A press release from the
Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA) regarding the Terry Schiavo circus caught my attention. The complexity of thought it embodied contrasted sharply with the GOP/MSM discourse and reminded me of a typology of adult reasoning that goes like this:
- Sequential thinkers reason "by tracking the world," recognize regularities in sequences of events, but have no abstract understanding of cause and effect. The world they perceive is a world of appearances that has very little organization to it beyond the recurrence of sequences.
- Linear thinkers understand cause and effect, limited to a one-direction, one-cause/one-effect model. The world they perceive has logical order and structure, but the structure is invariably hierarchical, causality flows top-down, and the world is divided neatly into cause and effect.
- Systematic thinkers understand multi-faceted, multi-linear cause and effect, with mutual cause-and-effect relationships between different elements. The world they perceive is primarily a world of systems and relationships, rather than objects.
On the flip: what we might learn.
The typology I'm using comes from Shawn Rosenberg (no relation) in the 1988 book,
Reason, Ideology and Politics. It is discussed along with other developmental approaches in an online papepr,
Structures of geopolitical reasoning.
The IPA press release is here. I think it's just great. But it's operating inside the reality-based community. The Schiavo circus is not just outside that community--it's in another universe. Hence, the need to focus our reality-based skills on understanding that enormous gap.
First, I want to establish that IPA's experts are operating as systematic thinkers. Then I want to delve more deeply into sequential thinking, and show how it explains the GOP's SOP. Then I want to draw a few conclusions & invite responses.
Here's what IPA's experts say:
JEAN KILBOURNE
The AP recently reported: "The Schiavos' lawyer said her 1990 collapse was caused by a potassium imbalance brought on by an eating disorder. It is a cruel twist lost on no one close to the case: A woman who is said to have struggled with an eating disorder is now in the middle of a court battle over whether her feeding tube should be removed so that she can starve to death."
Kilbourne is author of the book Can't Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel, and creator of the "Killing Us Softly: Advertising's Image of Women" film series. She said today: "Congress holds a special session, Bush jets back to Washington from vacation, the case might go all the way to the Supreme Court. Imagine if all this energy and media attention focused instead on the self-loathing and hatred of their own bodies that our culture generates in women and the rampant eating disorders that often result. Now that might save the lives of many young women for whom it is not too late."
Here we see "a world of systems and relationships, rather than objects." There is also, at least implicitly, awareness of "multi-faceted, multi-linear cause and effect."
There are multiple reasons why this case is before us. One of those reasons is the eating disorder which lead--along with other factors--to Terri Schiavo being in a persistent vegetative state. So, the simple act of focusing on one of these reasons--a factor generally ignored by the media--is by itself an example of systematic thinking.
Of course, I'm making an assumption here--that the author would not deny the existence of other factors. But that seems like a pretty safe assumption. Above all, including this perspective in our approach to the case definitely puts us into the realm of "multi-faceted, multi-linear cause and effect."
Next:
Dr. QUENTIN YOUNG
National coordinator of Physicians for a National Health Program, Young has chaired the Department of Medicine at Chicago's Cook County Hospital. He said today: "It is stunning how little regard this president has for human life. His interest seems to extend to only one tragic brain-damaged woman. The U.S. is the only industrialized country to lack health care coverage for all citizens. Over 18,000 Americans perish every year because they lack health insurance. A lack of health insurance increases the chances a 55-year-old will die before they turn 64 by 40 percent. If the president wanted to save lives he would call for an emergency session to make Congress vote to extend Medicare to every American."
Again, this passage clearly presents us with "a world of systems and relationships, rather than objects." Here is someone who doesn't need to see a picture of someone to know that they are out there, dying needlessly.
Finally:
Rev. G. SIMON HARAK
A Jesuit priest and author of the books Virtuous Passions and Nonviolence for the Third Millennium , Harak is anti-militarism coordinator of the War Resisters League. He said today: "One of the first things we learn is that the more universal your ethical principles are, the more moral force they have. I hear of Bush's flying back to D.C. to sign the Schiavo bill, and I think of him flying back from his first presidential campaign to sign the death warrants of Texas prisoners. I think of Bush signing a bill in Texas to cut off funds for life support for people who want their children to live, but can't afford it. I hear of the government's concern for this individual, tragic case, and I think of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children whom we diseased and starved to death during sanctions, and now the hundred thousand more Iraqis who have died in this invasion and occupation. How universal, how convincing, is the concern?"
