YES
From the media's coverage of what's going on in Congress one would be led to
assume that changes in the organizational structure will solve the problem of not
sharing information among the different departments and this is a big lie. The
only thing that will help is policies and programs to build interpersonal trust
at the community, national and international level.

I agree with rogerv that one of our goals should be to put the Carlyle group out
of business but I think it should be a short-term goal.

I loved your analysis of swing voters. I think that a little more revolutionary
approach will bring in people who have not been voting.

OK, gang,

On another thread I found that the republicans are trying to block a Washington recount, calling hand counts 'human enhancements'. This strikes me as made to order for this thread. It is obviously an attempt to frame the issue. We should expect to hear this phrase a lot, and we need to counter it before every pundit uses the republican language to describe what amounts to mechanical failures to register legal votes. Perhaps we need a phrase of our own, someething like 'obstructing voting justice' or simply 'stealing votes'. What they are doing is manifestly illegal. We should not stand idly by while they undermine the democratic process spelled out in the constitution and state constitutions. We should not let the usupers win through our silence and indifference. We need to fight this.

I've come back to this after thinking over something another felllow wrote:

My immediate reaction is: "No demand."
Then I started thinking...

No demand for idealistic journalism suggests "no demand for Truth", which itself suggests:

- Truth isn't an american value.

But Truth does have value, at least to me. I hold value in Truth, at least for what I believe is it's argumentive power.

That's when I came back to what you wrote: We all confront the Other.

And that's what struck me as missing in our discussion about values and communication: the representation, the perception, the exercise, the meaning of [b]Power, when confronting the Other[b].

It also appears interesting to study the circumstances bringing up the confrontation and individual behaviors, i.e.:
- when you walk up to someone to ask him directions,
- when you walk up to someone to ask him an opinion,
- when someone walks up to you to ask you your opinion,
- when you find yourself arguing with someone,
- when you find someone blocking your way,
- when you find yourself sharing a confined area with someone for some time,

I want your comments, I need your comments, gimme your comments !

We all confront the other When I came back to this phrase after Picadilly's
discussion, my first association was the social psychologists' study of the concept
personal power .From the standpoint of mere interpersonal communication
this mostly means being assertive rather than aggressive, passive or passive
aggressive. Expanded to an ecological and system's perspective personal power
reflects at least all the elements that Maslow included in self-actualization
and maybe more. It requires eating and drinking right, breathing right, not being
too hot or too cold, feeling safe and understanding yourself, the world and your place in it.

How aboutquality control ?

When countering fundamentalist notions of morality it's important to keep in mind that there's new information coming out of research that could back us up.

Here's an article from Wired:
http://wired.com/news/print/0,1294,65775,00.html

Psychologists are using fMRI to analyze human decision-making, such as moral judgment, evolutionary development, and love.

Integration is the best index of healthy maturity and maturity makes people smarter and more moral. The best way to help ourselves and others is not to interfere with natural development. Trust nature. Nature is more intelligent than any of its parts.

I'm of the opinion we can improve on nature. That is precisely the driving force behind technology. Why should we expect anything different? Evolution is not optimizing but satisficing. All evolution cares about it 'good enough' (please excuse the personification, but it is implied in RLA's request to trust nature). I think intelligence can do better.

I just picked up David Domke's book God Willing: Political Fundamentalism in the White House, the "War on Terror," and the Echoing Press (Pluto Press, 2003). This fellow is an asssociate professor of communications at the university of washington. who has done content analysis on the speeches of Bush and media coverage. It looks like it would fit into our discussion here of framing, agenda setting, and the political use of religion to stifle dissent. His category of 'political fundamentalism' looks interesting and perhaps useful.

The table of contents:
1. religion, politics, and the Bush administration
Modern political fundamentalism: a conceptual framework
An overview of evidence and implications
2. Marking boundaries
Fundamentalism, binaries, and strategic communication
Binary discourse and an echoing press
Analysis of discourse
Binaries: the evidence
Comfort and familiarity, at great cost
3. A 'mission' and a 'moment', time and again
Fundamentalism, time, and strategic communication
Analysis of discourse
An obsession with time: the evidence
No time for others, or for democracy
4. The universal gospel of freedom and liberty
Fundamentalism, freedomand liberty, and strategic communication
AQnalysis of discourse
A universal gospel of freedom and liberty: the evidence
Freedom and liberty, rhetorica vs reality
5. Unity, or else
Fundamentalism, dissent, and strategic communication
Analysis of discourse
An intolerance of dissent: the evidence
Dissent, authoritarianism, and the news echo.
6. Political fundamentalism, the Press and the Democrats
The strategic communication of the Bush administration
An echoing press
The Democrats' language.

Domke shows awareness of Lakoff's work Moral Politics (the first edition not the second edition available now), and may be applying some of his insights in his discourse analysis. Would you like to read and discuss this book?

There is also a lot of stuff still in Lakoff on the issues (see my posts a few back).

Or we could go through the two volume work of Popper that started this thread. Popper's claim in that work is that totalitarianism is an enemy of the open society because it fears change, and tames change by historicism: that is, change is tolerated so long as it follows a fixed immutable law (Marx and Hegel are the two sources he studies most closely). But historicists, no less than Platonists, are convinced they have it right, and that unshakeable conviction blocks the normal process of checking results. Popper is in favor of piecemeal social engineering (we make small incremental changes, and see if we like the results before we make any additional changes).

