On Language

Hola mi gente,
I would rather have a straight up racist like Trump and his gang in the White House, than a racist like Hillary Clinton. Hopefully people are waking up.

On another note, I will be on WBAI’s “On the Count” this Saturday, November 19^th at 11AM. Check us out on the radio or the internet. Click here for more information.

Language

The Tower of Babel

The limits of my language means the limits of my world.
 -- Ludwig Wittgenstein

I have a friend. He is pretty smart, having first graduated from Harvard and then finishing his graduate studies at Columbia. He loves his sons dearly and oftentimes comes to me to discuss child-rearing practices. He points out that sometimes I come off as a “Philosopher King,” which is the aspect of my personality he loves best. He doesn’t like it when I’m “dicking around,” as he calls the aspect of my personality which loves to goof off (I happen to enjoy my dicking around, by the way).

Which was why I was surprised when, in asking his son to do a task, he told him, “And make sure you don’t spill any of the water?”

He had asked his seven-year-old son to bring me a glass of water. It was filled very close to the top. What do you think happened? Yup, he spilled the water almost as soon as his father asked him not to spill the water.

I have a co-worker who has recently met a woman with which he’s considering marriage. He came to me with some concerns. I noticed, as the conversation progressed that he was talking in terms of how things could go wrong, rather than how they should work.

Now, let me clarify that the aim of this post is not to make value judgments; we all have different ways of processing information. My intention here is not to judge. Rather, I am going to simply point out how our mind works how a familiarity with its mechanisms can assist in creating lasting change.

Language is a very powerful characteristic of change. It shapes the world we live in. Whenever I am involved in a social change project, I am often reminded of Einstein’s thought experiments. For the sake of brevity, I will not go into detail about them, but simply note that they entailed Einstein placing himself in an imaginary scenario in order to better understand a particular problem. 

In one of his most famous thought experiments, Einstein asked himself what would happen if you chased a beam of light as it moved through space and caught up to it. Following the line of this thought experiment, Einstein eventually laid the groundwork for his special theory of relativity.

What is important here is that Einstein’s thought experiment compelled him to imagine a world that did not exist. In doing so, in immersing himself in that world, he had to act and behave as if that world existed. Furthermore, in order to properly envision such a world, he had to develop a language (theory) for it. In the process, he changed the world. What is needed to create lasting change is the capacity and will to envision a world that we want and the language necessary to create and sustain it. Unfortunately, that is what is missing from our collective political consciousness today. This is why we in the United States have Trump as president-elect.

At the micro level, observe almost every parent and you will hear people say things such as, “Don’t do it,” “Don’t think about it, or the famous parental admonition, “Don’t you dare say/ do that!” This is why punishment, as a parental tool, fails miserably. At the macro level, this is why punishment as a solution to crime, lack of access to education, and poverty has failed miserably, in the process making the United States an apartheid state. In both instances, the failure has been the failure of creating a language that sustains a vision.

If I were to tell you right now, “Don’t think about Eddie sodomizing you,” what immediately happens in your mind? Well (your protestations notwithstanding), you find yourself thinking about Eddie sodomizing you. The same thing happens when you tell your child, “Don’t spill the water.” The way our brains work is that in order to erase a negative (i.e., “Don’t let Eddie fuck you in the ass… ”), we first have to think about it. Our brains don’t know how to put things into negative language. In order to know what not to think of, our brains first have to think of it.

We all have people in our lives who, with good intentions, tell us what not to do. What they are actually doing is putting our attention exactly in the direction they feel in wrong. A few examples include, “Don’t say ____ anymore,” “Don’t worry,” “Don’t panic,” “I don’t think you’re stupid.” Using negative language is also something we do to ourselves. We tell ourselves we won’t think about something and we do. This is repression and we often mistake it for morality. For example, I am sure Weiner has struggled with posting dick pics on social media. Other examples include: “I won’t do that again (usually followed by, “Dear God!” LOL), “Don’t piss me off,” and “Don’t smoke,” just to name a few. We tend to think of what we don’t’ want to do, and then do it anyway.

Part of changing our society and even our personal idiosyncrasies is changing the language that supports them. One way is to understand that we can take our negative thoughts and state them in the positive. Instead of saying what we don’t want, we can instead envision and state what we do want. Try it.

