The Obama Code
As President Obama prepares to address a joint session of Congress, what can we expect to hear?
The pundits will stress the nuts-and-bolts policy issues: the banking system, education, energy, health care. But beyond policy, there will be a vision of America--a moral vision and a view of unity that the pundits often miss.
What they miss is the Obama Code. For the sake of unity, the President tends to express his moral vision indirectly. Like other self-aware and highly articulate speakers, he connects with his audience using what cognitive scientists call the "cognitive unconscious." Speaking naturally, he lets his deepest ideas simply structure what he is saying. If you follow him, the deep ideas are communicated unconsciously and automatically. The Code is his most effective way to bring the country together around fundamental American values.
For supporters of the President, it is crucial to understand the Code in order to talk overtly about the old values our new president is communicating. It is necessary because tens of millions of Americans--both conservatives and progressives--don't yet perceive the vital sea change that Obama is bringing about.
The word "code" can refer to a system of either communication or morality. President Obama has integrated the two. The Obama Code is both moral and linguistic at once. The President is using his enormous skills as a communicator to express a moral system. As he has said, budgets are moral documents. His economic program is tied to his moral system and is discussed in the Code, as are just about all of his other policies.
Behind the Obama Code are seven crucial intellectual moves that I believe are historically, practically, and cognitively appropriate, as well as politically astute. They are not all obvious, and jointly they may seem mysterious. That is why it is worth sorting them out one-by-one.
1. Values Over Programs
The first move is to distinguish programs from the value systems they represent. Every policy has a material aspect--the nuts and bolts of how it works-- plus a typically implicit cognitive aspect that represents the values and ideas behind the nuts and bolts. The President knows the difference. He understands that those who see themselves as "progressive" or "conservative" all too often define those words in terms of programs rather than values. Even the programs championed by progressives may not fit what the President sees as the fundamental values of the country. He is seeking to align the programs of his administration with those values.
The potential pushback will come not just from conservatives who do not share his values, but just as much from progressives who make the mistake of thinking that programs are values and that progressivism is defined by a list of programs. When some of those programs are cut as economically secondary or as unessential, their defenders will inevitably see this as a conservative move rather than a move within an overall moral vision they share with the President.
This separation between values and programs lies behind the president's pledge to cut programs that don't serve those values and support those that do -- no matter whether they are proposed by Republicans or Democrats. The President's idealistic question is, what policies serve what values? -- not what political interests?
2. Progressive Values are American Values
President Obama's second intellectual move concerns what the fundamental American values are. In Moral Politics, I described what I found to be the implicit, often unconscious, value systems behind progressive and conservative thought. Progressive thought rests, first, on the value of empathy--putting oneself in other people's shoes, seeing the world through their eyes, and therefore caring about them. The second principle is acting on that care, taking responsibility both for oneself and others, social as well as individual responsibility. The third is acting to make oneself, the country, and the world better--what Obama has called an "ethic of excellence" toward creating "a more perfect union" politically.
Historian Lynn Hunt, in Inventing Human Rights, has shown that those values, beginning with empathy, lie historically behind the human rights expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Obama, in various interviews and speeches, has provided the logical link. Empathy is not mere sympathy. Putting oneself in the shoes of others brings with it the responsibility to act on that empathy--to be "our brother's keeper and our sister's keeper"--and to act to improve ourselves, our country, and the world.
The logic is simple: Empathy is why we have the values of freedom, fairness, and equality -- for everyone, not just for certain individuals. If we put ourselves in the shoes of others, we will want them to be free and treated fairly. Empathy with all leads to equality: no one should be treated worse than anyone else. Empathy leads us to democracy: to avoid being subject indefinitely to the whims of an oppressive and unfair ruler, we need to be able to choose who governs us and we need a government of laws.
Obama has consistently maintained that what I, in my writings, have called "progressive" values are fundamental American values. From his perspective, he is not a progressive; he is just an American. That is a crucial intellectual move.
Those empathy-based moral values are the opposite of the conservative focus on individual responsibility without social responsibility. They make it intolerable to tolerate a president who is The Decider--who gets to decide without caring about or listening to anybody. Empathy-based values are opposed to the pure self-interest of a laissez-faire "free market," which assumes that greed is good and that seeking self-interest will magically maximize everyone's interests. They oppose a purely self-interested view of America in foreign policy. Obama's foreign policy is empathy-based, concerned with people as well as states--with poverty, education, disease, water, the rights of women and children, ethnic cleansing, and so on around the world.
