Would you start saying it?
Have you ever said it? No. Do you believe it? Yes.
Welcome back to Pro-Empathy Freedom Voters are the Solution and a big hello to all free Pro-Empathy Freedom subscribers. We still have room for you as a new paid subscriber to join our Fall one-hour-long Zoom discussions beginning this Tuesday at 6:45 pm Eastern. We convene two more Tuesdays in September and the first two in November. We are focusing on George Lakoff’s Don’t Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate. Click the blue button on our website for enrollment information.
Introducing Miriam Speaight
Paid subscribers benefit the Empathy Surplus Network USA, a 501c3 local human rights empathy education collective. One of our co-founders, Miriam Speaight,1 a Quaker pastor and business owner, is submitting for the first time one of her Zoom forum testimonies, where we apply Dr. Lakoff’s cognitive science to what we are currently passionate about. Paid subscribers can comment after the article, or you can email Miriam at miriam.speaight@empathysurplus.com.
If you'd like to be part of these congenial and stimulating conversations, you can upgrade to paid, and we’ll send you enrollment instructions:
Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community, Equality, and Service
As an American Quaker, I am committed to governing with empathy, the soul of democracy. Our central testimonies, called SPICES2 for over 400 years, are Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community, Equality, and Service. SPICES have nurtured generations to secure human rights for prisoners living in squalid conditions, supply food and shelter for victims of wars, establish and teach conflict resolution in prisons and schools, expanding freedom and fairness for all.
But we must do better at framing the unframed,3 or we could lose our freedoms to autocracy. For Quaker SPICES values to become common sense, they must be repeated over and over. Quakers are fond of quoting George Fox, their founder, as saying, “Be patterns and examples and answer that of God in everyone.”4 We like our doing and love our silence. However, when the spirit moves us to “answer that of God,” we can build a SPICES common sense by linking our verbal and physical empathic testimonies to our SPICES tradition. As the Psalmist says, we can “sing a new song”5 by intentionally linking our SPICES to daily life.
Quaker simplicity and peace align us with pro-empathy culture diplomacy versus culture warfare. Quaker integrity commits us to caring for all citizen well-being in our communities by framing the truth to reflect our values. Quaker service promotes public revenue equally through our taxes to provide safe and caring schools for our children and safe highways to markets for our ethical businesses and their wealth creators.
Quaker SPICES are infused with empathy.
Quaker SPICES are powerful empathic values. When talking to wealth creators in their unions, cognitive scientist and linguist George Lakoff gets a universal agreement that pensions are delayed payment for work already done. Then he asks, “Have you ever said it? No. Do you believe it? Yes. Would you start saying it? That is when it gets difficult.”
Peace and prosperity for all are realized when we repeatedly use culture diplomacy language for the common good versus culture warfare language for autocracy. Quaker SPICES values can help make government more effective and caring. Quakers must talk about them more. Say them, say them, say them.
Miriam Speaight’s Bio is at https://empathysurplus.com/human-rights-empathy-education-leadership/
Connecticut Friends School, Friends Journal, SPICES: The Quaker Testimonies, https://www.friendsjournal.org/s-p-i-c-e-s-quaker-testimonies/
Lakoff, George, Don’t Think of an Elephant, Ch. 2, “Framing the Unframed,” p. 33-34, Chelsea Green Publishing, Vermont, 2014.
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