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The Political Mind: Why You Can't Understand 21st-Century American Politics with an 18th-Century Brain | 
 enlarge | Author: George Lakoff
Publisher: Viking Adult
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95
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Rating:  16 reviews
Sales Rank: 14890
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 304
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 4.1
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.1 x 1.3
ISBN: 0670019275
Dewey Decimal Number: 320.01
EAN: 9780670019274
ASIN: 0670019275
Publication Date: May 29, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
In What s the Matter with Kansas?, Thomas Frank pointed out that a great number of Americans actually vote against their own interests. In The Political Mind, George Lakoff explains why.
As it turns out, human beings are not the rational creatures we ve so long imagined ourselves to be. Ideas, morals, and values do not exist somewhere outside the body, ready to be examined and put to use. Instead, they exist quite literally inside the brain and they take physical shape there. For example, we form particular kinds of narratives in our minds just like we form specific muscle memories such as typing or dancing, and then we fit new information into those narratives. Getting that information out of one narrative type and into another or building a whole new narrative altogether can be as hard as learning to play the banjo. Changing your mind isn t like changing your body it s the same thing.
But as long as progressive politicians and activists persist in believing that people use an objective system of reasoning to decide on their politics, the Democrats will continue to lose elections. They must wrest control of the terms of the debate from their opponents rather than accepting their frame and trying to argue within it.
This passionate, erudite, and groundbreaking book will appeal to readers of Steven Pinker and Thomas Frank. It is a fascinating read for anyone interested in how the mind works, how society works, and how they work together.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 11 more reviews...
 Framed again November 17, 2008
W. Jamison (Eagle River, Ak United States)
There is a very nice description of the essentials of narrative theory and its relation to personality theory to start but then the focus is on frames and two narratives in particular, those of the strict father and empathy. This becomes essentially the Kantian Enlightenment narrative versus the evolution (complex systems) narrative with argument that contemporary neuroscience supports the evolution narrative instead of the Enlightenment narrative. The evolution narrative then becomes the New Enlightenment narrative. Conservatives primarily hold the Enlightenment Narrative and Progressives the New Enlightenment Narrative. (For an interesting sense of how this difference changes the interpretation of a person see his other book "Philosophy in the Flesh")
Abstract but good November 5, 2008
David Ziff (Chapel Hill, NC)
The author, George Lakoff, is an eminent linguist and cognitive scientist who uses this book to coach Democratic candidates and present fascinating material from his area of study. It is readable for the bright layman but gets more abstract in its presentation of neural circuitry and frames of reference than some may like.
 Pseudo Cognitive Science November 4, 2008
Smile of Reason (Covington, LA USA)
0 out of 7 found this review helpful
Nobel physicist Richard Feynman said, "Learn from science that you must doubt the experts. As a matter of fact, I can also define science another way: Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts". Lakoff is such an "expert". His arguments beg the question because he asserts that his claims are facts when they are really hypotheses and theories. He claims that we "know" this and that because of various experiments. Because a hypothesis has been successfully tested once or twice does not make it a fact, a law of nature. The history of science is full of "experts" who asserted, erroneously, that they had discovered a scientific fact. Lakoff's "cognitive science" is really left wing politics, an Orwellian nightmare. His brand of "science" is more like Johnnie Cochran's brand of "law": "If the glove doesn't fit, you must acquit".
 Terror Managment Theory subsumes this formulation October 16, 2008
jasciu nowicka (Corvallis, OR United States)
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
Terror management theory based on the works of Ernest Becker does not contradict family dynamics theory but subsumes and provides the initial condition of humanity - a mean-seeking, symbol-using, esteem, power and status-seeking, social animal looking for protective affliations. TMT can explain the political machinations of family dynamics theory in terms of jockeying for status and significance in groups because it bolsters the self-esteem, worth and ultimately provides feeling of security against the alternative - powerlessness and "social death". In fact, symbols that promise protection forms the unconscious ability to move forward and have confidence in life. Conservatives leverage the symbols that represent protection and associate political messages at every turn. Thus percieved threats to security are symbolized and communicated through code words and those protective symbols promising our ultimate security - the flag, the american dream, right to guns, and even our ultimate security -immortality(religion) is used effectively in cost and time effective 30 second ads. Remember, we are animals...but we are thinking animals that not only react to the need for security but worry about our successful growth - unlike every other animal on earth.
Useful - But Only If You Use It September 30, 2008
R. WINN (Seattle, WA USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Few people know enough about neuroscience to agree or disagree with Lakoff's description of its discoveries, but nearly everyone can use what this book teaches as a recipe for dealing with people who, to us, seem irrational in their political choices.
I think it is very likely that Lakoff has his science right, or at least right enough. Can anyone reasonably say that the centuries-old concepts of how mind and language work are not as obsolete as their contemporaries, the theories of phlogiston and of the Great Flood? Whether Lakoff's brain science is exactly right matters little; it is sufficient to give a scientific foundation to think more effectively about how people think. Science continually evolves, and for today it suffices to take today's preliminary results to develop a useful technology of persuasion; waiting for a perfect knowledge that may never come is a recipe for failure.
More important than the precise rightness of Lakoff's formulation is its utility. Who has not found it frustrating to lay out fact after fact, logical argument after logical argument, and still to lose in the matter of persuasion? How many times I have drawn the conclusion that the listener was insincere, deluded or stupid! And never have those conclusions been especially helpful; no-one has ever been persuaded by being called "Stupid!"
Lakoff's explanations are much more useful than simply blaming the listener. It is very likely that people who brush aside my logic are almost never being stupid; they simply have a very different frame of reference and way of thinking. And since all thinking is based in biology, there is a biological basis for that thinking. (Lakoff's description of the biology is interesting for those who like that sort of thing, and can be skipped by those who don't.)
As Lakoff notes, whether "they" are being "rational" or not is completely irrelevant. They think the way they do, and I can't magically expect them to change by mere logical argument. I can fail to respect their frame of reference, their way of thinking, the way they are built; and with that choice, I will fail. And (going beyond Lakoff) may I add that I would deserve to fail, for being disrespectful.
Or ... I can accept our differences, and work with them, gradually changing the way they think over time.
There is no magic formula for persuading people to agree with me (...and it would be frightening if there were. Think about it!) But Lakoff's recipe for action offers hope: offer alternative frames, non-authoritarian ways of thinking about the problems that matter, thus gradually getting people used to non-authoritarian conduct.
We often do this without knowing it. It's the heart of every potluck supper, neighborhood watch or other volunteer community organizing event. Really, "all" Lakoff does is give us a metaphor for thinking about what works, so we can implement the methodology effectively. But since thinking is fundamentally the use of apt metaphors, perhaps that's all Lakoff needs to do.
Putting the metaphor to use is up to us.
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