By Charles Barnard
“If a man knows precisely what he can do to you or what epithet he can hurl against you in order to make you lose your temper, your equilibrium, then he can always keep you under subjection.” The previous quote came from American author, philosopher, theologian, educator, and civil rights leader Howard Thurman. The idea in this quote I want to focus on is the idea that language impacts your emotions and your response. Language, the spoken and written word, shapes internal representations which in turn shapes your state, physiology, and behavior. The epithet hurled at you will shape your internal representation and eventually your behavior – how specifically is under your control.
In a moving lecture, clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson discusses the most irrefutable facts about life. Life is difficult. Life is demanding. Life is heartbreaking. Experience tells us that presupposition is true and explains why we constantly have to battle the negative emotions of fear, anger, grief, hurt, guilt and a host of others. Fear that is a byproduct of being caught in one of these life events is rational, and still manageable. Allowing irrational fear to control us is downright dangerous for us as individuals and for society as a whole. Irrational fear is regularly being manufactured.
Progressives have become masters of using language to frame political messaging. University of California cognitive linguist George Lakoff has been called the intellectual godfather of progressive messaging. Lakoff’s books, Metaphors We Live By (with Mark Johnson), Moral Politics, and Don’t Think of an Elephant are the foundational textbooks on how to use language to shape political behavior. The books are read and used by a large number of Democratic political operatives.
The big idea behind Lakoff’s teaching is that “understanding is inherently metaphorical. We process complex ideas in terms of other, simpler, more primal experiences (spatial and tactile sensations, pictures, basic family relations).” The approach is all about finding the metaphor that best frames the problem and its solutions the way the messenger gains the advantage and wins the idea. It is not about winning the argument on the rational merits of the evidence. It is all about emotions.
Lakoff teaches four essential principles involved in effective framing.
1. Every word evokes a frame.
A common example given is the metaphorical comparison of arguing in the intellectual sense and war. These debates or arguments are often compared by using war terminology. Using the war metaphor will lead to the use of words like attacks and defenses, winners and losers, domination and surrender. Lakoff uses some specific examples:
- He shot down all my arguments.
- Her criticisms were right on target.
- If you use that strategy, he’ll wipe you out.
The point here is we do not have to accept that metaphor for arguing. Debating or arguing is not inherently warlike. Someone chose to use that metaphor and that metaphor can control the frame. Lakoff asks us to “imagine a culture where an argument is viewed as a dance, the participants are seen as performers, and the goal is to perform in a balanced and aesthetically pleasing way.” (Metaphors We Live By, p. 5). Would that metaphor change the frame and how we think of debate and arguments?
2: Words defined within a frame evoke the frame.
In the examples above the frame is the war frame so the words shot down, right on target, and wipe you out elicit the frame – the war metaphor.
3. Negating a frame evokes the frame.
It is very important to remember that when you try to argue against the truth claims of the frame, it forces the representation of the frame. In very simple terms if I say don’t think about the war metaphor because…, the listener has to conjure up the war metaphor to understand my statement. To counter the frame it is always better to reframe – in other words give different meaning to the same frame.
4. Evoking a frame reinforces that frame.
The more often the frame is used the more the brain connects and wires in that metaphorical connection. It becomes a stronger connection the more it is evoked. The idea of branding is to attempt to make deep connections in the brain between the brand and the desired response – Rolaids = relief. As Lakoff writes,
“Framing is the process of choosing words and phrases to communicate an idea in a way that invokes certain metaphorical associations and rules out others. Frames set the vocabulary and metaphors through which an issue can be comprehended and discussed. By consistently invoking a resonant frame, the framing party sets the terms of the debate, shapes the perceptions of the issue, and provides a narrative for possible solutions.”
Politically speaking, in the United States most people think of the nation metaphorically as a family. The frame defines what kind of family. Progressives and conservatives have different frames. Progressives rely on utilizing the nurturant parent frame, which is gender-neutral and projects imagery where both parents play an equal role in raising their children. There are four essential presuppositions in this frame:
- Children are inherently good and can become better.
- Our role is to work on making the world a better place, which is entirely possible
- Parents are responsible for nurturing their children and training them to become nurturers.
