![[Ask]](http://www.mattthedemocrat.org/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/ask.png)
![[Facebook]](http://www.mattthedemocrat.org/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/facebook.png)
![[Google]](http://www.mattthedemocrat.org/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/google.png)
![[MySpace]](http://www.mattthedemocrat.org/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/myspace.png)
![[Twitter]](http://www.mattthedemocrat.org/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/twitter.png)
![[Windows Live]](http://www.mattthedemocrat.org/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/windowslive.png)
![[Yahoo!]](http://www.mattthedemocrat.org/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/yahoo.png)
![[Email]](http://www.mattthedemocrat.org/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/email.png)
The Political Mind: Why You Can’t Understand 21st-Century American Politics with an 18th-Century Brain
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 ta… More >>
Tags: 18thCentury, 21stCentury, American, Brain, Can't, Mind, Political, Politics, Understand
March 8th, 2010 at 6:30 pm
Even the left wing NY Times review of this propagandistic screed had to trash it, and that’s saying a lot. As William Saletan commented in said review of this laughable work: …it’s hard to take Lakoff’s neurodeterminism seriously if you know any science. As he acknowledges, current brain-imaging technology is far too crude to see specific neural activity. Cores? Narrative structures? Issue-to-worldview binding? It’s all speculation.
To dismiss his politics (Lakoff’s) as a brain defect would do him no more justice than he’s done voters. His proposal to re-engineer our heads is neither democratic nor scientifically warranted. It defies public accountability, the very principle he purports to serve. It also underestimates our intelligence. The fact that brain formation materializes mind formation doesn’t simplify their relationship. To the extent that the brain is the mind’s recorder, physical laws constrain the writing process. But maybe the power of rationality isn’t in the writing. Maybe it’s in the editing. The mind, through the brain, revises itself.
We’re capable of changing our minds. Just give us a good reason.
Rating: 1 / 5
March 8th, 2010 at 7:40 pm
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”.
Rating: 1 / 5
March 8th, 2010 at 8:23 pm
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.
Rating: 3 / 5
March 8th, 2010 at 10:43 pm
The author is simply wrong. The hand up that conservatives received came from the merit of their position rather than the emotional appeal. I agree that society, to a large extent, has left behind the thought of the 18th century. This is not because of a lack of logical reasoning, but because a removal of the first principles that were prevalent then. If society again took up those first principles (which I believe would well serve the world), men would reason better and make better decisions concerning their government.
Rating: 1 / 5
March 8th, 2010 at 11:08 pm
New way to look at what we believe and why. based on new neuro science.
Rating: 4 / 5