What I am after are the hindrances and conditions of public debate on political issues, and the input of such a debate into the policy-making process. I'm interested in democratizing the process. Right now, it is an elite invitation-only affair, and has been for some time. The Bush group is rude and more brazen about it, but the insular character of the beltway has been noticed for years. Englishman noted in the thread (or its predecessor) that openess to debate is not necessarily going to solve the problem: people in pubs love to debate, but it changes nothing in their behavior. The results of the debate are quaranteened, so to speak, and insulted from sensitive beliefs. What would lead such people to consider their most basic beliefs as open for debate?

First the GOP is only united during the stretch of election cycles. They are kpt together by acknowdleding their differences without pulling hissy fits when they do not get the candidate of their choice. They use IDENTITY POLITICS. As in . """"I identify with being a "good" American and that is more important to me than tax or bread and butter issues, because I want to be a 'good" American more than anything else."""""

It is all part of the GOP strategy of getting blue collar ethnic (irish, italian, polish, german,.etc) voters to vote against their "interests" ,....."ISSUES"

We make the mistake of thinking issues and common sense will rule the day and we will continue to lose. again, and again, and again,.......
\

I'm a bit swamped with work and family stuff, but have followed along. Excellent summary of Lakoff's Moral Poitics, Roger. I'm going to have to let him marinate in my mind a bit longer: taking his Philosophy in the Flesh on holiday break for a few days away from a computer may help put my finger on some vague confusions/dissatisfactions I've had with his political work. I'm sold on the cognitive theory of metaphor as being the inference to the best explanation for a huge range of linguistic phenomena, but his application of the theory to politics, and especialy his construct of authoritarian and nurturant family structures, seems ad hoc when realistically qualified to account for wide variations in American family and political structures and perhaps simply not necessary: the moral accounting system might be able to do the work without that construct. I'll think about this a bit more.

In any case, his theory, or my understanding of it, doesn't yet break down cleanly in a way I can see implementing as a Web-based application that might further rational discourse on democratic processes.

I'm intrigued with the work on deliberative democracy: small face to face groups (ideally) getting together, after individually reading up on a set book of readings, to discuss the issues and try to explore their feelings and rationales.

Public Agenda at http://publicagenda.org/ has been doing this sort of thing for decades, but the empirical research on the process is at Stanford's Center for Deliberative Democracy at http://cdd.stanford.edu/ This sort of thing can be Web-enabled, and how to structure such a collaborative workspace is a topic of great interest and much research, with many implementations of 'groupware' from the business world finding themselves adapted to political work. I've looked at many and have my own ideas - later.

Looking forward to learning more about Karl Popper -- I know his work on philosophy of science, but haven't read his The Open Society and Its Enemies. Awaiting a guided tour.

If we are a part of nature and we improve on some part of nature, then nature is improving itself which is what we mean by intelligence. There is no technology knowable to man which is not in and of nature. I see Persons and persons'
culture and persons's technology and persons' social systems as all part of nature.
Everything that is, is in process and we can and do individually and collectively
influence this process for better or worse. How we organize ourselves to compete and/or cooperate will largely determine the outcome.

In the political domain we over-employ competition for power and pretty much
limit interpersonal communication to a debate mode. Our whole political process
looks like the operations of the personnel department of a very large company
and no knows what the rest of the company is about. When we get all the open positions filled, we're done.

Perhaps the thread that's working on developing an electronic think tank will help.
Your suggested format of small group discussion of selected books shows that
you're aware of the problem I'm alluding to. Maybe we should focus on the problem statement you mentioned above and further elaborate that into a goal statement for the group and commence to create a position paper. During the process we could bring together whatever information resources that seemed useful.

We have another advantage the conservatives don't have. Academia. If there is a true bastion of liberalism left in America, it is college and universities, despite all the pressures on them. We do not need to construct a think tank from scratch. A foundation can be established to fund research and conferences on applying the social science theory already done in universities.

This model works very well with applied science research, often performed by university scientists but funded by government and business.

Your remark about not having hissy fits over not getting the candidate of their choice makes it sound like the GOP is a marriage of convenience, without any coherent ideology everyone subscribes to. That would make their alliance strategic rather than material or ideological. Do you believe that? Is it an 'anybody but the liberals' alliance? Or is there more common ground among the conservatives than you let on?

Two things. First, I agree with you. Second--I'm not sure academia is unified enough to do the work it has to do here. Academics may be constitutionally liberal. I think that is true. But there are all sorts of differences among liberals, and the academic workplace accentuates difference at the expense of commonality. Nobody wants to publish things that start out "I agree with so and so...". Nobody ever gets tenure repeating the work of others. Novelty is emphasized (alas, sometimes at the expense of solidity and other scholarly virtues).

This disunity makes them vulnerable to conservative attack. In fact, the conservatives have figured this out a long time ago, and have attacked university funding for social sciences and humanities since Reagan.

I'm an academic, and am flattered that you expect help from that quarter. But realistically, this work will not happen without some institutional structure, perhaps like the one you and UlTrax and BNW are trying to build. Even liberal think tanks, which freely use academics from the universities, have instituional structure and norms. We probably could learn a lot from seeing how Brookings Institute and the Open Society Institute do things.

BTW, thanks for joing us, progressivephoenix and dante.

Interesting notion of nature! I had a professor once who said the distinction between natural and artificial was an artificial distinction. I suppose if we are going to naturalize intelligence (an enterprise we are engaged in here, at least in part) we are in part making nature intelligent (or parts of it at least).

