information out of one narrative type and into anotheror building a whole new narrative altogethercan be as hard as learning to play the banjo. Changing your mind isnt like changing your bodyits the same thing.
But as long as progressive politicians and activists persist in believing that people use an objective system of reasoning to decide on their politics, the Democrats will continue to lose elections. They must wrest control of the terms of the debate from their opponents rather than accepting their frame and trying to argue within it.
This passionate, erudite, and groundbreaking book will appeal to readers of Steven Pinker and Thomas Frank. It is a fascinating read for anyone interested in how the mind works, how society works, and how they work together.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 13 more reviews...
 Finally I Understand What a Frame Is November 29, 2008
All Lakoff's previous books were excellent but left me wondering, "What's a frame?" This book answers that question, and goes well beyond that. If you haven't read any of Lakoff's books, start with this one. It is by far the best!
The last chapter, which contains no politics, is an overview of the New 21st-Century Enlightenment we are entering. This chapter really is superb, destined to be a classic that changes our philosophical understanding of the world. And since philosophy determines what type of government people will adopt, politics is a natural field to use for examples. This book is like Isaac Newton's Principia. It's full of new knowledge, not about what we think, but how we think. How we go about understanding and reasoning about abstract concepts. If I tried to summarize the book I'd end up quoting the entire book.
18th-Century Enlightenment said reason can solve all problems. If that were so then all these controversial issues would have been solved by now. Progressives and conservatives both reason quite well, yet they still arrive at opposite conclusions. Discussing the issues doesn't work. Yet we still insist on doing that because 18th-Century Enlightenment tells us it should work.
Rather than talking about issues you disagree on, which is exactly the wrong thing to do, you should instead talk about issues which you agree on. Find what issue a conservative has adopted a progressive view on, and discuss that issue. By discussing an issue a conservative has adopted a progressive view on, you are helping to reinforce their progressive mode of thinking. It's brain exercise! The more they exercise their progressive mode of thinking, the stronger it gets. The more you get them to discuss issues where they already have adopted a progressive view, the more their progressive mode of thinking is strengthened. As their progressive mode of thinking gets exercised and strengthened, they will tend more and more to use progressive thinking on other issues.
It's that simple. And that different.
Creating a Progressive Frame of Empathy November 24, 2008
This is the fourth book by George Lakoff that I've read and as always he has a great message for liberals. `The Political Mind' focuses on the misguided belief held by liberals that most voters are rational actors making voting decisions based on logic and self interest. In this world the roll of liberal leadership is to present ideas using empirical evidence and logical arguments banking on the belief that if voters only knew the true facts they would undoubtedly vote Democrat. Conservatives, on the other hand, target emotions and effectively create frames on which to hang their ideas. Despite Liberals faith in the rational voter, emotion and framing has been crushing logic until it's taken two endless military conflicts and what looks to be a total collapse of the American financial system to swing the pendulum. One need look no further than climate change and evolution to see that logic and evidence frequently fly right out the window.
Mr. Lakoff's proposal is that liberals need to create a complete narrative, or frame, in order to sell progressive ideals. The author is encouraging liberals to take a holistic view of politics rather than address each issue piecemeal. A progressive frame would be built around empathy as opposed to the conservative frame of authority, obedience and discipline. Mr. Lakoff writes, "To get the public to adopt progressive moral position you have to activate progressive moral thought in them by openly - and constantly - stressing morality, not just the interest of demographic groups" In the past progressives have been unwittingly promoting the conservative frame by using their language with phrases like `tax burden' and `war on terror'.
I have a few issues with Mr. Lakoff's books. The first is that his books are often so similar to prior books that they seem like just rehashes. If you've read the fantastic book `Moral Politics' you pretty much get most of what's presented in `The Political Mind'. Another problem is that the author tries desperately hard to categorize conservatives and liberals into strict father and nurturing parent. I would argue that this simplification as a model fails as often as it succeeds and the author tries way too hard to try and shoehorn each group into their category. The idea that conservatives crave authority and obedience fails when you consider the conservative purported belief in smaller decentralized government. President Clinton was twice elected but conservatives had zero respect for his position of as leader and consistently accused him of overreaching his authority.
Within the same paragraph the author blasts his own argument apart when he refers to Bob Dole seeing the government as the meddling strict father interfering in the lives of his grown children and then switches immediately to Dubya Bush's claim that, as a wartime president, he can wiretap citizens at will is the case. In the later case the nation is the Family, the president is the Parent and the Citizens are the Family members. So how can Conservatives see the government as both the meddlesome parent AND the protective parent? If conservatives are so much about authority why would they stress deregulation and smaller government while turning a blind eye to Bush's power grab. My belief is that it has less to do with strict father and nurturing parent and more to do with conservatives treating politics like a contact sport. It's the Vince Lombardi philosophy that `winning isn't everything, it's the only thing'.
`The Political Mind' often reads like a textbook and that's not necessarily a criticism since it is an instruction manual on selling ideas. My only concern is that we might see increasingly sophisticated psychological warfare employed on voters from both sides targeting the very core of human thought. It's scary to think that rational thought can so easily be usurped by clever marketing.
Framed again November 17, 2008
There is a very nice description of the essentials of narrative theory and its relation to personality theory to start but then the focus is on frames and two narratives in particular, those of the strict father and empathy. This becomes essentially the Kantian Enlightenment narrative versus the evolution (complex systems) narrative with argument that contemporary neuroscience supports the evolution narrative instead of the Enlightenment narrative. The evolution narrative then becomes the New Enlightenment narrative. Conservatives primarily hold the Enlightenment Narrative and Progressives the New Enlightenment Narrative. (For an interesting sense of how this difference changes the interpretation of a person see his other book "Philosophy in the Flesh")
Abstract but good November 5, 2008
The author, George Lakoff, is an eminent linguist and cognitive scientist who uses this book to coach Democratic candidates and present fascinating material from his area of study. It is readable for the bright layman but gets more abstract in its presentation of neural circuitry and frames of reference than some may like.
 Pseudo Cognitive Science November 4, 2008
2 out of 10 found this review helpful
Nobel physicist Richard Feynman said, "Learn from science that you must doubt the experts. As a matter of fact, I can also define science another way: Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts". Lakoff is such an "expert". His arguments beg the question because he asserts that his claims are facts when they are really hypotheses and theories. He claims that we "know" this and that because of various experiments. Because a hypothesis has been successfully tested once or twice does not make it a fact, a law of nature. The history of science is full of "experts" who asserted, erroneously, that they had discovered a scientific fact. Lakoff's "cognitive science" is really left wing politics, an Orwellian nightmare. His brand of "science" is more like Johnnie Cochran's brand of "law": "If the glove doesn't fit, you must acquit".
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