How are such values expressed? Take a look at the inaugural speech. Empathy: "the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break, the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job, the firefighter's courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent's willingness to nurture a child..." Responsibility to ourselves and others: "We have duties to ourselves, the nation, and the world." The ethic of excellence: "there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of character, than giving our all to a difficult task." They define our democracy: "This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed."
The same values apply to foreign policy: "To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and make clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds." And to religion as well: By quoting language like "our brother's keeper," he is communicating that mere individual responsibility will not get you into Heaven, that social responsibility and making the world better is required.
3. Biconceptualism and the New Bipartisanship
The third crucial idea behind the Obama Code is biconceptualism, the knowledge that a great many people who identify themselves ideologically as conservatives, or politically as Republicans or Independents, share those fundamental American values--at least on certain issues. Most "conservatives" are not thoroughgoing movement conservatives, but are what I have called "partial progressives" sharing Obama's American values on many issues. Where such folks agree with him on values, Obama tries, and will continue to try, to work with them on those issues if not others. And, he assumes, correctly believe, that the more they come to think in terms of those American values, the less they will think in terms of opposing conservative values.
Biconceptualism lay behind his invitation to Rick Warren to speak at the inaugural. Warren is a biconceptual, like many younger evangelicals. He shares Obama's views of the environment, poverty, health, and social responsibility, though he is otherwise a conservative. Biconceptualism is behind his "courting" of Republican members of Congress. The idea is not to accept conservative moral views, but to find those issues where individual Republicans already share what he sees as fundamentally American values. He has "reached across the aisle" to Richard Luger on nuclear proliferation, but not on economics.
Biconceptualism is central to Obama's attempts to achieve unity --a unity based on his understanding of American values. The current economic failure gives him an opening to speak about the economy in terms of those ideals: caring about all, prosperity for all, responsibility for all by all, and good jobs for all who want to work.
I think Obama is correct about biconceptualism of this sort -- at least where the overwhelming proportion of Americans is concerned. When the President spoke at the Lincoln Day dinner recently about sensible Midwestern Republicans, he meant biconceptual Republicans, who are progressive and/or pragmatic on many issues.
But hardcore movement conservatives tend to be more ideological and less biconceptual than their constituents. In the recent stimulus vote, the hardcore movement conservatives kept party discipline (except for three Senate votes) by threatening to run opposition candidates against anyone who broke ranks. They were able to enforce this because the conservative message machine is strong in their districts and there is no nationwide progressive message machine operating in those districts. The effectiveness of the conservative message machine led to Obama making a rare mistake in communication, the mistake of saying out loud in Florida not to think of Rush Limbaugh, thus violating the first rule of framing and giving Rush Limbaugh even greater power.
Biconceptual, partly progressive, Republicans do exist in Congress, and the president is not going to give up on them. But as long as the conservative message machine can activate its values virtually unopposed in conservative districts, movement conservatives can continue to pressure biconceptual Republicans and keep them from voting their conscience on many issues. This is why a nationwide progressive message machine needs to be organized if the president is to achieve unity through biconceptualism.
4. Protection and Empowerment
The fourth idea behind the Obama Code is the President's understanding of government--"not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works." This depends on what "works" means. The word sounds purely pragmatic, but it is moral in operation.
The idea is that government has twin moral missions: protection and empowerment. Protection includes not just military and police protection, but protections for the environment, consumers, workers, pensioners, disaster victims, and investors.
Empowerment is what his stimulus package is about: it includes education and other forms of infrastructure--roads, bridges, communications, energy supply, the banking system and stock market. The moral mission of government is simple: no one can earn a living in America or live an American life without protection and empowerment by the government. The stimulus package is basically an empowerment package. Taxes are what you pay for living in America, rather than in Congo or Bangladesh. And the more money you make from government protection and empowerment, the more you owe in return. Progressive taxation is a matter of moral accounting. Tax cuts for the middle class mean that the middle class hasn't been getting as much as it has been contributing to the nation's productivity for many years.
This view of government meshes with our national ideal of equality. There needs to be moral equality: equal protection and equal empowerment. We all deserve health care protection, retirement protection, worker protection, employment protection, protection of our civil liberties, and investment protection. Protection and empowerment. That's what "works" means--"whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified."