Still, it seems to me that 'trusting nature' is a phrase that usually directs us to unexpanded nature, and is consel to give up the artificial in favor of the natural. natural food, natural birth, etc. is meant to point us to something uncontaminated by science or human tinkering. But since nothing is more 'natural' than dying from diseased food, or to die in childbearing or to die as an infant from infantile disease (witness the fate of many in the third world on just these matters), I think Western science and technology are decided improvements (though not without costs and other problems) over what went before.

Perhaps we should. Do you have a preference where we should begin in our collaborative composition?

Once-upon-a-time someone would come out with a stroke of genius when faced with something like Ukraine: and avert disaster.

There has been a spoiling of the ability to suggest peaceful ways of change: it's become too easy to fall in with the pattern of assertiveness and hostility already colonising our minds. The “weak” ways, the ways-of-losers, are already falling by the evolutionary wayside in this rush for victor's glamour -- before their virtue for mankind has shone.

These potential victors don't want bright ideas to usher away their darkness. A broad painting of fear allows their rigid talents to predominate.

Where did the vision and the urge to bring about co-operation go to -- if indeed it went? Was it snuffed out by the same politics driving the retiring Secretary of State to ask for yet more concessions from the losers in Palestine?

There is no openness here. It is the country of the blinded that we are entering. And the one-armed bandit is king.

Perhaps my earliest recollection of American culture is the TV Western. And one of the staples was the supplying of “firewater” and (prophetically) “long knives” to the natives -- usually being done by unscrupulous, unshaven, rogue white-men “speaking with forked tongue”.

To a child in 1950s Britain all this seemed very distant -- and the idea of firewater and pow-wows amusing: like viewing creatures on another planet -- that you'll never meet. All this may have amused Ronald Reagan too, but I went on to Arthur C. Clarke.

One of his books was entitled “Profiles of the Future” and a paperback. He speculates that we have two hurdles, in such a quest: failure of nerve and failure of imagination.

We do, as the spaceman said to Houston, "have a problem". And it's not that we've lacked in our scientific talent. It's that we're hamstrung by our cultures as much as our biology.

I can be an island of thought, getting Scientific American before I understood much of it, just as you can feel unassailable in your ivory towers; but the community has voted against our open thinking going on.

This one sentence contains the bitter lesson of my life -- the last thirty years of it. The awesome battle we have (hinted at by the HG Wells “education v. catastrophe” quotation) is the bringing of peace to the freshly ignited combat between the “spiritual” and the “analytical”. Our morale and our reasoning.

Englishman.
I always look forward to finding your posts. They help me push my thinking a little further and at my age that's not easy. I think your analysis of the problem is roughly equivalent to Lakof's conclusions about authoritarian vs nurturant parenting/leadership. From this perspective I would take exception to the way you use the term,asertive as in ,"the assertive and hostile" way today's leaders
approach problems. In the social and behavioral sciences, assertive usually means one of four styles that segments of interpersonal communication may be reliably sorted into along with aggressive, passive and passive aggressive.
Within this model assertiveness includes communicating empathy, respect and
genuiness as well as a clear self-disclosure of the speakers feelings and
position in the situation. Assertiveness also includes sending complimentary
and affirming messages as well as messages protecting the speaker's space, rights
and preferences. So therefore I think it is usefull to make a clear distinction
between being assertive and being aggressive or hostile.

The two essential elements of nurturance in Lakof's model(according to roger's summary) is empathy and responsibility. I started mapping the concept of
empathy in a previous post on this thread. Maybe roger will help us get a better notion of how "responsibility" is used. From a verb or process perspective I
would start with response ability . Essentially this means staying centered
so that all of one's faculties are available to respond to one's empathic reading of the actual situation.

I'll need to get back with you on that after I check Lakoff again, RLA.

As a first approximation, I think he means the following: responsible people take on tasks that need to be done, whether a rule would be broken if they failed to do so or not. If I am right, it comes out nearly the same as what we now call 'proactive'. But it comes with all sorts of associated ideas: getting (or giving) the training that is needed to do the job right; taking a developmental perspective (knowing that competence comes in stages and not all at once); and realistically analyzing failure to prevent its recurrence. It is the idea that goes with training kids how to do the tasks adults ask of them, rather than just issuing edicts with the warning 'or else'! IT fits with Lakoff's emphasis on inner motivation rather than external motivation. I produced competent practitioners by making them reeflective practitioners, able to evaluate their own porecesses and products, and not counting on evaluation by others to tell them if they are doing it right or making anything good. And it fits with Lakoff's claim that this is how saelf-reliance is produced. I think that's it. But I need to check his text to make sure.

