ozarque: Linguistics; political language; an alternative approach

ozarque (

ozarque) wrote,
@ 2006-03-30 14:00:00

Linguistics; political language; an alternative approach
I keep fussing in this journal about the long, bland, vague, uninspiring list of "values" being proposed for the non-Right in George Lakoff's current writings on political language. In that context, I want to quote briefly from a review by Jerry Ortiz y Pino of Michael Lerner's The Left Hand of God, from the March 16-22 issue of the Alibi. Ortiz y Pino writes:

"Throughout the book, Lerner uses 'the left hand of God' as a metaphor for the values and attitudes of optimism, hope, humility, caring and service to others that flow from progressive elements in Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism and Islam."

He also says that Lerner contrasts this with the "right hand of God," defined as an orientation which warns that "the world is a place in which everyone is going to exercise power over you, dominate you, control you unless you dominate and control them first."

I haven't read the book -- I'll be ordering it today so that I can fix that; if you have read it, I'd welcome your comments about it. (For example, without reading the book I can't know why "hope" and "optimism" are listed as two diffierent values.) But I'd be interested in your reactions to that list of five values -- optimism, hope, humility, caring, and service to others -- and to the "hand of God" metaphors.

Thanks to Patricia Mathews for sending me the review.

(Post a new comment)

(Anonymous)
2006-03-30 02:20 pm UTC (link)

Very interesting, I'll try to get my hands on a copy.

The problem with Lakoff I've been pouring over right now is that I think he doesn't take systems of political belief seriously. I think the right has always valued strength, obedience, reward and punishment, and the like. I think what's made them more unified in the past forty years is that they've come to believe in some shared narratives - "We are returning America to its roots as a Christian nation / as a capitalist nation / as a nation that follows its Constitution literally / as a nation of tough individualists / etc." These aren't emanations from one central metaphor; they are complex stories that link together dozens or hundreds of metaphors to create a somewhat coherent ideology.

It seems to me that Lakoff treats these beliefs as if they are epiphenomena. If anything I think liberals / progressives focus *too* much on their basic values - caring, service, equality, etc - and not enough on weaving these values together and fleshing them out into a complex narrative about what America should be. I think that "lists of values" are by nature uninspiring, vague, and bland.

Your thoughts?

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	nfnitperplexity 2006-03-30 02:20 pm UTC (link)
	argh, that was me. If you respond, respond to this comment rather than the original so I get notification. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

Response to nfinitperplexity....

ozarque
2006-03-30 02:28 pm UTC (link)

Thank you for the comment. Before I try to respond, however, I have a request. I've been following (using the term loosely!) a linguistics listserv's interminable wrangle over whether particular items do or do not qualify as an "epiphenomenon." From that discussion, I know what a slippery word that is. Could you define it for me in the sense that you're using it in your comment?

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	Re: Response to nfinitperplexity.... nfnitperplexity 2006-03-30 03:00 pm UTC (link)
	Ah, sorry. I'm using it in a popular sense - it seems to me that Lakoff treats political belief systems as irrelevant decorations that pretty up (or obscure) the parenting metaphors that are the true source of political opinions. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

Re: Response to nfinitperplexity.... continued...

ozarque
2006-04-03 06:08 pm UTC (link)

"it seems to me that Lakoff treats political belief systems as irrelevant decorations that pretty up (or obscure) the parenting metaphors that are the true source of political opinions."

Even using "epiphenomenon" in the sense you describe, I don't feel that I understand your statement above well enough to say anything useful in response to it.

I do agree with you, however, that the non-Right desperately needs better stories. Ideally, just one really good story.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

Re: Response to nfinitperplexity.... continued...

nfnitperplexity
2006-04-04 12:13 am UTC (link)

Hmmm, let me try another way, then.

1) Lakoff says that conservatives believe what they do because they have the Strict Father ideal of parenthood.

2) (Many) conservatives say they believe what they do because they are working within a movement established by William F. Buckley, Barry Goldwater, and Ronald Reagan, based on an intellectual tradition drawing from centuries of Classical Liberal thought, with an emphasis on Edmund Burke.

What's the relationship between those two explanations of "what Conservatism is"? I don't think it's possible to take the second explanation fully seriously if you believe firmly in the first explanation.

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And yet, where are our values?

idiotgrrl
2006-03-30 02:44 pm UTC (link)

Both sides seem to have totally forgotten certain values which used to define America. Fair play. Finish the fight but don't start it. I disagree with what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it. Etc. One really good source for that is Robert Heinlein's collection which includes his predictions dated 1950, 1965, and 1980.

I see two things here.