Think of a negative statement you’ve been making to yourself, and experiment by turning it into a positive one, right now… 

Yes… now.

Instead of saying to yourself, “don’t worry,” try asking yourself “How would I like to feel?” Instead of saying, “Don’t smoke,” try saying, “I would like to be smoke-free.” This not only feels better, it actually begins creating the mental conditions (actually making the synaptic connections) that reorients your brain and prepares you to achieve more of what you want, by focusing on the positive things you want in your life.

At the societal level, this was evident in the Clinton campaign. When running against Bernie Sanders, who was spearheading a wildly popular political movement and what he (and others) envisioned, the Clinton campaign settled in what we could not do. The language of the Sanders campaign was composed of declarations of what we could do. The Clinton campaign settled smugly into a faux “pragmatic progressive” that failed and failed miserably. The same happened with the general election where, say what you will about Trump, he was able to offer a vision and language of making “America great again.” The Clinton campaign was basically bereft of vision and language that did not counter the bleak status quo.

From a statistical perspective, about 80% of the people who make New Year’s resolutions stopped trying altogether by the end of a month. What I want to say here is that the vast majority of people who achieve change in their lives experience difficulty and fall off the wagon, sometimes many times, before they eventually get it. If you smoked a cigarette, try being smoke-free over again; see how long you can be smoke-free. Very few people get it the first time, people, so give yourself a break, and focus on the positive things you want in life. But in order to do that, you have to have a language that resonates with the kind of person you want to be or the world you want to live in.

In the end, whether we want to make personal changes or change the society we live in, we first have to create a language that helps manifest such a world. As this election shows, we are not even close and some of us believe -- use language -- that is self-defeating. 

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

Runaway Society

Hola Everybody,
Voting for the lesser of two evils is a logical fallacy called false dilemma. Voting for the lesser of two evils is not like choosing to switch a runaway train to another track so it kills one person instead of five if you do nothing. In this hypothetical case, there are only two choices. But when faced, as we are in this election cycle, with two of the most despised candidates in history, there are other choices. You can abstain from voting, for example, or vote for a third party candidate, or write someone in. 

If you aren’t fooled by the Democratic Party’s propaganda, you’ll see the real issue is not the lesser of two evils the evil of two lessers. Which choice is really the lesser evil? Evil is evil and leads to more evil.

Runaway Society

I don't give a damn about semi-radicals...
This is not a time of gentleness.
It is not a time of lukewarm beginnings.
It's a time for open speech and fearless thinking.
-- Helen Keller

Towards the end of Emile Zola’s Beast of Man, an engineer and a fireman are quarreling in the locomotive of a passenger train. In his rage, the fireman has stoked the engine’s fire into an inferno. They grab at each other’s throats, each trying to force the other through the open door. Losing their balance, both fall out and perish. The train rumbles on at breakneck speed. The passengers, soldiers en route to the war front, are sleeping or drunkenly unaware of the impending disaster.

Zola’s story has been seen as a parable of modern runaway societies. Those supposedly in charge, embroiled in their own personal dramas, paralyzed with performance anxiety, or caught up in their ambitions, have left the driver’s seat. Meanwhile we, their oblivious passengers, are about to pay the price.

A common neoliberal strategy is setting up government for failure and then blaming any failure, not on deregulation, but the very agencies they set up to fail. We ignore the fact that a gun endows people -- many unstable -- the power to inflict destruction like no other instrument. Sure pencils don’t cause people misspell words, but let me see how many people you can shred with one pencil as opposed to an assault weapon.

The genius of the neoliberal project lies in how its adherents have convinced us that a regressive rather than a progressive tax structure is better for us (they call it “tax relief”). It’s how they convinced a number of us to go along with trickle-down economics -- an economic theory no real economist has ever backed. Worst of all, is how neoliberals like Hillary Clinton have convinced many of us that nothing is possible -- that the best we can hope for is a platform that’s to the right of Richard “Tricky Dick” Nixon.

In any case, our opinions are most often driven by the beliefs -- or better put: by the metaphors -- we live by. Neoliberals have known this for some time and that’s partly why you voted for Obama and why you vote against your own economic interests, or find some identification with a regressive politician such as Hillary Clinton. Neoliberal operatives discovered long ago that people vote their values, not on the issues. Therefore, if you can frame, say, “family values” in a way that serves the economic interests of the elites, you have co-opted the most important metaphor we all live by -- families.