I share your preference for science fiction over westerns (although some science fiction is essential space westerns --like the first Star Trek, or world war two movies, like Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, Star Wars, and Forbidden Planet--the last one adding a psychoanalytic twist making it more interesting and one of my favorites.). I wonder what that preference says about us. Are we forward looking rather than backward looking--driven by hope rather than fear? Maybe taste in literature and art are indicative of something, although I'm sure the correlation is complicated. And there are questions of what subgenres one likes. Some Westerns are very simple, and attacttive for those seeking 'moral clarity' to use Bennett's phrase. Others (like Clint Eastwood's spaghetti westerns) have more moral ambiguity to them. Still others (like "High Noon") were probably intended to comment on McCarthyism rather than feed the hero myth. Some science fiction makes scientists heroes (like the WW2 scientists who helped win the war?), some science fiction makes the scientist mad, and plays into the image we already had from gothic horror films (like Frankenstein, which builds on the Romantic rejection of science). Some have aliens that are benevolent (although maybe a little pushy) like "the Day the earth stood still" (one of my boyhood favorites). Others have them menacing (like "the Thing" and "Alien"). And some are just glorified action films (most of Swartzeneger's science fiction, "Total Recall", which does contain an interesting idea about illusion and reality, but most of it shows off Arnold's actions) or film noir (" Blade Runner"). But if we fine-tune this analysis enough, there might be some interesting correlations between who likes what, and where they come out politically. It will probably turn out to be a claim not only about what genres people like, but what they like about those genres--(e.g., is it the science or the fiction, that makes the magical seem possible?)

I think Englishman has brought up something we should look at more closely--the structure of our myths. Our utopias and dystopias, our heroes and antiheroes, the narratives we like, probably say a lot about our identities, and explain a lot of our actions, even in voting. The place of science and knowledge vs. violent resolution with guns. The customs of other peoples--the native americans Englishman describes in 1950's westerns (including the one starring Reagan) seem more alien than the alien cultures we encounrter in Clarke's science fiction. Isn't this an interesting reflection on our racism, our inability to understand other cultures?

I think you are right. I think there is a misconception about what strength is, and what weakness is. Cooperation has made us the most successful animal on earth. One does hear much about that, and maybe one isn't believed when one says that. But look at the results. Social primates have been successful against stronger more agressive predators. And the primates we are have adapted to every environment there is. Competition and force are very much overrated. We need to say that clearly and convincingly. 'United we stand' is not just a windshield sticker. It was a sentiment expressed when our backs were to the wall and we were facing a militarily superior--England! It was our allianace with England, France and Russia that made us unstoppable against one of the greatest warmachines in history, the German Wehrmacht.

It is cooperative research that has lead to the medical advances of the last century. I give competition its due. But had the model of science been what the current private insutry is following--patent discoveries and not share results except with those who pay the fees--the advances in medicine of the last century would not have happened. Salk's research is just an example, of how quickly we mastered the polio cahllenge. Sabin and Salk gave us effective remedies to one of the great childhood diseases because of cooperative research. And the great electoronic revolution of the twentieth century would have been impossible without all the research, in Europe and America, in phyasics and chemistry in the nineteenth century. Openness there made the research accumulate more quickly. Conferences where the results were shared and discussed led to quality control of a high order. Contrast all this with the Viox scandal here, where the regulations for quality control have been so reduced, and the power of the FDA so reduced, that a dangerous me-too drug was released. The costs of closedness and relentless pursuit of profit over the public good has led to a dangerous situation.

I haven't quite read all of the posts in this thread, but this one did catch my eye.

First, a thank you to rogerv for the *invitation* to toss in my 2 cents - hope that doesn't get you into too much hot water.

The funny thing is that my wife and I were discussing something along these lines just last night.

First, for those who don't know, I am a true moderate. I am conservative on some issues, liberal on others. I weigh all issues on their merits and form my opinion based on information and knowledge.

I have to take issue, first, with this statement:
"We have another advantage the conservatives don't have. Academia."

This almost sounds similar to the rhetoric of 'Liberals are better than conservatives because liberals are better-educated, smarter, etc.'

That is a very narrow minded statement and comes from a very limited view of the world and leads only to a very uninformed conclusion.

The problem with the overall opinion that any think tank or discussion can be based upon the foundation that our universities and institutes of higher learning have already built is that it is fatally flawed because that foundation itself is constructed of very weak material.

Why?

Well, this person summed it up: colleges and universities are a true bastion of liberalism.

That is all well and good, but that would assume that liberalism is the 'be all, end all' answer to everything wrong in the universe. Unfortunately, it is not.

Therefore, when one puts together a group of people who are of a like mind, they begin to think that their ideas must be right because no one disagrees. Those ideas, or that ideology, is the foundation of which you speak that we would build on. And, as I said, the problem is that the foundation was formed by limited ideas, therefore, the foundation is doomed to collapse.

Without viewpoints that come from many different angles, ideas go unchallenged and untested. Once upon a time, higher learning meant questioning and debating, but it seems that it has become far more complacent than that.

The ideas that form this foundation, must be questioned, challenged and tested until those ideas are solid enough to withstand any foe. Failing that, the foundation will crumble and the society that rests up it will go down with it.

Thank you for joining us, brossignol.

I think your point is similar to the thesis on the Cass Sunstein book Why Societies Need Dissent, a book we should perhaps discuss here. The jacket blurb is worth quoting here: "Sunstein shows that organizations and nations are far more likely to prosper if they welcome dissent and promote openess. Attacking political correctness" in all forms, Sunstein demonstrates that corporations, legislatures, even presidents are likely to blunder if thgey do not cultivate a culture of candor and disclosure. He shows that unjustified extremism, including violence and terrorism, often result from failure to tolerate dissenting views. The tragedy is that blunders and cruelties could be avoided if people spoke out."