- Love protects and nurturing parents deeply love their children
Children develop best through their positive relationships to others…. The obedience of children comes out of their love and respect for their parents, not out of the fear of punishment.
If you empathize with your child, you will provide protection. This comes into politics in many ways. What do you protect your child from? Crime and drugs, certainly. You also protect your child from cars without seat belts, pollution, lead paint, pesticides in food, unscrupulous businessmen, and so on. So progressive politics focuses on environmental protection, worker protection, consumer protection, etc. —Don’t Think of An Elephant, p.12.
Let’s look at how this plays out in the political arena. Progressives fall in line with the nurturant parent metaphorical frame. During the pandemic the nurturant parent frame was evoked in some general principles in managing the pandemic.
- The nurturant parent wants to stop the spread of this deadly virus and save lives so they will quarantine healthy and sick alike (with the exception of “essential” workers) so we can stop the spread of the deadly virus and protect our children.
- The nurturant parent will protect people by mandating everyone wear masks because a nurturant parent understands someone may have Covid and not know it and thereby spread it to someone who may get it and die.
- The nurturant parent will support vaccine mandates because the unvaccinated will be more likely to get sick and put in the hospital taking up very limited critical care beds which will cause some people to die unnecessarily, and we want to protect people.
If you attack the premise of the frame you evoke the frame and reinforce those neural pathways strengthening the metaphor. If you want to counter their frame, the ideal would be to reframe the argument by changing the meaning of the nurturant parent frame.
- Nurturant parents do NOT allow frauds to perform medical experiments on their kids and Pfizer settled the largest fraud suit in history for fraudulent marketing.
- Nurturant parents do NOT allow government agencies who hold a patent on the product the government wants to mandate everyone to take.
- Nurturant parents do NOT allow school officials to deprive their children of being able to communicate effectively and be deprived of the vital socialization they need to develop normally.
- Nurturant parents do NOT disdain other parents for personal medical decisions.
- Nurturant parents do NOT look at only one side of any argument.
- Nurturant parents have a responsibility to research the efficacy of any medical treatment.
- Nurturant parents have a responsibility to read the Nuremberg Code and understand the reasons why “The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential.”
- Nurturant parents have a responsibility to listen to the mothers and fathers of vaccine-injured children and learn from their experience.
- Nurturant parents have a responsibility to engage in critical thinking and unbiased due diligence and have realized that independent doctors understand prevention and treatment of Covid better than captured regulators.
I want to take this a step further to show you how emotions are being internalized. In the major arguments using the nurturing parent frame die, deadly, and sick are presuppositions of possibility and existence. You internalize those words. You may also internalize the emotions associated with being heroic by protecting lives. Regardless, the subliminal message is danger and fear. We must fear this virus.
The counter argument also evokes negative emotions. Words like fraud, disdain, deprive evoke negative imagery inside our minds. We need to fear big government, big pharmaceutical, losing our rights. Both are very effective messaging. We are constantly being bombarded with this type of messaging. Societally you cannot avoid its use. It will always be with us. I am not even arguing whether it is ethical one way or the other. I am simply saying we must learn how we internalize all this information and manage it so we can control the impact it has on our emotional and physical well-being.
Dr. Peterson in that speech mentioned earlier was talking about how religious faith helps people address the undeniable fact that life is difficult. Life is demanding. Life is heartbreaking. What allows us to find feelings of joy and fulfillment in living is building a mindset where the foundation is love, the piers are faith and faithfulness, the voussoirs are the relationships of family and friends as well as the intellect or the mind and the body. The keystone that holds it all together is the spirit of a champion. I think it is irrefutable, that religious teachings evoke that mindset of a champion arch metaphor. They all espouse on some level the necessity of love, faith, faithfulness, family, friendships, the importance of the mind, the body, and the human spirit.
Are you building your mindset of a champion arch? Are you helping you children to do the same? If not, why not?
Source
Rogers, Toby. “What Happened to Progressivism?” Brownstone Institute, 5 Feb.
2022, brownstone.org/articles/what-happened-to-progressivism/. Accessed 10
Mar. 2022.