Again we see a world of systems and relationships, rather than objects. The relationships of universality and consistency are invoked as providing more moral force, and they are found lacking in Bush.
By presenting us with these three different perspectives, IPA is further heightening the systematic view of this case. The more different perspectives we take, the more different causal relationships we are likely to perceive, and draw connections between.
Now let's turn to the Bush, the GOP and the MSM. Let me begin by restating the lowest form of adult thinking:
* Sequential thinkers reason "by tracking the world," recognize regularities in sequences of events, but have no abstract understanding of cause and effect. The world they perceive is a world of appearances that has very little organization to it beyond the recurrence of sequences.
Well, what more needs to be said, really? But here are some more things that can be said about sequential thinkers. The first two come from the paper linked to above:
- The notion of causality, e.g. that events are caused by necessary and sufficient preconditions, does not play a salient role in the sequential mind. Events transpire, without much interpretation of how they come about. The attention is occupied by one item at a time, and there is little spontaneous effort to relate them to other items or to a general context.
- The sequential thinker is not really aware that the world may appear differently to other people, and he or she has therefore a limited ability to take the perspective of others.
- Sequential involves conceptual relations that "are synthetic without being analytic. They join events together but the union forged is not subject to any conceptual dissection." [Direct quote from Rosenberg's book.] Because such relations are non-rational, there is nothing rational one can say or do to change them. (Sound familiar?)
- But they can change, Rosenberg explains, based on changing appearances. These relationships "are mutable," they can either be extended, based on "share[d] recognized overlapping events" (connections provided by Limbaugh, O'Lielly, etc.) or changed, when the sequence does not play out as expected. Because it is a pre-logical mode of thought, "the relations of sequential thought engender expectations, but do not create subjective standards of normal or necessary relations between events." People who think this way can be quite unbothered by the lack of consistency that Reverand Harak highlighted. They certainly won't make the connections he does, given their inability to think abstractly. So when he makes the connections, it seems arbitrary to them--just as their own thinking is quite arbitrary, though they may not realize it.
From all the above, I draw one simple conclusion: We have to fight fire with fire. Associational, sequential thinking has be countered with the same sort of thinking, simply because sequential thinkers can't grasp anything else.
That's why associating this whole charade with outside interference in family affairs is such a winner. Not only is that obviously true, it absolves us of having to make any more abstract arguments.
It also works to bring in other associations. This is clearly grandstanding, a power-grab, a distraction from other important business, etc. It works to make these points, provided we come back to them again and again, since it is the repetition of the points, rather than the logic which appeals to the sequential mind.
Does this mean that everything in politics has to be reduced to this lowest-common-denominator level? No! Absolutely not. But for grand dramas like this--which draw in people who don't follow politics regularly--the sequential approach is absolutely required.
It's not just that a lot of sequential thinkers are watching, who ordinarily don't follow politics. It's also that the media employs sequential thinking itself. It's all about images, appearances, and relations that "are synthetic without being analytic."
Does that mean there is no room for the sorts of experts IPA presents? Not really. But we have to prepare a space for them--and we have to do that using sequential means.
Lakoff presents us with a means for doing this. Everything he has to say about frames is based on associational thinking ("Don't Think of An Elephant"--the very title relates to this, the logical NOT operator just doesn't work on the most basic level of thought.)
This is not to say that Lakoff is opposed to more sophisticated thinking. In fact, he shows repeatedly in his work on cognitive metaphor that there are logical entailments involved. But the power of cognitive metaphor is that these logical entailments work on a very basic, subconscious level. If we put our minds to it, and devote our sophisticated thinking into crafting the frames and the metaphors we want to use, then we actually can get more sophisticated ideas across.
It's even possible to introduce metaphors that legitimate systematic thinking, even to people who aren't up to it themselves. This is part of why people respect the opinions of authorities they cannot understand. This is not a good thing, in general. But obviously there are cases where it is necessary. (Getting a doctor's diagnosis, for example.) And if people are going to do it anyway, then it's better to have authorities in front of them who actually know what they're talking about.
Finally, in certain fora, it's quite normal to assume that most people are at least linear thinkers. Sequential thinkers are not, generally, avid consumers of print media. So the experts IPA highlights can still have their say, and influence people who can understand them. IPA is not just spitting in the wind. But we do have to watch out for the wind tunnels.