"Sunstein casts new light on freedom of speech, showing that a free society not only forbids censorship but bprovides public spaces for dissenters to expose widely held myths and ervasive injustices. He provides evidence about the effects of conformity and dissent on the federal courts. The evidence shows not only that Republican appointees vote differently from Democratic appointees but also that both Republican and Democratic judges are likely to go to extremes if unchecked by opposing views. Understanding the need for dissent illuminates countless swocial debates, including those over affirmative action in higher education, because diversity is indispensable to learning."

"Dissenters are often portrayed as selfish and disloyal, but Sunstein shows that those who reject pressures imposed by others perform valuable social functions, often at their own expense. This is true for dissenters in boardrooms, churches, unions, academia. It is tru for dissenters in the White House, Congress, and the Supreme Court. And it is true during times of war and peace."

Judging by the dust-jacket blurb (probably written by the author), does this sound like an interesting topic to discuss here?

Welcome brossignol,
I thought that you took out a lot more from the post by progressivephoenix than he put in it. I thought his main point was that universities provide a mechanism
for using the scientific method for exploring new ideas and that we should find them approachable because they are inhabited by persons who describe themselves as liberal more often than describing themselves as conservative.
To what extent this is actually the case I don't know. I've run in to a lot of people around universities that seemed pretty conservative to me. I think groups more often fail to achieve their goals because of premature compromise than by checking out radical ideas.

I have too, rla. But conservatives in universities tend gto be a different animal from (many) conservatives in government, and I can deal with those. I think the crucial matter is tghat we all stand in the space of reasons, and everyone has to carry their burden of proof. No one gets a free pass here. We all have to make our case. I wouldn't want it any other way.

I agree, rla. I have been tempted more than once to weigh in on a couple of threads with the claim that consensus is overrated. It makes a world of difference how we reach consensus. If we reach it because everyone has examined the pros and cons and agrees the solider case is on one side on the issue, that is one thing. That is consensus won by bearing the argumentative burden, and even if the consensus turns out wrong, it is still worth respect: it has passed one crucial test of rationality (there are others). It is possible that we should make due with less than unanimity on these issues as well. Conservatives have learned that lesson. I think we need to learn it too. It is possible for well-informed, well-intentioned reasonable people to disagree. That is not a failure of rationality. There is no good reason, in advance, to think that rational weighing of the evidence is goingto eliminate all serious rival views but one. There may be several that, as far as reason is concerned, are equally acceptable alternatives. This is not 'anything goes' relativism--most alternatives will not even make the first cut! And the more rigorous our analysis, and the larger of base of information, the fewer serious alternatives will remain. But I am comfortable with a rational pluralism.

The problem I have with premature compromise is that it may block or discourage further exploration of the merits and demerits of proposals. Some proposals need revision before they should be taken seriously. Some views have been discredited, or have flaws that would be revealed in open-ended discussion. All views should be subjected to testing, or at least as much testing as makes practical sense. We don't always have the time or resources to give a thorough examination to rival proposals, and we cannot put off indefinitely the need to act; sometimes we just have to go with the view that looks best to us on review of the evidence at hand. Compromise only makes sense when we have adequately discussed the alternatives, and honestly believe that further investigation is not going to be worth the effort, and action must be taken soon. If immediate action is not necessary, it makes sense to table the discussion to pick it up later.

Thank you.

It is certainly possible that I read more into the post than was really there; that was likely fueled by the discussion my wife and I had last night about the problems of many college students who have literally claimed that their views are so 'worldly' when they have been simply surrounded by a microcosm of like-minded individuals for the most part. My wife is a high school science teacher so she has very serious opinions when it comes to education in general.

At any rate, I do have to differ on your statement that we would find anyone more approachable because they are liberal. I guess it depends on how liberal. My experience has been (including on this site) that ultra-liberals are just as approachable as ultra-conservatives. Neither seem to have much room for any more ideas in their heads and they spend all of their time shouting people down who offer differing views rather than discussing and debating.

Now, it is certain that no person approaches an issue without already having some belief formed. The difference is when that belief is so strong to begin with that there is no possibility for weighing the facts with the potential for one changing their mind.

Moderates have been the most approachable, IMHO, simply because they seem to be open to just about anything. Of course people like Rush Limbaugh tell us that if we do not believe in EVERYTHING conservative, then we are not Republicans. OK, I guess I am not a Republican. Likewise, I have heard people, both liberal and conservative, say that moderates simply have no values or convictions. Well, if having a value or conviction means that I cannot change my mind given new information, new knowledge, etc. Then I guess I don't want to be either liberal or conservative.

For example, *I* believe that abortion, unless for medical reasons (mother's life in danger, etc.), or in cases of abuse (rape - considering that the child may not be *wanted* by the mother, and the additional trauma that would be forced on the mother having to carry to term), is wrong. To me, it is an easy way out and it is killing something that IS alive. However, I am always open to hear other's thoughts on this and I also hold that as long as our laws say it is someone's right, then I would happily defend that person's right. << That is one of those issues I am rather conservative on.

I have to toss in another in case someone has a bad reaction to that one. Gay marriage. I am all for it. Marriage should be between 2 or more people who honestly love each other (yes, I did say 'more'). Love should be the only requirement to allow people to enjoy the benefits the rest of us do! However, I also am willing to listen to the conservative view that we certainly do not want various states making laws and then having courts re-write them one way or the other. I think it is an excuse to just try to push for a Constitutional Amendment, but I am at least willing to listen to their reasoning.

And, certainly, radical ideas have their place. It is like brainstorming. We do that a LOT in my company. We put together a group and we just start tossing out ideas. They often start out pretty radical. IMHO, radical ideas serve as food for thought.