The first [From Ken Wilber] is that as you go up the ladder of moral and social development you go from the egocentric adolescent "You aren't the boss of me" to the Good Citizen = one who obeys the rules model [necessary to get out of the adolescent model!] to Citizenship as defined by the values of The Enlightenment and our founders [see Brin's Blog for a passionate advocate of this] to the postmodern idealism which claims to be multicultural, worldcentric, "nurturing parent model" etc ... and which has its flaws. Our current culture wars are IMO a quarrel between the "Citizen = following rules" and the postmodern idealism, and the people in the middle - me, Brin, Heinlein, et. al. are sitting there wondering what in the blazes HAPPENED to the values we took for granted?

The second thing, which answers the first, is something that also happened in Ancient Rome, and indeed has happened often in history. For example, in the 1930s a lot of people bemoaned the fact that you had to stand either for fascism or for communism; there was no middle way. Luckily, America - and FDR - rejected that and stood firm. So our current culture wars have happened before, not in my living memory but certainly that of my parents.

How do we come to this? "The old order passes, giving way to the new, lest one good custom should corrupt the world." Tennyson understood this cycle. That is: Heinlein and his generation are all but dead. The leaders now on deck have no living memory of the events - or the values - of his day. "Mo-THER! We studied that in Ancient History!"

To give an example from Tuesday's lecture (I'm going to school this spring), the Roman Republic may have died in the Civil Wars, but it wasn't buried until Augustus appointed Tiberius as his successor. Not that it was Tiberius' fault; it was the principle of the thing, that power was now handed down at the whim of the current holder and not in the old Republican ways. How did that happen? The professor said flatly "Everyone who had ever lived under the Republic, before the Civil Wars, was dead by then."

What has this to do with Lakoff and the vague muzzy platitudes the Left is coming up with? Just this: both sides are ignoring the values that have really made America, but the Right still has its hands on a few of them (the more law & order sort) while the Left seems to have forgotten they exist! Instead (to quote an author on the Libertarian Right), they offer "a puddle of sticky syrup a fly would not die in, or for." Sigh. Come ON, boys and girls, get your ACT together!

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Re: And yet, where are our values?

nfnitperplexity
2006-03-30 03:10 pm UTC (link)

I'm going to have to admit I found some of what you said obscure, but I think I picked out some of the key ideas.

Are you familiar with the people who consider themselves "radical centrists" or "the radical middle"? They have a sizeable presence on the web. The theme of theirs that I found most interesting is the idea of "value pluralism," the idea that the poles Left and the Right are defined more by the values they neglect than by the values they represent.

Also, they seem aware of the need for "centrists" to avoid The Fallacy of the Golden Mean - the idea that whatever position is halfway between the two poles must be the correct one.

Do you have any particular views about the (historical) Progressive Movement? They have been described variously as Leftist or Centrist, but what I find especially interesting about them is that they were "nationalists" in the sense that they were very aware of the values that animate America as a nation, but they were not Rightists of the sort we usually associate with the word "nationalism."

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Re: And yet, where are our values?

idiotgrrl
2006-03-30 03:46 pm UTC (link)

I'm vaguely familiar with "The radical middle", and yes, somewhat wary of the "halfway between two poles" position. Just think what would have happened 70 years ago if someone had decided that "halfway between fascism and communism" was the Golden Mean!

Historically, the Progressive Movement was all about the power of the State to do good. They were nationalists and leftists both, and in their day the flag-waving patriotism was seen as a positive moral value - Good Citizenship being the aim. So we had Americanization classes for adult immigrants, settlement houses for the immigrant poor (later extended to our own rural poor who moved to the big city), the eight-hour day, trust-busting, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, and all sorts of things which became institutions by midcentury. Now, inveitably, they've become attached to the conservative (in the old fashioned sense, not the current crop of neocons and radical rightists) view - because they worked so well in their day.

Do they still work? Have they become encrusted with bureaucratic micromanagement? (i.e. gone the way of all institutions that don't periodically reinvent themselves). Are they unfashionable? Will they return? Ask Madam Scamz to check her crystal ball; mine's in the shop. But I rather wish some of them were still alive, well, and advocated by our brightest minds.

BTW, today's 'progressive' cause, ever since the 1960s, has been ecology. I put 'progressive' in quotes to distinguish it from the historical Teddy Roosevelt Progressives on one hand, and The Nation using it as a code word for 'Socialist' on the other. At least, that's what I THINK The Nation is doing, and the lack of transparency annoys me. [Or why I dropped them in favor of In These Times.]

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	Re: And yet, where are our values? dmsherwood53 2006-03-30 03:56 pm UTC (link)
	I could do with some of the can-doism of the 20's for the left(see a history of the Wobblies)seems to have been captured by the Right as can-be-the hardsest-bastard-on-the-block (Reply to this)(Parent)

Re: And yet, where are our values?

nfnitperplexity
2006-03-30 03:57 pm UTC (link)

I'm going to be giving a presentation about (Roosevelt-style) progressivism to a "progressive" student group at the LBJ School of Public Affairs. It's interesting: attending a left-leaning public policy school I'm around the cream of the "young, idealistic, politically-motivated" crop, and many of them seem to be groping hopefully for a new meaning for the word "progressive" that doesn't match the post-1960's use of the term.