Progressives have labored under the false notion that reason or issues should come first. Yes, issues are important, but people vote on values (frames) and if you can’t connect with people on values, you will never get your agenda on board. Let’s take the following facts as an example:

On the Iraq War, an overwhelming majority of Americans want a timetable for pulling out our troops. On economic policy, most Americans support stronger government regulations to protect citizens. On trade, polls consistently show the public is very suspicious of the free trade agreements that have hurt the middle class. On health care, surveys consistently show that about two-thirds of those asked desire a government-guaranteed universal health-insurance system -- even if that means higher taxes.

If the US electorate is more left of center, then why aren’t progressive issues on the table for public discourse? Why? One reason is because we longer live in a democracy -- we live in an oligarchy. Another reason is that these issues haven’t been framed adequately. One of the ways issues are framed is through repetition. Jon Stewart from The Daily Show has made a career highlighting hilarious video clips of the neoliberal noise machine using the same words over and over on the same day. This is a very effective way to express and embed an idea. The words come with frames of reference attached. Those frames in turn latch on to and activate deeper, subconscious frames. When repeated over and over, the words serve to reinforce deep frames by actually strengthening neural connections in listeners.

In that way, I can stand up on a stump and yell out catch phrases like “family values!” or (as Hillary did) yell, “superpredators!” or “tough on crime!” and immediately in your brain a barrage of neoliberal-framed issues appear. I can blurt out, “tax and spend” and immediately neoliberal frames come to your mind. “Tough on crime!” “Traditional marriage!” “Choice!” For the last 40 years, a vast media network of think tanks, newspapers, radio and TV shows have embedded these values into the mind of unsuspecting or apathetic Americans, creating a passive mindset. Shit, people in France, who are taking to the streets to fight for their equal share are wondering, “Have the Americans fallen asleep?” Sadly, we have, and the train is hurtling towards certain disaster... 

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

Moral Politics

Hola mi Gente,

Well, now the nation knows what we New Yorkers have known for quite some time: the New York electoral process is broken -- has been for quite some time. I can’t even to wade through the cesspool of yesterday’s primary election. I can only say that 100s of thousands were disenfranchised. That New Yorkers (at least those who had their votes counted) voted overwhelmingly for a hawkish neoliberal Thatcherite.

Suffice it to say that the shit storm was so bad even a mope like faux liberal, Mayor Bill De Blasio, has called for an audit.

* * *

The Sociological Imagination

It is not what you look at but what you see.

 -- Henry David Thoreau

Most of my readers know how much I detest overly simplistic explanations. Take these for example:

• Idiots are consistently voted into office = Voters/ people are stupid.
• The subprime meltdown was the consequence of clueless borrowers.^[1]
• Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.

I could go on ad nauseum on yo ass with a list of the foolish and narrow-minded shit people pull out of their nether regions in their quest to form opinions. I believe that the greatest postmodern challenge facing us is our inability to apply what C. Wright Mills called the sociological imagination (1959). Mills described the sociological imagination as the capacity to shift from one perspective to another: from the political to the psychological; from examination of a single family to evaluation of the national budgets of the world; from considerations of an oil industry to studies of contemporary poetry. Simply put, the sociological imagination is the capacity to view issues from both a micro and macro perspective -- inclusive of divergent points of view.

This lack of the capacity for a sociological imagination is killing us – literally.

We blame “a nation of idiots” on the election of idiots; lazily ignoring the massive propaganda machine tied to interests that want idiots in office. We blame borrowers in what is the greatest financial scam in our nation’s history, ignoring the decades of deregulation and dismantling of government insight that paved the way, not just for the subprime meltdown, but also Enron and every other corporate malfeasance, since the Savings & Loan debacle of the 1980s.

In fact, it is a common practice of neoliberals to set up government agencies for failure and then blame any failure, not on the cause (often lack of oversight--deregulation), but the very agencies they set up to fail. We ignore the fact that a gun gives people -- in a culture steeped in violence -- the power to inflict destruction like no other instrument. Sure pencils don’t make people misspell words, but let me see how many people you can shred with one pencil as opposed to an assault rifle.

