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  • From: Jim Allman <jim AT ibang.com>
  • To: InterNetWorkers <internetworkers AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [internetworkers] Erection (same planet, different worlds)
  • Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2004 15:54:37 -0500

On Nov 4, 2004, at 2:47 PM, Tony Spencer wrote:
Categorizing church goers and/or those that vote for a Republican
candidate as intellectually sub-par, simpletons is not the way to boost the
democrat party.

I think the problem is that we truly baffle one another. So people leap to the only interpretations they can think of: Those guys must be morons, or sheeple, or up to something sinister. Which is not such a big deal, unless they're running the country. I imagine that fundamentalists feel this dissonance (Oh crap, I'm living in an insane asylum!) most of the time.

It might help if we all try harder to understand the people "over there," because there's a hell of a gulf between us. Same planet, different worlds. Here's George Lakoff's attempt to "unpack" the tacit conceptual models behind American politics:
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/467716.html

(Just an excerpt, but pretty cool. Has anybody here read the book? I'm interested, but then I'm the kind of liberal weenie that responded to Sept 11 by wanting to know more about modern Islam. Silly rabbit!)

Lakoff makes the point that most people don't have a conscious map of their *own* assumptions, let alone their opponent's. This kind of archaeology might help us find common ground, or key points of difference. Anything beats yelling insults at each other for another four years.

=jimA=

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Jim Allman
Interrobang Digital Media
http://www.ibang.com/
(919) 649-5760





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