My thinking is that the popularity of the word "progressive" over "liberal" combined with the popular sense of "a soul-searching crisis of the Democrats and the Left" could be an opportunity to return to some of the values of the Progressive movement.

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	Re: And yet, where are our values? nfnitperplexity 2006-03-30 04:10 pm UTC (link)
	Do you know of any essays or articles that address the double-talk on the word "progressive"? Those might be really helpful for building my speech. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	Well it seems pretty good dmsherwood53 2006-03-30 03:53 pm UTC (link)
	Waffly bleeding heartism IS a flaw of the LEFT. Well not of COMMUNISM but liberal thot generally. Recomend the writing of a few more Utopias has gone REALLY out of fashion since the 1900's. If it was good enuf for Wells and Morris .... (Take it for granted that I'm talking of GOOD Utopias not Pastorial circle-jackoffs) (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

Re: Well it seems pretty good

idiotgrrl
2006-03-30 04:08 pm UTC (link)

"Waffly bleeding heartism IS a flaw of the LEFT." Don't I know it! Where, oh, where, are some *ideas* well-thought-out, or even the core value of "is this good or bad for John and Jane Doe?" Which is MY touchstone for whether a policy is good or bad.

And do NOT get me started on the Left's love affair with Eminent Domain. It took the Right to defend our homes and businesses.

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	starcat_jewel 2006-03-30 03:00 pm UTC (link)
	While I personally adore the "left hand of God" (aka "Religious Left") metaphor, I do want to point out that "left-handedness" in and of itself may be a problem. Though certainly less so here than it would be in a country whose majority religion was Islam! (Reply to this)

dteleki
2006-03-30 04:51 pm UTC (link)

without reading the book I can't know why "hope" and "optimism" are listed as two diffierent values.

I haven't read the book either, but I think I can guess at the distinction that it's making here.

hope: the future will be better than the present.

optimism: the present is already better than you realize. or perhaps better than you have been willing to take seriously.

* * * * *

In this "two hands of God" metaphor, it isn't at all clear to me where liberty and equal rights fit. I don't see where there's any room for them in this model, and for me that's a problem with the entire model, and not just with one or the other side of it. Liberty and equal rights might possibly get shoehorned somehow inside of caring, or even inside of humility, but those possibilities seem to me to raise more problems than they solve.

It is my perception that what these days goes by the name of "The Right" is a wild mish-mash of unrelated things, like lumps of clay pushed together but not kneaded together; and liberty and equal rights are two of the fault lines between the lumps. I suspect that the mish-mash may start falling apart along the fault lines in the ordinary course of events as the clay starts drying.

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	nfnitperplexity 2006-03-30 08:57 pm UTC (link)
	What you're saying about "liberty" and "equal rights", I think, is similar to what I'm saying about "not taking belief systems seriously." It seems to me that ideas like "liberty" and "equal rights" are enormously complex systems that delineate how we should apply simpler values like "caring" or "humility" to political situations. (Reply to this)(Parent)

nancylebov
2006-03-30 07:38 pm UTC (link)

I twitch at God metaphors, and also at people who seem to expect I'll feel all warm and fuzzy if they mention God.

Possibly related: I sometimes think in terms of orderly and disorderly virtues--the orderly virtues include keeping promises, tidiness, and punctuality. The disorderly virtues include fun, humor, telling the truth when it's inconvenient, and refusing to keep excessively destructive promises. A sensible life presumably includes both, though people will generally have a preference for one side or the other.

This doesn't exactly map onto Left and Right, though the Left has somewhat more fondness for the disorderly virtues and the Right for orderly virtues. As far as I can tell, both sides invoke law-abidingness as a major virtue when it's convenient for them, and don't when it isn't.

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Left, right, lawful, & chaotic

idiotgrrl
2006-03-30 09:29 pm UTC (link)

The Libertarians have been putting out a two-axis political chart since at least 1970. The X-axis is labeled Left and Right. The Y-axis is labeled "Authoritarian" and "Libertarian". Our current Right Wing is heavily Authoritarian.

Note please: this is diamond shaped, so that the further out the Y-axis you go in either direction, the more like each other Left and Right become. The classic example: "How do you tell Stalin from Hitler?" {by their mustaches.]

Likewise, the further out the X-axis you go, the more the dimensions or order and liberty merge.

Occasionally I think there should be a Z-axis but have drawn a blank on thinking of one right now.