5. Morality and Economics Fit Together
Crises are times of opportunity. Budgets are moral statements. President Obama has put these ideas together. His economic program is a moral program and conversely. Why the quartet of leading economic issues--education, energy, health, banking? Because they are at the heart of government's moral mission of protection and empowerment, and correspondingly, they are what is needed to act on empathy, social and personal responsibility, and making the future better. The economic crisis is also an opportunity. It requires him to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on the right things to do.
6. Systemic Causation and Systemic Risk
Conservatives tend to think in terms of direct causation. The overwhelming moral value of individual, not social, responsibility requires that causation be local and direct. For each individual to be entirely responsible for the consequences of his or her actions, those actions must be the direct causes of those consequences. If systemic causation is real, then the most fundamental of conservative moral--and economic--values is fallacious.
Global ecology and global economics are prime examples of systemic causation. Global warming is fundamentally a system phenomenon. That is why the very idea threatens conservative thinking. And the global economic collapse is also systemic in nature. That is at the heart of the death of the conservative principle of the laissez-faire free market, where individual short-term self-interest was supposed to be natural, moral, and the best for everybody. The reality of systemic causation has left conservatism without any real ideas to address global warming and the global economic crisis.
With systemic causation goes systemic risk. The old rational actor model taught in economics and political science ignored systemic risk. Risk was seen as local and governed by direct causation, that is, buy short-term individual decisions. The investment banks acted on their own short-term risk, based on short-term assumptions, for example, that housing prices would continue to rise or that bundles of mortgages once secure for the short term would continue to be "secure" and could be traded as "securities."
The systemic nature of ecological and economic causation and risk have resulted in the twin disasters of global warming and global economic breakdown. Both must be dealt with on a systematic, global, long-term basis. Regulating risk is global and long-term, and so what are required are world-wide institutions that carry out that regulation in systematic way and that monitor causation and risk systemically, not just locally.
President Obama understands this, though much of the country does not. Part of his challenge will be to formulate policies that carry out these ideas and to communicate these ideas as well as possible to the public.
7. Contested Concepts and Patriotic Language
As President, Barack Obama must speak in patriotic language. But all patriot language in this country is "contested." Every major patriotic term has a core meaning that we all understand the same way. But that common core meaning is very limited in its application. Most uses of patriotic language are extended from the core on the basis of either conservative or progressive values to produce meanings that are often opposite from each other.
I've written a whole book, Whose Freedom?, on the word "freedom" as used by conservatives and progressives. In his second inaugural, George W. Bush used "freedom," "free," and "liberty" over and over--first, with its common meaning, then shifting to its conservative meaning: defending "freedom" as including domestic spying, torture and rendition, denial of habeus corpus, invading a country that posed no threat to us, a "free market" based on greed and short-term profits for the wealthy, denying sex education and access to women's health facilities, denying health care to the poor, and leading to the killing and maiming of innocent civilians in Iraq by the hundreds of thousands, all in the name of "freedom." It was anything but a progressive's view of freedom--and anything but the view intended in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution.
For forty years, from the late 1960's through 2008, conservatives managed, through their extensive message machine, to reframe much of our political discourse to fit their worldview. President Obama is reclaiming our patriotic language after decades of conservative dominance, to fit what he has correctly seen as the ideals behind the founding of our country.
"Freedom" will no longer mean what George W. Bush meant by it. Guantanamo will be closed, torture outlawed, the market regulated. Obama's inaugural address was filled with framings of patriotic concepts to fit those ideals. Not just the concept of freedom, but also equality, prosperity, unity, security, interests, challenges, courage, purpose, loyalty, patriotism, virtue, character, and grace. Look at these words in his inaugural address and you will see how Obama has situated their meaning within his view of fundamental American values: empathy, social and well as personal responsibility, improving yourself and your country. We can expect further reclaiming of patriotic language throughout his administration.
All this is what "change" means. In his policy proposals the President is trying to align his administration's policies with the fundamental values of the Framers of our Constitution. In seeking "bipartisan" support, he is looking beyond political affiliations to those who share those values on particular issues. In his economic policy, he is realigning our economy with the moral missions of government: protection and empowerment for all.
It's Us, Not Just Him
The president is the best political communicator of our age. He has the bully pulpit. He gets media attention from the press. His website is running a permanent campaign, Organizing for Obama, run by his campaign manager David Plouffe. It seeks issue-by-issue support from his huge mailing list. There are plenty of progressive blogs. MoveOn.org now has over five million members. And yet that is nowhere near enough.