However, the problem that I tend to run into are those who seem to have only radical ideas and do not want to seem to discuss any others. They toss their idea into a discussion, and then, when challenged (even quite mildly), they go on the attack and then several others who were not even participating in the discussion jump in and it is a free-for-all on the moderate (or moderates if there happen to be 2).

I found this to be true on Democratic Underground where I was banned for expressing moderate viewpoints. I then found this to be true on Free Republic, again, I was banned for expressing moderate viewpoints. I admit to being naive about what both sites were really all about before posting there, but, live and learn.

Then, I found this site. I thought it looked perfect. Until I started participating in discussions (which was well after I first joined). Then, I found the same thing. Very few moderates. Most fairly solid liberals. And quite a few ultra-liberals. And I was called names, I was told that I was not welcome, I was told that this site was for liberal and progressive Democrats only, etc.

So, once again, like-minded individuals try to surround themselves only with other like-minded individuals (this all was really going somewhere, honest). Why? Well, partly human nature. It is a comforting feeling when one has fairly strong beliefs about issues and they are reinforced solely by others agreeing. So, from that perspective, I can understand the psychology behind it all, but that doesn't mean that I have to like it.

Now, here, on this site, we have a very great potential for honest discussion and potential for finding that common ground. But, imagine if we had ultra-conservatives along with the ultra-liberals (especially conspiracy theorists of both sides). Nothing would be accomplished. I am not saying that we should all be moderates. What I am saying is that, if only one viewpoint is ever discussed, something will be accomplished, but it may not actually be good.

Therefore, I believe that we must strive to find that common ground that this site is named for. Because, if the extremists of the world have their way, our only choices are anarchy or fascism. And, let's be honest. Because the Republican Party has seen so many successes of late, they are skewing further and further to the right and taking much of America with them.

Fighting between liberals and moderates will only result in more success on the part of the ultra-conservatives. You know... the whole 'divide and conquer' thing.

Dang! These posts get so long, so fast.

Hello rogerv,
I hope you had a happy holiday.

The approach I envisioned was that each of us write 2 or 3 paragraphs about
how to promote a more Open and Rational Social System, combine this information into a topical outline for a concept paper and proposed action agenda.
After the group finalized the outline individuals could volunteer to complete the
topics they were most interested in and the results could be edited by a committee of the whole group.

Just off the top of my head I would start off with a basic systems principle of
structure and process--what it is and what it does. I would apply this question to what I see as the major components of a social system. What is a person? How does the process of personing work? What is a family? How do families work?
What is a community? How do communities work? What is a social system? How do social systems work?

A post script on our previous discussion of nature.

I view the central goal of the Zen Master or the Gestalt Therapist to teach the person how to stay engaged and also stay out of their own way. A part of this
is how to observe that part of nature that is in you and around you sufficiently to improve on nature without interfering with it. I believe this is where technology comes from. Its not that we learn so we can do nor is it that we do so we can
learn.Learning is doing and doing is learning.

I'm up for it. I'll post my 2 or 3 paragraphs later. I like my idea about the online debates, but I have to pass on the technical details like how many T1 lines and how much bandwidth such a system would require... Maybe lots of mirror sites? I'd need help there.

Hey, norm,
ulTrax and BNW have open threads in the "Online Action" forum where they are working out the details of an online think tank. There is some discussion of wikis. Maybe there are people there who can help with the technical details--or who need your help with the technical details! If any of those get up and running let us know.

That would certainly be something I could help out with. My company owns two data center facilities. Our primary facility has 4 direct gigabit connections to 4 different backbone providers (and a single OC-192 line for backup).

Just let me know what you want to be able to do.

That's certainly the way it looks on Crossfire.

There's some truth in that observation -- ultra-liberals and ultra-right-wing-neocons do frame the issues differently. Shouting is what happens when you're fighting a frame war and you don't know that it's a frame war you're fighting and mistake it for a debate on issues.

Notable evidence that the libs and neocons don't know they're fighting a frame war is the way "moral values" became an issue rather than a frame.

The network exit-polls did something incredibly stupid: They included "moral values" on a list of specific issues--terrorism, Iraq, the economy, health care, ... "moral values" --and asked people what was the most important issue in determining their vote. Now, gay marriage is an issue, abortion is an issue -- but "moral values" points to a frame. Moral values is not an "issue" so much as a component of other issues. Listing it alongside health care and terrorism is a category mistake.

Moral values, like religion, is a frame whereby issues are evaluted, not a specific issue in and of itself. People who rated Iraq as the top issue likely were applying their values and morals to making that determination, as were people who rated terrorism as their top voting concern. In the exit poll, "moral values" seemed to serve as a surrogate for people who really thought a basketful of specific issues such as same-sex marriage or abortion or stem-cell research were important. Each of these is a real and important issues and each should have been listed idividually, but wasn't.

We libs lost that frame war when "moral values" became an issue instead of a frame, it's like if you're not a bigot towards gays and you don't have superstitious beliefs about embryos with souls -- than you're not moral. We've got to reframe that.



What facts? I've noticed that neocons and liberals are working with not only different frames but different facts.



Hogwash -- moderate is yet another frame style.



They're wrong of course -- the truth is that there's more than two ways to frame the issues.



And I don't believe it's wrong and you've no right to force your opinion on me.