I'm Left Libertarian aka Chaotic Neutral. But then, I'm also a wizard.

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	meowse 2006-03-30 09:35 pm UTC (link)
	I really like the "orderly vs. disorderly virtues" paradigm. Thanks! (Reply to this)(Parent)

	nolly 2006-03-30 07:49 pm UTC (link)
	I can't read the phrase "left hand of God" without thinking of The Left Hand of Darkness, (Reply to this)(Thread)

	meowse 2006-03-30 09:35 pm UTC (link)
	I was half-assuming that was deliberate. :-) (Reply to this)(Parent)

	badger 2006-03-30 10:15 pm UTC (link)
	In my case, I can't forget Clancy Brown's character in the HBO series _Carnivale_ describing his purpose in life as "the left hand of God". Probably because it's more recent mindstamp than Le Guin's book is for me. (Reply to this)(Parent)

Seven Cardinal Virtues

wolfinthewood
2006-03-30 08:16 pm UTC (link)

I cannot speak with any real knowledge about the teachings, 'progessive' or otherwise, of Buddhism and Islam, or even Judaism. However, I do know something about the traditional moral and social teachings of Christianity in the pre-modern period, according to which the Seven Cardinal Virtues are Justice, Fortitude, Prudence, Temperance, and, of course, Faith, Hope and Charity/Love (see 1 Corinthians 13.13). I am not a Christian, traditional or otherwise, but I think Lerner's 'values' are wishy-washy beside these. Okay, he keeps 'hope' and, in effect, 'charity' ('caring and service to others'), but he leaves out Justice - a virtue without which no society can survive for long. And if we are going to sort out our problems of global warming and environmental degradation, we are going to need to exercise Prudence and Temperance, and, indeed, Fortitude, on a global scale. As for Fortitude: only Fortitude will enable us to stand up and defend Justice in the teeth of greed and power; and defend, too, Truth, Mercy, Righteousness and Peace: another key set of Judaeo-Christian virtues (see Psalm 85 verse 10). I don't think we need 'progressive values': I think we need to take much more seriously the old, demanding social virtues, which require us to take responsibility for building an equitable human society.

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	(Anonymous) 2006-03-31 01:25 am UTC (link)
	The first thing I think of when I think of "the left hand of God" is the parable of the sheep and the goats. The left hand of God is the hand of judgment and where the damned are found. Ouch. I can't read the phrase "left hand of God" without thinking of The Left Hand of Darkness, Indeed. (Reply to this)(Thread)

(Anonymous)
2006-03-31 04:37 am UTC (link)

Ok. Enough.

You can't say "we are in trouble, but don't worry, your permissive mother is the one you want to take over." It doesn't persuade anyone.

You have to say "The Republicans are like your drunken uncle who just went on a bender with your pay check" and "Democrats are ..." who you can trust to be responsible and pull things back in line.

After all, what are the problems that Republicans have -- as far as the middle is concerned? The problems they have are all about acting like teenagers who have hotwired the car and taken off and don't understand proper limits. Irresponsible spending, military adventures and slapping everyone around they don't like. Come on, if they were really disciplined fathers you might not like them, but you would tolerate it a lot better.

And the middle, the middle who makes decisions in elections? That is their core concern. A litmus test doesn't appeal to them. Opposing the patriarchy sounds silly to them. They want a responsible father figure. An adult in the house.

Look what happened to Joe L, the poor guy that Gore turned on. The Republicans feared him, but the left loathed him and he went no where.

The left right now comes across not as a nurturing mother but as a crazy aunt who thinks martians are stealing her flowers and that bugs have rights to the sugar in the kitchen.

Do you really want either? Does the middle, the independent voter?

Let us hope not.

That is the metaphor challenge and the one that is being missed.

All of these projects sell the other side as attractive to the middle. Gee, no wonder they don't work.

I'm tired, just spent too long trying to cheer up a progressive friend.

But rethink things.

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	Love this! idiotgrrl 2006-03-31 05:33 am UTC (link)
	Do I have your permission to copy what you said and forward it to friends? Especially one who keeps trying to get the Democrats' act together? Oh, I DO love it! Does anyone in public life stand for rationality these days? (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: Love this! (Anonymous) 2006-04-01 02:58 am UTC (link)
	Feel free to share this. It is why I posted it. I'm concerned and am working on doing more. I'm just having a mental block right now. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	nancylebov 2006-03-31 05:45 pm UTC (link)
	Bingo. I'd like to get in more about how harshness does not equal making people safe, but your metaphor is more than enough to get started with. (Reply to this)(Parent)

optimism vs hope

ambar
2006-03-31 05:03 am UTC (link)

This came over a "quote of the day" mailing list today, and I thought immediately of your question. I don't have any more context or citation than what is given.

Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.

-- Vaclav Havel

(Reply to this)

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