The conservative message machine is huge and still going. There are dozens of conservative think tanks, many with very large communications budgets. The conservative leadership institutes are continuing to turn out thousands of trained conservative spokespeople every year. The conservative apparatus for language creation is still functioning. Conservative talking points are still going out to their network of spokespeople, who still being booked on tv and radio around the country. About 80% of the talking heads on tv are conservatives. Rush Limbaugh and Fox News are as strong as ever. There are now progressive voices on MSNBC, Comedy Central, and Air America, but they are still overwhelmed by Right's enormous megaphone. Republicans in Congress can count on overwhelming message support in their home districts and homes states. That is one reason why they were able to stonewall on the President's stimulus package. They had no serious media competition at home pounding out the Obama vision day after day.
Such national, day-by-day media competition is necessary. Democrats need to build it. Democratic think tanks are strong on policy and programs, but weak on values and vision. Without the moral arguments based on the Obama values and vision, the policymakers most likely be unable to regularly address both independent voters and the Limbaugh-FoxNews audiences in conservative Republican strongholds.
The president and his administration cannot build such a communication system, nor can the Democrats in Congress. The DNC does not have the resources. It will be up to supporters of the Obama values, not just supporters on the issues, to put such a system in place. Despite all the organizing strength of Obama supporters, no such organizing effort is now going on. If none is put together, the movement conservatives will face few challenges of fundamental values in their home constituencies and will be able to go on stonewalling with impunity. That will make the president's vision that much harder to carry out.
Summary
The Obama Code is based on seven deep, insightful, and subtle intellectual moves. What President Obama has been attempting in his speeches is a return to the original frames of the Framers, reconstituting what it means to be an American, to be patriotic, to be a citizen and to share in both the sacrifices and the glories of our country. In seeking "bipartisan" support, he is looking beyond political affiliations to those who share those values on particular issues. In his economic plan, he is attempting to realign our economy with the moral missions of government: protection and empowerment for all.
The president hasn't fooled the radical ideological conservatives in Congress. They know progressive values when they see them -- and they see them in their own colleagues and constituents too often for comfort. The radical conservatives are aware that this economic crisis threatens not only their political support, but the very underpinnings of conservative ideology itself. Nonetheless, their brains have not been changed by facts. Movement conservatives are not fading away. They think their conservative values are the real American values. They still have their message machine and they are going to make the most of it. The ratings for Fox News and Rush Limbaugh are rising. Without a countervailing communications system on the Democratic side, they can create a lot of trouble, not just for the president, not just for the nation, but on a global scale, for the environmental and economic future of the world.
George Lakoff is Goldman Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley. He is the author of The Political Mind and Don't Think of an Elephant!
An american social scientist discovers oratory. Next comes the trademark term: "The Obama Code." and then what. another book?
Yes it's called persuasion. A good speech is designed to be seductive.
And I'd be more impressed if he wrote them himself.
February 24, 2009 10:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
Impressing you seems awful difficult.
February 24, 2009 2:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
George has once again been able to see through the media's emotional smoke screens and outline a strategy for dealing with the foolishness of talk radio/TV in most of the country. Progressives have to turn this strategic outline into specific tactical questions that make obvious the underlying values of the conservative echo chamber.
February 24, 2009 11:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
Mr. Lakoff, thank you for the insightful post.
I would be interested in reading more about what such a "communication system" looks like, and how we might go about getting one organized for the progressive side. Who could fund such an operation? And who could start an organization dedictated to making it happen, so that we, the huddled masses, might be able to contribute our time or money?
Are some of the pieces in place already? Is there a foundation on which to build?
-- ARG
February 24, 2009 11:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
1) Values over programs.
That's what the Dems have needed for a very long time. People outside the inner workings of a party (or obsessive blog-world denizens) do not care about the near-fractal depth of program details. They care about an overarching set of values, and from that make choices based on emotional resonance. That's why the Dems have been losing for so long. Obama recognizes this, and he's been sharp enough to change direction. We forget that at our peril.
And for the campaign-history-obsessive among us, that is what he meant when he referenced Reagan.
#'s 2 through infinity are mere elaboration. #1 is the nut of it.
February 24, 2009 11:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
As a self-described 'moderate' Democrat, I've always been struck by the basic, primal POWER of conservative arguments: I find even those arguments (and there are many) that I decisively do NOT support, nevertheless hard to argue with - at least in the context of the buzz-words, cliches', and sound-bites which dominate even 'sophisticated' discussion.