So what? We kill living things just to eat. What kind of stupid frame are you working with? What kind of absurd value are you putting on fetuses that aren't growing in your body?

Your frame makes no sense to me.



I have listened to their reasoning and argued with it -- go look for HDD's posts here and back on the old Kerry/Edward's site.



I would suggest you're working with a "third frame" that's as equally incompatible with neocon and lib positions.



You shouldn't be banned -- but you need to learn that this argument gets down to frames, not issues and you have a third frame.

You have to learn that you're talking about framing.



You're right on that last point. Fighting between libs and moderates gives the game to the neocons. George Bush got away with playing both sides -- going under the media radar to appear an extremist fundy to fundies, then sounding like a moderate at the debates -- he lied when he siad -- "you know where I stand" because we don't really know.

Thank you, rogerv, for inviting me into the conversation. After an admittedly cursory read of some of the posts, I wanted to share a few thoughts about public discourse.

First, I see that there is a call from some to a discourse based on rationality and seeking a consensus. While these are certainly worthy goals, they seem to be rooted in an Enlightenment, modernist view of discourse. Our pluralistic American society challenges this approach.

I'm wondering if instead of using rationality as a criteria for discourse [read Jurgen Habermas], we may want to extend this Kantian ideal into the postmodern world relying on someone like Seyla Benhabib. Benhabib uses "interactive rationality" as criteria for healthy, ethical public discourse. This view places an emphasis on the rhetorical quality of the public sphere.

Further, instead of seeking consensus [which is problematic in a postmodern world...who gets to define the common good, for example?] perphaps we can seek open, ethical public conversation as the goal unto itself.

Benhabib's idea of ethical discourse is based on Habermas' ideal speech situation, but she extends Habermas [I believe] to accommodate an agonistic public sphere....one where competing ideas of the common good struggle to be heard.

Just some thoughts.......

Well, first, I was not trying to create arguing points, I just tossed in two examples, one conservative, one liberal, so I will not address that any further.

But, am I reading you correctly? That 'framing' is akin to 'pigeon holing'?

It sounds to me like you are describing frames as some sort of 'box' that contains a persons value system or ideology.

I am sorry, but maybe it is not that I have a "third frame" as you put it, but rather than I have NO frame. I look at an issue, weigh the pros and cons based on my perception, then I make a decision. Period. However, at the same time, I am always open to further discussion on ANY topic and, if my prior decision is proven wrong when I add new pros and cons to my thinking, then I will change my decision.

I firmly believe that there is a universal right and wrong. I apply this belief to everything equally. Therefore, I guess if you want to say I have a "third frame", that would be it.

Thanks, rhetorician,

I actually met Benhabib at a Habermas conference in Chicago, at which Habermas was the keynote speaker (and was addressing postmodernism, as he had in his just then published book). I have a lot of respect for the enlightenment values of universaility and rationality, but I also have an appreciation for points raised in the pragmatist tradition, that intelligence is relative to environment: it is a matter of what one can do to maintian oneself in the environment one finds oneself that determines whether one's action count as intelligent or not. Some of these points were made a long time agoi by Aristotle: the test of wisdom is whether one can make the appropriate choices in the situation one finds at hand. This responsive character of rationality is, if I understand your point, what Benhabib seems after. If I got it wrong, please correct me. I am open to your suggestion, if I understood you correctly.

brossignol,

I don't think truth is always in the middle. On some questions, one must choose an answer, and all others are incorrect. 1+1=2 and 1+1=3. If those are the choices, the correct answer is one of the extreme answers, not something in between (2 1/2?). For many other questions, there are a range of answers, or a diversity of approaches, and making an arbitgrary choice of one spot to defend makes no ense. One needs reasons and evidence to justify the stance one takes, or it is arbitrary no matter where one stands. If the evidence and reasons favor a position some people view as extreme, that by itself is no a good reason to reject it.

There is an importantly different set of questions where it does make sense to be somewhere in the middle. That is on the matter of how much change and how fast. I am an incrementalist. I believfe we ought to introduce changes slowly and cautiously when we are unsure of the results of making the change. Here too, it makes a difference what issue we are talking about. If someone is going to die if we don't act immediately, then one goes with the action with the hihest probability for successful remedy--and hope for the best. But many issues,especially the ones in politics, disaster is more likely to come from drastic wrong action than from inaction. Where we have time to study the problem, we should. And we should act slowly when we have nothing to loose by doing so.

Probably not.



That's literally impossible. You can't write a sentense or phrase without putting it in a frame.



Therein lies your frames... your perceptions are not objective, your perceptions are framed.



That is also literally impossible -- no human being has time for that -- your frames sent you here and not to another of millions of forum sites you are currently not and probably never will read.



That's a frame. I'm something of a moral relativist -- I think.



It's just one of many of your frames.

I'm not an expert on Benhabib. Having said that, I have read a good bit of her work, and her view of public discourse for today's democratic society resonates with me.

Your reference to the Aristotelian view of rhetoric as pragmatically responding to the situation speaks more, I believe, to rhetoric as persuasion than to the rhetorical quality of public discourse that Benhabib seeks. If I read Benhabib correctly, she is more concerned with the ethical quality of discorse than with the pragmatic goal of persuasion.

Benhabib's concern....one I think is worth exploring...is that discourse be open to all and that all may introduce [not just respond] new issues and conversations. In other words, all have the right to initiate topics or to set the agenda. All have the right to question, to interrogate, and to debate. It is this very quality that I believe characterizes Internet forums like this one. We set the agenda, everyone has a right to enter the conversation, and anyone has the right to question the topics.

