Review: The Political Mind by George Lakoff, 2008
Political, Media ·Wednesday March 31, 2010 @ 00:28 EDT (link)
The Political Mind by George Lakoff (2008) is a poisonous screed. I felt sick to my stomach reading it. I had hoped to learn something from what the author had to say about how the brain works, but there was so much propaganda, lies, leaps of illogic, and smug assumption of unsupported and unsupportable statist political theories that I couldn't get through it. It presents the state as the only moral agent and individual rights as worthless except to be subverted. American history is rewritten from whole cloth on every page.
Some of the few good things are the concepts of framing, some examination of metaphor (e.g., of morality being beauty, fairness, light. etc.), and of psychological decision-making, near the end, however, Dan Ariely's treatment in Predictably Irrational is much better. The fact that people don't act rationally, however, is a powerful indictment against democracy or any sort of system where the choices of the masses legitimize violence controlled by the few.
A massive false dichotomy permeates the book, itself composed of two straw men: "progressive" morality is about empathy and responsibility, conservative morality is about authority. Of course, both are about authority, historically "progressives" have authored the most rigidly and disastrously authoritarian regimes, and it is neither empathic nor responsible to bribe the irresponsible with other people's money. Furthermore, no room at all is left for individual freedom - libertarians, voluntaryists, anarchists, and small Âgovernment conservatives. His model excludes it entirely, which is a strong indicator that his model is incorrect (as my software architecture professor says, all models are wrong; some are useful; his is not useful).
From my own observations, and from reading this book, what I'm actually seeing is that the "progressive" brain focuses on the collective, while the libertarian focuses on the individual. The collective brain wants control; it wants its "empathy" (misguided as it may be) to have an outlet, by rearranging the collective (including stopping people from harmless pursuits, or redistributing their wealth and posessions); this is where harm begins. It grows angry at any incomplete submission to the self-declared authority of the collective (if it must submit, so must everyone; for social programs, if it must pay for them - even if it agrees - then everyone else must be forced to as well). The individual is subservient. Individualism is tolerated to a point, but the collective (however defined - possibly democratically, possibly not) is king and god. It sees problems and thinks a knee-jerk reaction is an answer, and carries it out with enthusiasm as great as its ignorance; it has a design for "society", and nobody may stray outside it (or refuse to pay for it).
In opposition is the libertarian (classically liberal) brain, which is about individual choice (rights, including property ownership) and responsibility. It doesn't care what anyone else does as long as it is not harmed. There is no grand master plan for what everyone else should do; order is spontaneous and comes from voluntary interaction (e.g., the market). There may be a great deal of empathy (despite the typical liberal slander), but that just means the individual will give his time and means to help out; he feels no compulsion to make others do the same. Conservatives tend to fall between the two (as presented in the book, his authoritarian conservatives are basically just progressives with different ideas for the collective).
The author should have written two books: one a useful, scientific examination of how mental patterns and models affect political thought, then, as another book included free in case people need fire starting material, his poisonous statist screed. But I suspect the first book would be a pamphlet and the second a tome.
Books finished: The King of Torts, Pawn of Prophecy.DVDs finished: Spider-Man.