If they prevail even there, what chance does one have in the supermarket aisles, barbershops, bars, water-coolers, and neighorhood back fences where most of us LIVE our lives, and fit-in our casual (but critically important) determinitive discussions about 'politics'?
We seem to live in an era where most people have neither the time nor the inclination to really investigate, or really care enough about being 'right' on any potentially complex issue to get a range of information before making-up their minds. I KNOW that sounds patronizing, but nonetheless, I think that's the way it is.
How do you get thru, in that kind of express-lane environment? I was in a discussion here a while back where someone opined that, "All you have to do is read the White House Stimulus Report..."(loose quote). I submit that 999 of 1000 Americans will reach a set-in-stone conclusion (many already have) without even knowing the White House Stimulus Report EXISTS, let alone reading it.
I think those of us who share (at least in a vague, general way) the values you describe need to develop (as you seem to say) a LANGUAGE to communicate it. Until you feel comfortable in the everyday settings I've described above with articulating those values, and until it appears that your listeners grasp very quickly the meat of what you're trying to say with some degree of unconscious sympathy, we've still got a lot of work to do.
February 24, 2009 11:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
The way to do it is to talk simply and succinctly in words and phrases that people understand without having to think about it too much. That's all there is to it.
The people on "our" side of the political spectrum love to talk to themselves and they love to let everyone know how smart they are and they often try to prove that they are right and those who disagree are wrong. They often are not subtle at all about their didain/dislike/contempt for much of the average person in America's lifestyle, habits, mores, ways of thinking and so on. The average American is not any of the things that the typical leader on our side of the aisle and the opinion leaders on our side of the aisle value. The average American is not well informed or well educated and not likely to be. The average American is a working class with working class values (even when they make a lot of money) who does not necessarily share the social agenda of the more enlightened Democratic liberals or even moderates. They are preoccupied with getting by and don't have the time or patience to get lectured by smarty pants liberals and Demcorats about issues and how they need to be helping other people when, from their point of view, they are struggling just to get by themselves.
The essay above by Mr. Lakoff is a prime example of how well educated people on our side love to communicate, especially with eachother, and it is also a great example of how not to talk to the average American. This is not at all a criticism of Lakoff because he didn't write the piece above for the average American. But our political leaders often do try to foist complicated and "boring" stuff like this on people. When they do this it rarely has the desired effect. That's the basic communication problem our side has had now for decades.
February 24, 2009 4:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think there is another important difference between "conservatives" and "liberals" besides the attitudes that Jared Bernstein called YOYO vs WITT (you're on your own vs we're in this together).
That is that liberals have a set of ethical principles based upon community. This can be seen in the Declaration of Independence and the preamble to the constitution:
The conservatives don't have goals, they have an interest in process. They are for smaller government (smaller than what?). They are for lower taxes (lower than what?). They are for less regulation (less than what?).
There is no end point to their programs, they can't express what they are aiming for.
This means that they are tacticians, not moral philosophers. They are all about "winning" against their enemies. Bush was the ultimate of this, his only interest was in politics and besting his opponents. That's why he surrounded himself with fellow tacticians like Rove, Delay and Gingrich.
It's why the GOP if floundering now, their standard process recommendations are out of tune with the current situation and they have no vision to offer in their place.
February 24, 2009 12:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
A result of the individual-centered policy is that it only works when NOT everyone does it. For example, if everyone buys the hot stock, no one gets a bargain, and when everyone sells it, all lose.
If everyone was a business owner, we would have only single-person artisan shops. If everyone owned land there would be no cities. If everyone lived on investments there would be nothing to buy (or eat).
February 24, 2009 6:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't think Obama's bipartisanhip, emphasis on values, pragmatism, patriotism, advocacy of some form of a safety net etc is all that unconcious. I think the 'cognitive unconscious' angle here is superfluous. Obama talks about values etc all the time quite openly and people comment on the such all the time. The 'cognitive unconcious' angle aside some excellent points about the direction Obama is going are made.
February 24, 2009 1:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
At what point does "empathizing" -- good -- turn into "enabling" -- bad?
February 24, 2009 1:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think it's when you start letting your Republican and Libertarian saboteurs near the economic structure of our society. As a group, you tend to misrepresent license and irresponsibility as "the free market" to the detriment of all of us, in the long run including yourselves.
You have proven you simply lack the judgment and maturity to make these sorts of decisions, and now the adults will have to come in and clean up after you. And quite a mess it is you've made...
