In a recent article in the Huffington Post, George Lakoff (author or co-author of numerous books and articles on metaphors and other aspects of language usage), said the following about framing:
Framing is much more than mere language or messaging. A frame is a conceptual structure used to think with. Frames come in hierarchies. At the top of the hierarchies are moral frames. All politics is moral. Politicians support policies because they are right, not wrong. The problem is that there is more than one conception of what is moral. Moreover, voters tend to vote their morality, since it is what defines their identity. Poor conservatives vote against their material interests, but for their moral identity. [Huffington Post, 11 Sep 2011]
Lakoff has written a number of books (Moral Politics, Don’t Think of an Elephant, Whose Freedom?, Thinking Points, and The Political Mind) about how framing influences political decisions. My sense is that the concept is important regardless of subject. If in place of what he calls “moral,” we use the NLP concept of “closely held beliefs,” we can begin to appreciate what is required to change a closely held belief that does not serve us well. One of the things that defines a “closely held” belief is that it is—or has become—part of a person’s identity. In terms of behavior and behavioral change, the challenge is that closely held beliefs—values—tend to become invisible in that they typically operate below or outside of a person’s conscious awareness. The person knows, of course, that he or she has a particular value, but he or she typically does not know why. Answers to questions about the reasons for a particular value tend to be circular.
“Circular” doesn’t mean “wrong.” It means that the belief isn’t supported by outside evidence. Most religious beliefs are circular as are other cultural beliefs, which are passed from generation to generation through a process Don Miguel Ruiz calls “domestication” (see The Four Agreements). For people who live together, the process of “domestication” usually serves a useful purpose by greatly reducing the amount of conflict between and among people caused by different beliefs about how things can be (should be) done. If you’re old enough, you may remember an epode of “All in the Family” in which Archie Bunker criticizes Michael (“Meathead”) about the way he put on his shoes and socks. Michael put on his right sock and his right shoe. Archie said, “That’s not the way you put on shoes and socks. You put your socks on first, and then you put your shoes on.” As long as the socks (assuming you wear them) end up next to your feet, there’s no good reason for the order we use to put them on. We learned a particular behavior, and we stick to it.
To complain about how someone else does it, the behavior needs to have been internalized as a value. In Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift discussed the war between the “Big Enders” and the “Little Enders” when it came to opening soft-boiled eggs as a metaphor for the squabbles between Protestants and Catholics. Even so, Swift’s metaphor seems to preclude the “siders,” who would open eggs at the middle rather than at either end.
In his recent article, Lakoff identifies conservatives, progressives, and “bi-conceptuals” as the three principal political moral frames. The bi-conceptuals are often called “the middle” or “independents,” but they differ by having more than one moral view. Conservatives and progressives have reasonably well-defined moral views and stick to them, whereas the bi-conceptuals change moral views based on circumstances. A bi-conceptual can have a conservative fiscal view while having liberal social views. If we were discussing eating rather than politics, conservatives and progressives would be those who insisted on eating either with knives and forks or with chopsticks. The bi-conceptuals would be comfortable using either depending on their location. Bi-conceptuals would be comfortable putting socks on first and then shoes or putting on one sock and shoe and then putting on the other sock and shoe and wouldn’t care which end of a soft-boiled egg they opened.
I agree with Lakoff when he says it is wrong to think “that language is neutral and that reason works by logic.” Most of the time, we are like the proverbial guy who loses his keys in a dark alley but searches for them next to the street lamp because “the light is better.” In Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain, David Eagelman presents a variety of recent discoveries in neuroscience that demonstrate that, most of the time, we have no idea where or how our ideas actually originate. My sense is that it is time we made a better effort to find out, so we can make better choices and have a better understanding of why we have made them.
One way to do this is to start looking more closely at “things”—advertising, political commentary, news articles and commentary, and other stories—to identify the frame being presupposed. You can “chunk up,” “chunk down,” “chunk laterally,” and change the frame size (larger or smaller) and become increasingly aware of what happens when you become increasingly aware of what the frame presupposes and/or implies. Richard Bandler likes to ask, “Are you sure enough to be unsure,” which encourages individuals to question beliefs, especially those often held too closely to be subject to questioning in most circumstances.
