“Frames are mental structures that shape the way we see the world. To change our frames is to change all of this. Reframing is social change.” – George Lakoff

Call to Gather

We begin our service this morning with the words of UU minister Ed Harris, adapted by Michael Schuler

This church is not a fortress of truth or an impregnable bastion of faith. It is a community of those who possess a sense of awe and mystery about this world and the enterprise of living. It is where the strands of our convictions, our hopes and our courage, form a cable strong enough to bear us across the valleys of pain, despair, grief, fear and disillusionment. Each of us has experienced these, or will, and we gain strength from one another. This is why we come to this special place, harboring old doubts, hungering for new insight, happy to be on this journey together.

Meditation for 9/17 & 9/18

From a piece adapted by UU minister Jill McAllister:

Spirit of Love and Compassion:

Help us remember that the jerk who cut us off in traffic last night is a single mother who worked nine hours that day and is rushing home to cook dinner, help with homework, do the laundry and spend a few precious moments with her children.

Help us to remember that the pierced, tattooed, disinterested young man who can’t make change correctly is a worried 19-year-old college student, balancing his apprehension over final exams with his fear of not getting his student loans for next semester.

Remind us that the scary looking bum, begging for money in the same spot every day (who really ought to get a job!) is a slave to addictions that we can only imagine in our worst nightmares.

Help us to remember that the old couple walking annoyingly slow through the store aisles and blocking our shopping progress are savoring this moment, knowing that, based on the biopsy report she got back last week, this will be the last year that they go shopping together.

Remind us each day that, of all the gifts we have been given, the greatest gift is love. It is not enough to share that love with just those we hold dear.

Open our hearts not just to those who are close to us, but to all humanity. Let us be slow to judge and quick to forgive, quick to show patience, empathy and love.

Amen.

Readings

From Janet Hutchinson, from a book of meditations by UU writers entitled For All That Is Our Life.

Of course, I want the truth,
but here’s the rub:

Truth doesn’t sit around
still as a rock,

it breathes and flows
and turns inside out.

Ever seen a lion in a cage?
He paces and glowers.

That must be how God feels
locked in our little religions.

Look how big the sky is,
the deep distances between stars.

Little speck, that’s you;
laughable speck, that’s me.

How could we contain The Truth,
all that overwhelming light?

Our truth is just a pinprick
in mystery’s velvet curtain.

Our second reading is from 13^th century mystic poet Rumi:

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase "each other"
doesn't make any sense.

Sermon

Since the 2004 election, one of the most popular thinkers in progressive circles has been a Berkeley-based cognitive linguist named George Lakoff who contends that the primary reason why Democrats faired so poorly in the election was that they were overmatched, as they have been for years, in the language of debate. Lakoff is an astute academic who has spent many years exploring the role that metaphor plays in our ability to think, reason, and persuade. He contends that the person or group who most effectively controls the prevailing metaphors of a society, will be the person or group with the most power to further their agenda, almost regardless of what that agenda is. In other words, the metaphors that are created in an attempt to persuade are more important than the facts.

Today I will spend some time going over a few of his most foundational ideas, I will offer some examples of these ideas at work and finally, I will attempt to answer questions about how these ideas relate to our common enterprise as human beings in search of meaning, purpose, and a life well-lived.

First, what exactly are Lakoff’s primary points?

Perhaps they can be best summed up in one word: Framing. To Lakoff and his followers, frames are more important than the details of ideas, because frames are the mental structures that shape the way we perceive the world. Frames are not something that we can easily see or hear. Rather, they are a component of what those who study the science of thinking would call our “collective unconscious”—the structure of our brains that enables us to reason and to determine what we call “common sense.”

We create and understand frames mostly through the language we use, because the words that we use are defined relative to frames.

Perhaps the most obvious way to explain this theory is to share an exercise that Lakoff uses with his students. The first day of class, he asks them to clear their minds. He then tells them, “Don’t think of an elephant. Think of anything at all, just don’t think of an elephant.” He says he’s never found a student capable of doing this. That’s because upon hearing the word elephant, we cannot help but imagine our own mental dictionary picture of a large, floppy-eared creature. The lesson here is that words always have frames associated with them, and even when we try to negate that frame (a la “don’t think of an elephant”) we inevitably evoke that frame anyway.