February 24, 2009 3:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
The point at which the object of said empathy is engaged in addictive behavior.
What are you implying?
-- ARG
February 24, 2009 3:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
If the economy does not perform, then all this gobbledegook won't mean squat.
I think people are pulling for Obama to succeed because of events more than anything. This is what gives him the golden opportunity to lead most of the people. It is not rocket science to see that things need to be done to avoid complete financial meltdown.
He has been in office one month. If the so-called sea change is evident next February, then perhaps these conclusory thoughts have merit.
February 24, 2009 2:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Amen, Eric. There is nothing new here. We can't talk our way out of this mess.
February 26, 2009 7:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Conservative thought is focused on, centered around the social and economic prosperity of the individual. Neither their fellow human beings nor their country is their concern, in fact only pops up on their radar when the wants of others or the obligations imposed by country threatens their own personal well-being.
Empathy is not a natural human characteristic. (Adam Smith, the laissez-faire guy, assumed it was and in putting together his version of an efficient economy counted on it coming into play when a few got very rich while more than a few ended up in the gutter. {Towards the end of his life, he realized his error.})
I'm afraid that unless Obama can convince the conservative that empathy for his fellow human beings will profit him personally, his message will fall on deaf ears.
February 24, 2009 2:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
"I'm afraid that unless Obama can convince the conservative that empathy for his fellow human beings will profit him personally, his message will fall on deaf ears."
This isn't that difficult to do - especially in this climate. We're seeing now that so much is interrelated. People who don't have a dime in the stock market are losing their jobs because of the stock market.
I don't advocate "empathy" to my conservative/libertarian friends (maybe that's becuase I'm not a liberal?): I only talk about self interest. Why invest in public education? Because otherwise the uneducated will have no financial recourse except to mug me, and because high-paying jobs requiring higher education will be performed on foreign shores, thereby eroding our tax base and turning America into a third-world country. I find that people can't be pursuaded to have empathy - they either have it or don't (it's incredible how many in our "Christian nation" care little for their fellow man)
February 24, 2009 5:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Empathy is not an un-natural human trait.
But not all humans share all characteristics. It is human to empathize, but it is also human to cheat. It is human to care about kin (animals do, too), but it is also human to kill the children of one's enemies (animals do this, too).
We don't need to convince the resistant conservative, only the non-doctrinare uninterested voter. The hard cases will stay that way.
February 24, 2009 5:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
Indeed, "empathy" is the most natural of human traits.
Current thinking is that the emotion arises when particular neurons in the anterior cingulate fire -- often called "mirror neurons" ---
The reason why we all have the capacity to be heroes. We see someone in distress; result: our mirror neurons fire (we can't help it); we feel miserable ("empathy"); and the only way to rid ourselves of that unpleasant feeling is to save the victim.
February 24, 2009 8:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
Do you hold that 'social conservative' and 'conservative socialist' are both no more than foolish oxymorons?
February 24, 2009 6:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
How is that you "know" all this detailed inside information about how Obama is communicating Mr. Lakoff? With respect, I think you are imputing a whole lot here and while it makes a great construct I don't think it is necessarily true. Is this just your interpretation of Obama's meaning and purpose or has he told you some of this? You present this interpretation as though it is true. I think that it is more accurate to say it is just what you think is going on, not that it is true. Unless, of course, Obama has told you this himself and I don't get the sense he has.
I am concerned with the trend among many that continues from the campaign that imputes lots of progressivity to Obama that is unseen and unheard. You seem to be doing some of this in your Obama code too Mr. Lakoff. I don't doubt at all that Obama has the right values. I remain skeptical that he has any intention of doing anything beyond talking about those values any differently than any other corporate/centrist Democrat would. I try to evaluate him on actions or clearly stated intentions versus guesses or unspoken signals that may or may not exist.
The President's actions thus far regarding things like torture are mixed and, quite frankly, I find a lot of what has occured thus far quite troubling. The President defends the indefensible and immoral when he sides with the Bush administration on questions of lawsuits against the government brought by people long detained without charges, etc... It is extremely disappointing, to say the least, when the new CIA chief states flatly in an open hearing that nobody will be prosecuted for torture. It is horrifying to see the administration indicate it will back up the Bush White House in hiding e-mails sought via lawsuit from the eyes of the public. It is troubling that the President seems far more wedded to protecting the interests of the powerful than the interests of the taxpayers with respect to the banking industry bailout.
