Progressive Coherence is our 1st Week Takeaway of Fall Moral Politics Forum on How to Talk to Swing Voters
Ongoing, regular, and recognizable national coherent messaging is cognitive scientist George Lakoff’s vision for progressives.
(Click on the Rev. Dr. John Paddock DDiv's photo above to read his bio. John is our newest trustee of the Empathy Surplus Network USA.)
Progressive Coherence is the 1st Week Takeaway of Fall Forum on Talking to Swing Voters
He calls the progressive commitment to America’s 1st Amendment human right to a caring society a challenge for coherence. And this challenge for ongoing published coherence is especially true of everyone we love currently under attack by anti-empathy conservatives. Many of our loved ones seek appropriate actions over and above voting. Therefore, my Fall Forum personal mission is to attempt to inspire you to engage your loved ones and neighbors with a pro-empathy progressive message? I hope you will especially consider monthly pro-empathy letters to the editor, or newsletters if you are in an organization.
Ignoring ongoing pro-empathy progressive messaging endangers our democracy and everyone we love.
Ongoing, regular, and recognizable national coherent progressive messaging is one of cognitive scientist George Lakoff’s goals for his book Moral Politics. 1 And, according to the US Constitutions2 and affirmed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,3 all human beings have a moral obligation to remind each other that we are all born free and equal in dignity and rights and have a duty to protect and empower each other just because we are human. In this nurturant parent worldview, we are ALL pro-empathy political leaders, not just our elected officials. And as pro-empathy voters, all true Americans have a mutual responsibility to frame our founders’ equality and democracy in the most caring way possible. Ignoring responsible and regularly coherent progressive messaging weakens American democracy, cedes power to cruel conservatism, and threatens everyone we love.
Overcoming conservatism's cruelty is a 1st Amendment goal. And pro-empathy voters secure our republic.
Ongoing, regular, and recognizable national coherent pro-empathy messaging from pro-empathy Americans is my prayer as well. And “(Moral Politics) attempts to say what it means to be entirely liberal or conservative,” wrote Dr. Lakoff. 4 And here’s a short reference link 5 to pro-empathy language you could use in a monthly pro-empathy letter to the editor? Pro-empathy Americans should ask themselves how we could measure our pro-empathy framing effectiveness? And our current suggestion is to embrace the frame “pro-empathy” for all references to progressive governance. If the frame “pro-empathy” became as ubiquitous as conservatives Orwellian and cruel “pro-life,” we would see conservatives be put on the defensive.
Values are not linear in the human brain. The human brain is more complex. Therefore, I hesitate to share this graphic. Nevertheless, clicking on the graphic for a short description of the Overton Window may be helpful in why repetition of pro-empathy values by individuals and organizations is important for a politics of care to be realized.
Measuring the effect of repeating our popular core values of pro-empathy
How could commitment to pro-empathy coherence messaging and 1st Amendment use be measured? Consider Overton Window followers as a model modified to measure debate of values that undergird all policy. Progressives can commit to the use of the terms pro-empathy voter(s), pro-empathy candidate(s), pro-empathy businesses, pro-empathy government, and pro-empathy governance in letters to the editors. By creating Google alerts for the frame “pro-empathy,” we all can receive one another’s pro-empathy letters to the editors show up in our inbox. When we get dozens of alerts per day versus one a month, we’ll know that progressive pro-empathy democracy is becoming common sense.
I hope you will signup for the 2022 Fall Forum. We have eleven sessions to go. If you'd like a short reference sheet containing a progressive's vision, values, and principles, consider clicking on the Pro-Empathy Freedom Declaration Toolkit link.
Click on the FrameLab logo above to listen to 20 podcasts by George Lakoff and his interviewer friend, Gil Duran. Many of the concepts we will discuss this Fall reading Moral Politics can be found at FrameLab. Click here to signup for the Fall Forum.
Lakoff's Moral Politics was cognitive science's first attempt to democratize the science behind articulating an effective progressive politics of care for human rights advocates.
Dr. Lakoff's cognitive science approach to politics started in the Fall of 1994. 6 He was watching election speeches and reading the GOP's Contract with America. He asked himself this: "What do the conservatives' positions on issues have to do with each other? If you are a conservative, what does your position on abortion have to do with your position on taxation? What does that have to do with your position on the environment? Or foreign policy? How do these positions fit together? What does being against gun control have to do with being for tort reform? What makes sense of the linkage?"
Dr. Lakoff could not figure it out. He thought to himself,"These are strange people. Their collection of positions makes no sense." But then it occurred to him that he had exactly the opposite positions on every issue, and he could not figure that out either. And as a cognitive scientist and linguist, he found himself in an embarrassing position.
Dr. Lakoff published the results of his findings in 1996 inMoral Politics. Two years later, he founded Rockridge Institute, a progressive think-tank that later became an online attempt to teach Americans how to think and speak progressively that focused on a commitment to govern with empathy for and responsibility to all human beings. The Empathy Surplus effort was launched in 2009 after Dr. Lakoff closed his think-tank in 2008.
What should you expect at Empathy Surplus Forums
Empathy Surplus Forums convened via Google Meet are focused on human rights thought leaders, which could be human rights experts, elected officials, or simply caring citizens who want to be more effective in the civic task of public governing. Forums are collective in nature with a facilitator versus a lecturer, where the teacher is Dr. Lakoff's writings. Forum members are expected to have read the material and receive up to three minutes of uninterrupted time (participants may pass) to apply what their learning to their particular passion and expertise.
The Empathy Surplus Fall Forum 2022 begins on the first Wednesday at 6:45 p.m. and continues weekly for four weeks. We convene for two Wednesdays in October and three in November and December. Please find tuition costs, more details, and a signup form at this link.
(Founder and CEO Tianisha Payne's Girls Emerging Into Maturity in Dayton, Ohio, received their personal complimentary copies of the Illustrated Universal Declaration of Human Rights in December 2021. Click on the photo above to explore their website.)
Human rights education needs your support.
Our children are shaped by how communities support human rights education at all levels. The Empathy Surplus Network USA UNICEF advisor supports the distribution of pocketbooks to grades K-12. If you are a teacher, you can sign up for complimentary books at https:bit.ly/TeachHR. If you are a human rights thought leader, you can donate pocketbooks to teachers athttps://bit.ly/USAhrpv. I'll send you a complimentary pocketbook for creating a recurring donation for pocketbooks.
Lakoff, George, Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think, p. 15, The University of Chicago Press, 1996 & 2002.
US Constitution, http://bit.ly/USAcons, 1789
United Nations, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Articles 1 & 29, https://bit.ly/IUDHRbk, 1948
Lakoff, Ibid., p. 16.
Lakoff, George, Don’t Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate, Part V - From Theory to Action, Chelsea Green Publishing, White River Junction, VT, 2014
Lakoff, George, Don’t Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate, p. 3, Chelsea Green Publishing, White River Junction, VT, 2014