This important book furthers the ideas from _Don't Think of An Elephant_ but has a little more to say about what to do about it. In brief, the idea that much of the way we think is based in metaphors that are activated by things that typically co-occur in our lives, especially our early lives (p. 256 finally gives a more satisfying discussion of this than either Elephant or _Metaphors we Live By_ had). He claims the American nation-as-family metaphor yields distinctly different thought systems: conservative for folks who have a strict-father family concept and progressive for folks who have a nurturing-parent family concept. Further, he says that the fundamental values of American government are deeply progressive: government existing to protect and empower the people (the roles of nurturing). However, conservatives have spent at least 30 years developing ways to talk about their ideas and most importantly frame their agendas that progressives have not. And until we talk about the frames and change the frames, we are stuck in them. Activating the frame has more impact than whatever you say about it apparently, so progressives need to resist using conservative frames and get better at using progressive frames.

One of the frames to resist is the whole idea of a continuum from left-right wing. He gives the example of mandatory health insurance being an attempt of the "left" to compromise with the "right" but really to use the insurance frame means to take the "right" wing point of view. Health insurance is a business, Lakoff points out, that makes its money by charging healthy people and then finding reasons to deny services to sick people. Health care would take a view that everyone at some point may need medical care. [I would add that with a single payer Care system, doctors and hospitals would have an incentive to actually try to cure diseases rather than let people experience chronic states, let's remember they're a business, too]. Warning: I actually felt in kind of a bad mood for the 4 days it took me to read this book when thinking about how the strict-father, obedience to authority, maximum-profit-shows-discipline, model has allowed scandals like Blackwater and Enron and how it continues to allow privateers to bilk the middle class taxpayer.

But luckily he says many people are "biconceptual," using conservative concepts in some thought areas and progressive concepts in other areas. These would be nonoverlapping thought domains so a conflict is not noticed. However the more a progressive can connect with someone around those areas in which they may use progressive concepts, the more progressive frames get activated. I love this paragraph from the chapter called "What if it works?" "The vital importance of childrearing would be recognized. The public would understand that a child's brain is largely shaped during the first three to five years by the large-scale death of neurons. The ones that go unused die off. Early childhood education would be recognized as vital. Studies showing that nurturant upbringing is far better for children-and for society-would be well-known. Nurturant forms of childrearing and teaching would be instituted nationwide. Child-beating and other child abuse would be outlawed. Advocates of strict father upbringing--like James Dobson and Dr. Laura--would be recognized as harmful to children." (p. 269)

Environmental concerns are also woven throughout the book; they are the ultimate example perhaps of how we are all in this together and changing our metaphors about survival and about our relationship to natural resources to more protective, nurturing metaphors could make a world of difference for us all.