You give the President a whole lot of credit based upon what I can only judge is your personal opinion and not any sort of supportable fact in much of your essay. I think this is a mistake and possibly a crucial mistake on your part and on the part of all those who are wont to give the President a pass on almost any issue thus far. None of us wish the President ill and all of us want him to be successful. Yet, I still think it far healthier to remain a skeptical audience rather than merely a cheerleading section because frankly, I think he is wrong on some things and they are not small things either.
The President is wrong to maintain the malignant military spending program that drags down our economy, threatens the peace of the world, and our national security. The President is wrong to avoid pursuing the very serious crimes that took place under Bush and in this I include the vast war crimes that have taken place along with the violations of the Geneva Conventions as well as the numerous crimes that have taken place here at home from the outing of a CIA agent to illegal domestic spying, to blatant and widespread corruption throughout every department of the Federal government.
These are some of the more serious mistakes that concern me and lots of others. How does any of this comport with your theory of aligning the government with any set of acceptable moral values? I don't think it does. In fact, I think it is the opposite.
It is not wrong or contradictory to criticize our President when we think he is wrong but still to support him when we think he is right and when he needs our support. But there's no middle ground on things like torture and rendition. There's no acceptable "compromise" on things like this.
I'm very uncomfortable with this phenomenon you seem to have succumbed to which says sometimes directly and other times indirectly that we should ignore the troubling things that the President or his people are indicating they're going to do because the brilliant young President really means to right those wrongs and be on the side of good, etc... I just don't buy that. That is not a satisfactory response to "Why is the President allowing a camp almost identical to Guantanamo to continue oeprating in Afghanistan? We voted to put and end to that kind of activity." Again, it is just not acceptable. Not for President Obama and not for any other elected official of any party.
I will be a loyal ally of the President when he actually does things that bring about real and substantive change. In fact, he'll find no one more loyal. But putting the change label with some rhetorical flourishes on values on the same old corporate/centrist song and dance will not be good enough for me or a whole lot of others I'm afraid. I worked very hard for real change, voted for it as millions of others did and want to see it happen but I don't see a whole helluva lot of it coming down the pike spoken or unspoken thus far. And I don't think it is either realistic or true to impute that he has some unspoken agenda that he intends to implement that will bring those things about. I think we need to evaluate the president on his actual proposals and actions and not on what we surmise he is not saying.
February 24, 2009 5:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree. To me, Obama appears to be just another Chicago politician. That's not all bad. Chicago pols tend to be pragmatic and get things done, but there's nothing new under the sun about how they operate. Change? No. Status quo, always. Progressive? Compared to Louisiana politicians, maybe.
February 24, 2009 6:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
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I was just wondering . . .
Hey Oleeb... Who was it in this very thread that said this?
Interesting , eh?
Love your stuff Oleeb ... But my goodness.
~OGD~
February 25, 2009 3:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
My goodness what? I didn't say it was wrong to do so. My point was and is that it is ineffective when talking to the electorate or the average American. Talking to a crowd like that found here in that manner is perfectly fine. But average folks don't cotton to it. They don't like the complicated, intellectually oriented way educated liberals go about discussing things. What the smart class needs to do is to learn how to talk to the population in ways that communicate to the population on its terms instead of the smartest kid in the class terms. The liberals/progressives have been quite stubborn on insisting the average American listen to the terms they prefer instead of what the average person prefers, understands and feels comfortable with. Kennedy did it well. Clinton often did it. FDR and Truman did it. Obama does it sometimes too. But the left/progressive wing in general does it very poorly indeed.
February 25, 2009 6:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
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K.I.S.S. ...
Is that what ya' mean?
Personally I like to read substance that doesn't ramble on like there's nothing else in life to do than read overly long diatribes about someone else's overly long diatribe about someone else's overly long diatribe.
But I still dig your work.
~OGD~
February 25, 2009 8:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, sort of. I don't think it's the length so much as how contrived the arguments are. If it is simple it works with a wide audience. When any of us try to go long and complicated on the ideas it does not work with that audience. It can and often does work on a more intellectually oriented audience that likes complicated ideas, concepts and extensive vocabulary.
February 27, 2009 12:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Wordy but meaty, Mr. Lakoff.
February 24, 2009 5:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
As a fiscal conservative progressive who is also a born-again moralist, I'm pleased to see Lakoff touching on these topics, but disappointed that he's so full of himself in his verbiage.