Another example Lakoff offers is when President Nixon declared on national television years ago that he “wasn’t a crook,” only to find that the nation then couldn’t resist associating him with the word.

The second lesson of this theory is that when we are engaged in a debate over ideas we should not use the language of our opponents, because, if we do, we will evoke their frames and hinder our ability to further our own.

There are countless examples of this principle, and, because Lakoff is writing about politics, he offers many related to the conservative agenda. One of the most obvious is the ubiquitous term tax relief. The Bush administration and other politicians on the right have been using this term non-stop for years. The frame (or metaphor) it evokes, is one of taxes as an overwhelming burden. Never mind that every bit of infrastructure in our nation and all the social programs that have kept the majority of Americans safe and secure throughout our nation’s history have been funded by taxes. They are still a burden…a burden that must be relieved. After all, if we need tax relief, taxes must be an affliction. “Tax relief” has been used so much that even reporters write and speak it as though it is not a term laden with ideology. Even some democrats have been using it, thereby further embedding the tax-as-burden metaphor into the public unconscious.

The key to using framing to further one’s own agenda, then, is to put together phrases and expressions that evoke one’s worldview while appealing to the public’s “common sense.” Of course, common sense is a concept that is difficult to pin down. Common sense to me, for example, may be anathema to you. Turns out “common sense” isn’t necessarily so “common” after all, and it can be flipped quite quickly. That’s because “common sense” is determined primarily by the frames to which we are repeatedly exposed and which we accept, often times unconsciously.

One powerful example of this is the right’s fight to ban “partial birth abortions.” Now I think we would be hard pressed to find anyone who is in favor of something that seems as grisly as a “partial birth abortion.” To ban this is a no-brainer; it is simply common sense. The problem is that “partial birth abortion” is a crafty combination of words used to describe a procedure that is rare, and almost always performed in emergency instances when the health of the mother is at stake. Yet, the use of the term is persuasive (and manipulative!) because it creates a frame related to abortion that implies any mother who chooses to have one is a blood-thirsty miscreant who cares not a whit for anyone other than herself. Powerful frames evoke powerful emotions.

I could offer a litany of other examples, including phrases like death tax, healthy forests initiative, fixing social security, even the war on terror. But in the interest of time, I want to share Lakoff’s ideas on one of the phrases most commonly linked to the conservative agenda: family values.

Lakoff really began to invest himself in the work of exploring political framing when he was trying to understand just why the nation seemed so polarized, why the conservative agenda seemed so opposite to the progressive agenda. He found his answer while considering the concept of “family values.” Working with the cognitive idea that humans naturally understand large social groups, like nations, in terms of smaller ones, like families, Lakoff wondered that, if there were two seemingly primary understandings of our nation, then perhaps these were based in two different understandings of family. It didn’t take him long to assert that the primary difference between the conservative and progressive worldviews was based in their most basic perceptions of family.

He contends that conservatives tend to follow the strict-father model of family which is grounded in the belief, among many, that in order for a person to be “good” he must be obedient to authority at all times, focused on morals as they are defined by the greater culture of which he is a part, and dedicated to his own self-interest above all else, as this self-interest builds self-reliance, the ultimate goal of any strict father modeled family. Understanding this model helps one begin to grasp why modern-day conservatives tend to reject social programs designed to care for the welfare of their fellow citizens, because they think this care actually detracts from the ability of those citizens to develop self-reliance. It also helps us understand the motivation of conservative activist Grover Norquist who famously said, he wants to see government reduced to the size where we “can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” A particularly interesting quote in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

