More than two decades ago, I read Mark Johnson and George Lakoff's book Metaphors We Live By. It knocked my socks off with its brilliance. "Yes," I thought. "Our language reveals the metaphors that shape/control our thinking. I'd never thought about it like that, but he's so right!"
I thought that same thing this morning when I read this article Lakoff wrote: "What Conservatives Really Want." In it, Lakoff lays out all the moves that conservatives make in the public sphere - including shaping/controlling the language ("80% of the talking heads on TV are conservative," Lakoff reminds us - he could make the same claim about "talk radio").
By listing all the moves conservatives make, he reveals that the controlling metaphor of conservatives' worldview is the autocratic "strict father": they want the world to be structured like a head-of-household family where the strict father makes all the decisions, is not questioned, metes out the [necessarily physical] discipline.
With this kind of family, the social contract that Democracy promises (that we-the-people have a social responsibility to our fellow citizens) becomes a threat: helping others in the wider culture undermines the authority of the strict father.
Lakoff articulates SO clearly the views I've had for at least two decades but haven't been able to formulate, other than to say we're living through the last desperate gasps of the Patriarchy. To me, no one talks about the masculine violence that's behind all the criminal activity, economic greed, and gun-toting fear we see around us.
Conservatives campaign on the slogan "Take our country/state back!" (Minnesota's recent Republican candidate for governor used this phrase, even though our state had been suffering under a Republican governor for eight years. No logic there, but "strict fathers" don't work with logic; they work with fear). Back to where, is of course the question. Turning out country back in time seems to be the conservatives' goal - when men were men, women knew their place, and Dad yelling "Get off my lawn!" and following that up with a few firings of a 410 shotgun are appropriate ways to act.
Change is automatically a threat to the "strict father." And our speeded-up, technologically enhanced pace of change scares these fathers (who can also be "Mama Grizzlies"), but "strict fathers" cannot show that they're scared. So they scare everyone else instead. And then use the threat of physical violence against everyone else.
Back to Lakoff: he sees the Wisconsin protests as a hopeful sign of real citizens who want to make the world a better place (real public servants such as teachers, pipe fitters, fire fighters, rather than the fake "public servants" that politicians claim to be, in another theft of a good metaphor). I applaud his article and want to share it far and wide.
Read it and pass on his clear thinking.
I thought that same thing this morning when I read this article Lakoff wrote: "What Conservatives Really Want." In it, Lakoff lays out all the moves that conservatives make in the public sphere - including shaping/controlling the language ("80% of the talking heads on TV are conservative," Lakoff reminds us - he could make the same claim about "talk radio").
By listing all the moves conservatives make, he reveals that the controlling metaphor of conservatives' worldview is the autocratic "strict father": they want the world to be structured like a head-of-household family where the strict father makes all the decisions, is not questioned, metes out the [necessarily physical] discipline.
With this kind of family, the social contract that Democracy promises (that we-the-people have a social responsibility to our fellow citizens) becomes a threat: helping others in the wider culture undermines the authority of the strict father.
Lakoff articulates SO clearly the views I've had for at least two decades but haven't been able to formulate, other than to say we're living through the last desperate gasps of the Patriarchy. To me, no one talks about the masculine violence that's behind all the criminal activity, economic greed, and gun-toting fear we see around us.
Conservatives campaign on the slogan "Take our country/state back!" (Minnesota's recent Republican candidate for governor used this phrase, even though our state had been suffering under a Republican governor for eight years. No logic there, but "strict fathers" don't work with logic; they work with fear). Back to where, is of course the question. Turning out country back in time seems to be the conservatives' goal - when men were men, women knew their place, and Dad yelling "Get off my lawn!" and following that up with a few firings of a 410 shotgun are appropriate ways to act.
Change is automatically a threat to the "strict father." And our speeded-up, technologically enhanced pace of change scares these fathers (who can also be "Mama Grizzlies"), but "strict fathers" cannot show that they're scared. So they scare everyone else instead. And then use the threat of physical violence against everyone else.
Back to Lakoff: he sees the Wisconsin protests as a hopeful sign of real citizens who want to make the world a better place (real public servants such as teachers, pipe fitters, fire fighters, rather than the fake "public servants" that politicians claim to be, in another theft of a good metaphor). I applaud his article and want to share it far and wide.
Read it and pass on his clear thinking.
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