I got hung up on item 2 in which Lakoff disses conservative values with childish caricatures of selfishness as a strawman. Such pandering to the liberal choir is hardly suitable to the progress of the Obama American adventure. As an American progressive, Obama is both a liberal and a conservative and yet in a greater sense is neither. If Lakoff would show tolerance and empathy for true conservative values, he'd seem less like a pompous self-serving windbag and more like a true progressive.
February 24, 2009 5:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Words mean nothing. Deeds define and frame the mettle or the metrics of nations, societies, industries, groups, or individuals. Words are hollow and moot,"...full of sound and fury, signifying nothing" if not substantiated by deeds.
The last eight years of relentless deception by our government, and our president and highest government officials repeatedly lying to us on a daily basis and intentionally manipulating or message-force multiplying patent LIES framed and mass marketed in partiotic platititudes, partisan propaganda and evangelicalspeak babal - prove that words mean nothing.
All the words pimped and bruted by the bushgov in the last eight were lies "...with no more substance or moral dignity than a shout."
Will Obama's soaring rhetoric be substantiated by actual deeds and the practical application of these seven "crucial intellectual moves" and the advancing of American values and progressive policies? - or are we to witness more lies, told more beautifully?
For example, this passage; - ("Freedom" will no longer mean what George W. Bush meant by it. Guantanamo will be closed, torture outlawed, the market regulated. Obama's inaugural address was filled with framings of patriotic concepts to fit those ideals. Not just the concept of freedom, but also equality, prosperity, unity, security, interests, challenges, courage, purpose, loyalty, patriotism, virtue, character, and grace.") touches all the critical intellectual moves, but in actual practical application, and in terms of actions and deeds, Obama has reversed on, or outright betrayed all of the lofty hollow promises, and academic theoretical discourse.
Words, without deeds are meaningless and moot.
If Obama is working for, and advancing the interests of the predator class, then the American people will continue to suffer, and there will be no end to the economic crisis. If Obama is working in the peoples best interests then the predator class is going to get a substantial haircut, and amenable to new more forceful regulation.
Or there could also be some middle road. The point is who benefits and how much, and who gets hurt, and how severly. If the solutions are equitable - there may be hope, - if not - the economic crisis will matastasize, linger, and eventually devour America.
February 24, 2009 6:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
That's a lot of words to say that words don't mean anything, TonyF.
-- ARG
February 24, 2009 10:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think it's in Code, we're supposed to suppose the deeds to go with the words, and then assume integrity too.
February 25, 2009 3:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
"3. Biconceptualism and the New Bipartisanship"
Lakoff engages in frame forcing, and it doesn't fit. The 'biconceptual' meme is stretched out of functionality.
I think the problem is that Lakoff forces the frame of progressive vs. conservative, while Obama might be known as progressive AND conservative, but not in the "issue by issue" basis of biconceptualism. In this sense, Obama is trans-partisan, transcending old notions of partisanship in favor of a power-oriented progressive dialectic. It's pragmatism as means and ends.
February 24, 2009 6:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Remember Obama telling you that he was going to get all the combat troops out of Iraq in 16 months? Well, here's the CHANGE - now it's 2/3 of the troops in 19 months.
February 24, 2009 8:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Was there something crucial about 16 months, to you?
February 24, 2009 9:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
You may blithely write that words are meaningless without action but Napoleon was of the opinion that 2 hostile newspapers were more to be feared than 1,000 armies. Thomas Paine's words drove a nation to action. Lakoff's concept of framing, or context, is brilliant.
Obama is moving on very dangerous ground and he knows it. Although I appreciate those who harbor some skepticism, and while I agree that dissent and criticism are important and that keeping politicians honest is fundamental, this is about politcs after all and for the time being I will continue to hold hope, give the benefit of the doubt, and contribute where I can, as Obama tries to steer the massive ship of State ever so carefully away from the shoals of treachery, deciet and bankruptcy, all while keeping himself alive.
If Obama is to succeed at reframing a unified vision of American morality it will not, cannot, happen over night. Anyone who expects, or demands that it does is bound to be dissapointed, perhaps embittered. It seems a little early for that, he's only been in office a month.
I believe 'finesse' is the strategy of Obama and I don't believe I've ever seen any politician as capable of achieving that very delicate maneuver.
I hold my breath for his health and well being. The difference between his leadership and what we have just come through is breath taking.
February 25, 2009 9:11 PM | Reply | Permalink