Let's resolve in 2024 to highlight human rights empathy in constant public discourse.
And by so doing hide conservatism's values, principles, and philosophy.
Welcome back, Pro-Empathy Freedom Voters are the Solution subscribers. Our Empathy Surplus Network USA Zoom Forums are applying the framing recommendations from cognitive scientists, linguists, and progressive activists George Lakoff and Elisabeth Wehling’s bestselling book Your Brain’s Politics: How the Science of Mind Explains the Political Divide and retired progressive public relations guru David Fenton’s memoir The Activist’s Media Handbook. Here’re the schedule and enrollment link. Also, consider becoming a co-proposer of the Empathy Surplus Network USA’s first model legislation for state legislators at the CARE Education Bill link. We want to make the cultivation of empathy and learning about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights for all students in grades K through 12 mandatory in every state.
Importance of highlighting progressive values, principles, and philosophies
Let's resolve to highlight human rights empathy education and make the empathic CARE Education Bill central to constant public discourse. Let’s resolve to use our Pro-Empathy Freedom Framing Kit in our daily advocacy. In Your Brain’s Politics, cognitive scientist and linguist Elizabeth Wehling1 writes, " Our metaphor choices are “usually entirely unconscious. It's not the case that we look at abstract concepts, such as taxation, and ask ourselves, ‘What source domain for taxation should I use today?’ " Cognitive scientist and linguist George Lakoff replies, “Right, but if the choice is not conscious and deliberate, then … it’s the language used in public discourse that determines how things are perceived.” This is why reframing IS social change.
Hiding conservative values, principles, and philosophies is equally important.
In resolving to highlight the empathic CARE Education Bill, progressives hide conservatism’s values, principles, and philosophy from constant public discourse. But Dr. Lakoff writes, “But that’s only one part of the issue. There is more to this. Namely, the more often a metaphoric mapping is used in language, the more that metaphor is being engrained in people’s brains due to synaptic strengthening.2 If public political debate implements one given metaphor repeatedly, then that metaphor becomes our primary way of perceiving the issue at hand. The mapping simply becomes part of our common sense, our “only,” “unquestionable,” and “inherently rightful” shared understanding of the issue.”
The CARE Education Bill is a strategic initiative.
The power is in our hands in 2024 to make empathy central to constant public discourse. That’s why I hope you will consider proposing the CARE Education Bill3 to your neighbors and legislators. Let's make cultivating empathy and the study of the UDHR for all students in grades K-12 the law of the land. The CARE Education Bill is what Dr. Lakoff called in his book Thinking Points,4 a strategic initiative. He wrote, “The most powerful form of thinking is strategic. It is not just a matter of thinking ahead. It is a matter of changing the landscape of thought and action. It is a matter of setting many things in motion by setting one thing in motion. It is a matter of reconfiguring the future by doing one thing in the present. Conservatives have been very good at strategic thinking. Progressives have not.”
Resolve today to frame your specific and precious human rights issue with empathy. For example, let's frame protecting and expanding women's reproductive freedom as the moral obligation of an effective, caring government. Or reframe gun violence as mass murder. Or frame conservatism as the epicenter of racism, homophobia, Islamaphobia, ageism, misogyny, etc. Go, empathy surplus.
Lakoff, George and Wehling, Elisabeth, Your Brain’s Politics, Chapter 1.9. The Public Brain: Metaphors in Public Discourse, p. 23, Imprint Academic, Exeter, UK 2016.
See, e.g., Caporale & Dan 2008; Hebb 1949; Shatz 1992.
Go to https://proempathy.us/careedbill to sign on. Use https://bit.ly/careedbill to promote on social media.
Lakoff, George and Rockridge Institute, Thinking Points: A Progressive Handbook - Communicating Our American Values and Vision, Ch. 7, Strategic Initiatives, p. 102, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006 - https://proempathy.us/thinking