On the flip side, Lakoff asserts that progressives tend to be motivated by a nurturing parent model which values fairness, empathy, open, two-way communication, cooperation, and freedom. As I was writing this portion of the sermon, I had to stop and ask myself whether or not my portrayal of Lakoff’s ideas, particularly describing a progressive worldview as based in nurturing, was fair. After all, to me, nurturing is a supreme value. Then I realized, “Of course I feel that way, and I’m guessing many of you do, as well. Duh!”. That’s why we gather each week in this progressive religious community where God, whoever or whatever we perceive it to be if we accept the concept at all, is more concerned with care and maintenance of the interdependent web of existence than dogma-driven punitive action. In short, I am a progressive because I care about nurturing, and I am a religious progressive because I believe our existence is impacted by divine action that emerges from the connections and understanding we foster in the world, always impacted by the continuous revelation of our lives. Lakoff’s work has reminded me that most conservatives would not define nurturing (or God) the same way I would. I would define nurturing as caring for others in order that they may share in the same opportunities I enjoy. Conservatives, on the other hand, would be likely to define nurturing as letting people sink or swim on their own merit or God-given ability. The point is that what one side views as outrageous, the other side views as truth. In this reality lies the heart of much, if not most, of the polarization of our nation.

So what do we do with this information? What kind of hope can we have for the future if our differences are so locked up in our own cognitive predispositions?

Lakoff suggests that the answer is not in expecting to convert everyone to the progressive worldview, as this goal, for many reasons, is plainly impossible. Instead, he encourages progressive-minded people to become more conversant in the art of framing. Not only to understand how the conservatives have been so successful in controlling the language of debate in this country, but to better spread the message of progressive ideals to those who are not fully converted to the strict-father model. Lakoff contends that all progressives have at least a little strict father model in us, just as most conservatives can be compelled toward a nurturing model from time to time. The key, he says, is that progressives must assert their own ideas more strongly, using their own frames rather than always reacting to those put forth by conservatives.

While I find it difficult to argue with the essence of his assertions—after all Lakoff has spent lots of time working with these concepts—I must admit to you that the whole thing makes me more than a little uneasy. I have no problem acknowledging that language is important and that being careful with words is a critical pursuit of any engaged citizen interested in furthering the common good.

However, no matter how I come at it, Lakoff’s work still seems reactive and not in keeping with the vision of divinity and beloved community for which I think we could be striving. While we are bantering words back and forth, aiming toward the most effective construction of syntax, the whole framing enterprise still just feels like an attempt at manipulation to me, which is not in keeping with the kind of open communication at the foundation of my theology. Maybe I’m just exposing my overly-emphasized nurturing parent worldview, but I don’t want to play the game if the rules are based in who can cheat the best. If we are so caught up in trying to choose the least offensive words, even as these words may betray our true intentions, aren’t we just creating obstructions to creative interchange? Aren’t we just putting up barriers to real understanding? And aren’t we just keeping ourselves from the kind of honest interaction that I believe is our greatest hope?

I’d like to think we are better than this. And when I say we, I don’t mean only progressives. I mean human beings. By whatever act of grace or happenstance, most of us have minds that can think, bodies that can feel and lives we did not choose…lives that are only temporary journeys through a too-rapid succession of days and nights where our conceptions of truth are always “merely a pinprick in mystery’s velvet curtain.”

We can argue about wrongdoing and rightdoing until our dying day, but the reality is that we will all eventually leave this life behind. And when we do, the frames and concepts to which we have given so much energy and emphasis will be left to our children and their children. Rather than leaving behind confrontational concepts and frames, I would like to see us striving to create and foster communities where people are focused on engaging through our differences, even when it is painful to do so, without such desperate clinging to one theoretical or ideological argument over another.

I envision a country where people are more interested in conversation than in being right. I envision a progressive movement of people committed to connecting to their neighbors, whatever their political and/or religious persuasion. I envision a nation of citizens who get to know each other well enough that we grow tired of polarization and we come to understand divisiveness to be the destructive impediment to healthy relationship that it truly is.

I know this is a lot to ask. I know I come of sounding like a dreamer. But somebody has to dream. Somebody has to believe that our nation is greater than the polarization, greater than divisiveness, greater than manipulation through language.

The change has to begin somewhere. Let it begin with us. Let it begin with me. Let it begin with you.