I still fail to see why this is a tremendous insight. "People are rational" hasn't been a dominant paradigm since David Hume and "exposure produces changes in the mind" is both obvious and much older.
--- On Fri, 9/19/08, Wojtek Sokolowski <swsokolowski at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> [WS:] Lakoff claims a third possibility - it is biological
> but not innate. Instead it is a product of what
> neuroscientist call "neuroplasticity" or changes
> in the neuron connections as a result of
> experience. Someone who has been repeatedly exposed to
> the right wing framing of issues, develops neural
> connections that evoke that frame (and its associations)
> more easily than those who have not. That would explain
> why Americans tend to be more conservative than their
> European ancestors.
>
> It is my understanding that the claims linking ideological
> prefrences to different functioning of our brains
> are pretty firmly grounded in neuroscience, which has been
> rapidly advancing during the past decade or so thanks to
> modern brain imaging technology (fMRA.) One consequence of
> that is the realization that people are not
> rational after all, at least in
> the "Cartesian" sense of the word, but think
> mainly in terms of emotions. Even smart and educated
> people, save those affected by Asperger Syndrome. The
> problem is that most lefties (inlcuding this writer) were
> taught that it is the reason alone that counts, and
> emotions are irrelevant or altogether bad, and thus should
> be controlled. This firm belief is perhaps one of the key
> reasons why the left has been failing to make popular appear
> for some time - it got stuck in the rut of making rational
> arguments, thus ceding the realm of emotional appeals to
> the right. And the right
> played on those emotions quite skillfully.
>
> Lakoff sugests to reverse that trend by using frames that
> are based in left wing emotions (nurturance, fairness,
> compassion, etc.) - but that is easier said than done
> while facing a relentless blitz of the Repug hate machine.
> However, framing "progressive" issues in the right
> wing frames (flag, duty, etc.) is precisely something to
> be avoided, because it only strengthens the conservative
> grip on public discourse. Bill Clinton tried that approach
> and succeeded for a while, but this was a short lived gain
> that only strengthen Repug positions in the long run.
>
> Wojtek
>
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------
> "When a candidate for public office faces the voters
> he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose
> chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite
> incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any
> save the most elemental — men whose whole thinking is done
> in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of
> what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate
> must either bark with the pack or be lost. [...] All the
> odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious
> and mediocre — the man who can most adeptly disperse the
> notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The Presidency
> tends, year by year, to go to such men." - HL Mencken
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
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