Your Brain's Politics by George Lakoff & Elisabeth Wehling

Author:George Lakoff & Elisabeth Wehling
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Politics, liberal, conservative, progressive, Republican, Democrat, economics, election campaigns, voting, elections, floating voters, swing voters, political middle, embodied cognition, cognitive linguistics, psychology, cognitive science, belief, strict father model, nurturant parent model, biconceptualism, political persuasion, propaganda, political language, rational voter, metaphors, embodied mind, morality, political theory, Darwin, taxation, values, political framing, religion, freedom
ISBN: 9781845409241
Publisher: Andrews UK Limited 2016
Published: 2016-11-08T00:00:00+00:00

4.2. Morality, Times Two: Strict and Nurturant worldview

E.W. Strict Father and Nurturant Parent morality are highly complex models of reasoning, and they are based on our conceptualization of ideal families. Let’s assume I grew up in a Strict Father family - will I ever be able to do a conceptual one-eighty and think about politics in terms of a Nurturant Parent worldview?

G.L. Absolutely. Say you grew up in a Strict Father family. You would still have been exposed to the Nurturant Parent model in other families, for instance at a friend’s house.

E.W. Moreover, the two family models are omnipresent in our culture.

G.L. Right, we see them in real life, in movies, and last but not least, in political discourse. We are exposed to them on a daily basis, and thus we become familiar with both. This is why a 25-year-old environmental activist in Oregon can watch “Rocky I” through “Rocky VI”, understand what these movies are about, and enjoy them. Although he probably lives his life mostly in terms of Nurturant Parent values, he still understands narrative structures that evolve around the Strict Father model.

E.W. If we understand both models equally well, then we can in theory make political decisions based on either of them. Which raises the question: who or what determines which model ultimately guides our policy stances?

G.L. The model we practice the most in our everyday lives, the one we regularly use as a template for our interactions with others, will usually be the one we apply to politics. The other model, which we may understand but don’t regularly act on, will be less prominent in our minds, and therefore less likely to influence our decision-making with regard to political issues.

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