::blank stare::

The genius of the neoliberal/ conservative project lies in how they have convinced you that a regressive rather than a progressive tax structure is better for you (they call it “tax relief”). It is remarkable in how it has convinced a number of you to go along with trickle-down and austerity economics -- economic theories advocating for upward shifts in wealth and income (trickle down) no credible economist has ever endorsed, and the bloodletting (austerity) that ensues when the theory fails.

As cognitive linguist, George Lackoff, has shown, our opinions are most often driven by the beliefs, or better put -- by the metaphors -- we live by (2006). Conservatives have exploited this fact for some time and that is partly the reason why people voted for Bush II or still see Hillary Clinton as something other than warped. Most importantly, it is why you vote against your own economic interests. Neoliberal operatives discovered that people vote their values, not on the issues. Therefore, if you can frame, say, “family values” in a conservative way, you have co-opted the most important metaphor we all live by -- the family.

Progressives have labored under the false notion that reason or issues should come first. Yes, issues are important, but people vote on values (frames) -- people make decisions based on emotions -- and if you can’t connect with people on values, you will never get your agenda on board. Let us take the following facts as  examples:

• During the Iraq War, an overwhelming majority of Americans wanted a timetable for pulling out our troops. On economic policy, most Americans support stronger government regulations to protect citizens.
• On trade, polls consistently show the public is very suspicious of the free trade agreements that have hurt the middle class^[2].

If, as polling data consistently shows, the mainstream is more left of center, then why aren’t these issues on the table for public discourse? Part of the answer lies in the reality that the issues have not been framed adequately. A larger part of this lack is that powerful interests invested in undermining progressive policies are now the ones driving public policy. As some social scientists have noted, we have slowly become an oligarchy. One of the ways issues are framed is through repetition. Jon Stewart, formerly of The Daily Show, made a career out of showing hilarious video clip compilations of mainstream media pundits and political leaders repeating the same emotionally charged words over and over.

Far right-wing politicians use this technique consistently. Neoconservative such as Ted Cruz frame their attack on women’s reproductive rights as a life and death moral struggle. His expressed and constantly repeated belief or frame (echoed 24/7 on mainstream news media cycles) is that as a society we are locked in a crusade against those who wish to persecute Christians. His key words include “reckless,” “immoral,” “dangerous,” and his overriding metaphor is one of war -- the war of “good” vs. “evil.”

This is a very effective way to express and embed an idea. The words come with frames of reference attached. Those frames in turn latch on to and activate deeper, subconscious frames that trigger emotions. When repeated every day, the words serve to reinforce deep frames by actually strengthening neural connections in the brains of listeners. Even if you are “smart” or consider yourself a latte-drinking, NPR-listening, sophisticated liberal, this onslaught of frames will have an impact on your thinking. At the very least, these frames serve to move the “center” of the political landscape to the right, in the process relegating progressive ideas tom the margins of the national dialog. In other words, progressive ideas and policies are not even up for discussion and whether you agree with them or not, we are all the poorer because of it.

In that way, I can stand up on a stump and yell out catch phrases such as “family values” or “tough on crime” and immediately in your brain a barrage of conservative-framed issues appear. I can blurt out, “tax and spend” and immediately conservative frames come to your mind. And this unconscious form of manipulation is how public consent is manufactured (Herman & Chomsky, 2002) rather than agreed upon in a conscious, democratic manner.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization… 

Resources

Herman, E. S., & Chomsky, N. (2002). Manufacturing consent: The political economy of the mass media (reprint ed.). New York: Pantheon Books. (click here)

Lakoff, G. (2006). Thinking points: Communicating our American values and vision: A progressive's handbook. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. (You can download a PDF version of this book for free by clicking here)

Mills, C. W. (1959). The sociological imagination (reprint, annotated ed.). New York: Oxford University Press.

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[1] While the government sponsored mortgage giants were certainly not blameless, Federal Reserve data shows conclusively that it was private mortgage brokers, not Fannie and Freddie, who drove the subprime housing bubble: More than 84 percent of the subprime mortgages in 2006 were issued by private lending institutions. Private firms made nearly 83 percent of the subprime loans to low- and moderate-income borrowers that year.

[2] Public opinion polls suggest that Americans are deeply suspicious of free trade agreements. A national survey by the Pew Research Center reveals the ongoing concerns Americans have regarding free trade. More Americans think free trade slows the economy down (34%) than makes it grow (31%).