Working in Movement

I'm a bottom line kind of guy. Give me the facts, but do so in a way that captures the essence of what is being said or written about. Take the recent U.S. election. There was lots of talk of red and blue states. That is, red states voted republican and blue states democratic. That's pretty bottom line.

But it's also maybe a bit misleading. Are the beliefs behind political preferences just geographic? Not too sure about that, although there are some states I wouldn't choose as my first choice for a home.

A more satisfying bottom line explanation for the fierce political positioning comes from cognitive scientist George Lakoff. Lakoff holds that political preference stems from one of two family metaphors, the "strong father" and the "nuturing parents." The strong father model, which tends to be politically conservative, holds that people need to learn how to be "good" and that a family with a strong, authoritarian father is the only way to do this. The nurturing parent model, politically progressive, sees people as fundamentally good and in need of nurturing by both parents.

The model is a bit more complicated than I've described it, but it basically captures the essence of the difference between progressive and conservative political behavior. Lakoff describes all this in his book, Don't Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate.

This interview in the UC Berkley News is a shorter hashing of the ideas. There's also a concise radio interview The Thinking Behind the Red and Blue States.

Good bottom line stuff.