ATDDTA (3): Control issues, 54-56

[Dave Monroe]

--- Tore Rye Andersen <torerye at hotmail.com> wrote:

> David Morris said:
> 
> >Pynchon couldn't make this choice of passivity
> >by the Chums any clearer.  And the Chums motive
> >(besides "peace of mind")?  To remain infantile,
> >children forever ...
> 
> Cf. also this passage from Vineland:
> 
> "... Brock saw the deep - if he'd allowed himself
> to feel it, the sometimes touching - need only to
> stay children forever, safe inside some extended
> national Family." (VL, 269)

... the progressive worldview is modeled on a
nurturant parent family. Briefly, it assumes that the
world is basically good and can be made better and
that one must work toward that. Children are born
good; parents can make them better. Nurturing involves
empathy, and the responsibility to take care of
oneself and others for whom we are responsible. On a
larger scale, specific policies follow, such as
governmental protection in form of a social safety net
and government regulation, universal education (to
ensure competence, fairness), civil liberties and
equal treatment (fairness and freedom), accountability
(derived from trust), public service (from
responsibility), open government (from open
communication), and the promotion of an economy that
benefits all and functions to promote these values,
which are traditional progressive values in American
politics.

The conservative worldview, the strict father model,
assumes that the world is dangerous and difficult and
that children are born bad and must be made good. The
strict father is the moral authority who supports and
defends the family, tells his wife what to do, and
teaches his kids right from wrong. The only way to do
that is through painful discipline — physical
punishment that by adulthood will become internal
discipline. The good people are the disciplined
people. Once grown, the self-reliant, disciplined
children are on their own. Those children who remain
dependent (who were spoiled, overly willful, or
recalcitrant) should be forced to undergo further
discipline or be cut free with no support to face the
discipline of the outside world.

So, project this onto the nation and you see that to
the right wing, the good citizens are the disciplined
ones — those who have already become wealthy or at
least self-reliant — and those who are on the way.
Social programs, meanwhile, "spoil" people by giving
them things they haven't earned and keeping them
dependent. The government is there only to protect the
nation, maintain order, administer justice
(punishment), and to provide for the promotion and
orderly conduct of business. In this way, disciplined
people become self-reliant. Wealth is a measure of
discipline. Taxes beyond the minimum needed for such
government take away from the good, disciplined people
rewards that they have earned and spend it on those
who have not earned it.

http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/10/27_lakoff.shtml

And see as well, e.g., ...

http://www.wwcd.org/issues/Lakoff.html

http://chelseagreen.com/2004/items/elephant

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/14819.ctl

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/467716.html




 
____________________________________________________________________________________
Finding fabulous fares is fun.  
Let Yahoo! FareChase search your favorite travel sites to find flight and hotel bargains.
http://farechase.yahoo.com/promo-generic-14795097