Thanks, I'll look into it.

Framing is a little more complicated than pigeonholing. It is like a frame of reference within which a given fact makes sense or has significance. Lakoff uses the term in a special way, to talk about basic metaphors that suggest arguments, and allow thinkng across categories. But nevermind Lakoff right now. The basic idea is this:all facts are interpreted facts, and must fit at least somewhere in our worldviews to be intellegible at all. Kant put it: concepts without percepts are empty; percepts without concepts are blind. Lakoff is working with a modern descendant of that view that he believes can be verified by our studies in lingusitics and cognitive science. So Lakoff would have us make some amendements to kant's statement.

Facts without interpretations are useless things--we cannot even talk about them, much less use them in arguments. That values are absolute is a frame, an important one. It is important because it may mean you simply cannot understand someone who claims values may be relative to social system, or may be applied differently by different people--you cannot understand such claims except as coming from someone who has no values (because their values are not absolute).

I think you are right to refuse to be pigeonholed. And I believe you when you claim to be open to reasoning. But we all find ourselves resistant to arguments that butt up against our frames, because at that point, we are having our basic assumptions challenged. Now, perhaps our basic assumptions are bad. But changing them would mean changing a lot of our other beliefs, not just a few. So we would need a lot of convincing before we would be willing to overturn such basic beliefs.

Great! -- Stay tuned for a request.

I'll be back tommorow, but I have to go now.

With respect, may I offer a comment about "framing"?

Perhaps we can look at framing this way...... we, each of us, come to issues with a frame that is made up of our life experiences, ideologies, world view, etc. We cannot help but see issues from a certain framing. Frames are not boxes within which we place our ideologies. Rather, frames are the lenses through which we see the world. We cannot escape our frames, or standpoints. We can only be aware that we have them, and acknowledge them for what they are.... limits.

hope you don't mind me sticking my nose in.

Thank you for your clarification, rhetorician. I would add: frames can be changed. They are not hard-wired into us, but can be adopted or abandoned. or modified. We can become aware of our frame, and can come to believe our frame is unhelpful or not working. We are not wedded to our frames, til death do we part.

No. I agree. Actually the truth is not a middle ground. I think middle ground and common ground are really two different things.

But, anyway, if you have a scale from 1 to 10 with 1 being extreme liberal and 10 being extreme conservative, I am not saying that the truth is generally around 5 or 6. Rather that the truth might be 5 on one thing, but 8 on another, 3 on yet another. Sure, I will even go so far as to say that the truth might even be a 1 or a 10 sometimes.

So, no. Truth is not somewhere in the middle. Truth is exactly where it is.

Yes. I agree with that. When I was younger, I had a much different set of ideals (or, OK, a frame) than I do now.

Sort of like people who accused Kerry of flip-flopping on the Vietnam War (no I don't want to make an issue out of this, it is just a BIG example).

He went, he served admirably. He came back and was against the war. His... frame, there I said it, changed.

Now if one's frame changes when the wind blows, that may raise questions, but I think people's frames do change over time. Who knows what I will think in another 10 or 20 years.....

Thank you. I agree with Benhabib on this one (in fact, I'm not completely sure how she differs from Habermas or Apel here). On Aristotle, perhaps I was unclear.His point is an ethical one (it is taken from his Nicomachean Ethics) and is a point about rationality, not rhetoric. I'm am less clear how his work on rhetoric fits in here, but perhaps you can bring me up to speed there.

Hello all:

I was invited to this discussion by rogerv to see if my analysis could contribute.

I'm coming in late and don't have time to read everything, so forgive me if I redundantly echo conclusions determined in this thread.

I don't think that I have most of the answers, but I like to start with my own theories. I usually get better questions from my own premature conclusions easier than I get the right questions or answers elsewhere.

I'll start with my simple answers to this post:


A person is a human being. The personing process is the person's whole life experiences and what the person concludes from the experience. A more controversial question: When does that person's life begin? Before birth, or after? Another controversial question: How important is one life compared to another?

A family is a group of people bound together by circumstances more than choice. A family usually can't begin to work until people recognize that they are bound. Even then, they must remain willing to be bound in order for it to work. America is a family of red and blue states and counties.

A community is a group of people with common goals and interest willing to share resources and collaborate on ways of achieving those goals. It often gets confused with a clique, which is just people with common interests but no real goals. The most valuable tools in a community is their communication methods. Often the power of communities is misused to fulfill a hidden or privatized agenda. The survivability of a community may depend on its ability to recognize hidden and privatized agendas.

A social system is a system that facilitates transfer of information and derivation of meaning. The system works through media technology including natural media such as the atmosphere and natural media technology such as acoustics. The latest media technologies are internet-based, but it doesn't end their. Aside from being a tool for derivation of meaning, the computer is a medium for communication. I think computer science needs to be part of a bigger field of study called media science. They have already used the term in the film industry.

To list a few of my posts:
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http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/for...wtopic=6673&hl=
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http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/for...wtopic=5957&hl=
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http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/for...wtopic=5958&hl=
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http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/for...wtopic=4801&hl=
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http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/for...wtopic=4730&hl=
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http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/for...wtopic=4803&hl=
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http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/for...wtopic=6238&hl=
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http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/for...wtopic=4665&hl=