Don't Think Of An Elephant!: Know Your Values And Frame The Debate ★★★★★

Read in 2022: Don't Think Of An Elephant!: Know Your Values And Frame The Debate by George Lakoff 📚

Just the thing progressives need to (re)read for these times. We have the ideas on our side. We just have to get better at believing and communicating them.

Notable Highlights

“There is no such thing as a self-made man. Every businessman has used the vast American infrastructure, which the taxpayers paid for, to make his money.”

“You can't understand Twenty-first-Century Politics with an Eighteenth-Century Brain.”

“People do not necessarily vote in their self-interest. They vote their identity. They vote their values. They vote for who they identify with.”

“One of the fundamental findings of cognitive science is that people think in terms of frames and metaphors […] The frames are in the synapses of our brains, physically present in the form of neural circuitry. When the facts don’t fit the frames, the frames are kept and the facts ignored.”

“What have been called “women’s issues” are freedom issues. Body control. The right of human beings to control their own bodies is a freedom issue. Respect. The right of human beings to be treated institutionally with respect as a human being is a freedom issue.”

“If you have cancer and you don’t have health care, you are not free. You are probably going to suffer and die. If you are in a car accident and suffer multiple injuries and don’t have health care, you are not free

“Discrimination is a denial of freedom.”

“Taxation is paying your dues, paying your membership fee in America. If you join a country club or a community center, you pay fees. Why? You did not build the swimming pool. You have to maintain it. You did not build the basketball court. Someone has to clean it. You may not use the squash court, but you still have to pay your dues. Otherwise it won’t be maintained and will fall apart. People who avoid taxes, like corporations that move to Bermuda, are not paying their dues to their country. It is patriotic to be a taxpayer. It is traitorous to desert our country and not pay your dues.”

“Progressives are constantly giving lists of facts. Facts matter enormously, but to be meaningful they must be framed in terms of their moral importance.”

“If you believe in the eighteenth century view of the mind, you will look and act wimpy. You will think that all you need to do is give people the facts and the figures and they will reach the right conclusion. You will think that all you need to do is point out where their interests lie, and they will act politically to maximize them. You will believe in polling and focus groups: you will believe that if you ask people what their interests are, they will be aware of them and will tell you, and will vote on it. You will not have any need to appeal to emotion---indeed, to do so would be wrong! You will not have to speak of values; facts and figures will suffice. You will not have to change people's brains; their reason should be enough. You will not have to frame the facts; they will speak for themselves. You just have to get the facts to them...”

“Systemic causation, because it is less obvious than direct causation, is more important to understand. A systemic cause may be one of a number of multiple causes. It may require some special conditions. It may be indirect, working through a network of more direct causes.”

“Our parents invested in the future, ours as well as theirs, through their taxes. They invested their tax money in the interstate highway system, the Internet, the scientific and medical establishments, our communications system, our airline system, the space program. They invested in the future, and we are reaping the tax benefits, the benefits from the taxes they paid. Today we have assets-highways, schools and colleges, the Internet, airlines-that come from the wise investments they made.”

“What is taxation? Taxation is what you pay to live in a civilized society- what you pay to have democracy and opportunity.”

“To be accepted, the truth must fit people’s frames. If the facts do not fit a frame, the frame stays and the facts bounce off. Why?”

“Wealth correlates with certain forms of freedom, like the freedom to acquire goods, or to travel, or freedom of access to certain cultural events, and so on.”

These are popular quotes sourced from Goodreads readers.