Excerpt from "Cracking the Code"...
Communication leads to community, that is, to
understanding, intimacy, and mutual valuing
- Rollo May.
My wife, Louise, and I live atop 30 feet of water, 100 feet from shore, in a houseboat on a river in Portland, Oregon. One day I stepped out our back door onto the floating deck that serves as our backyard and found myself confronting a very upset Canada goose. He bobbed his head up and down, lifted his wings to make his body look larger and more intimidating, and ran straight at me, hissing and trying to nip at me.
Observing this behavior my comedian friend Swami Beyondananda (Steve Bhaerman), who was visiting us that week, named the bird Goosalini.
I had no idea why this psycho goose was attacking, but there was no mistaking what Goosalini was trying to communicate: Stay inside that house and don’t come out! I got the message, but I didn’t stay inside. Instead, every time I went out to water the plants on my deck, I brought a broom with me to fight off Goosalini.
I found out what was going on a week later, when I learned from my neighbor that a female goose had settled on her back deck, just a few feet from our own, and was sitting on a nest. I realized that Goosalini must have been the proud papa, protecting his territory, and I stopped swatting at him with my broom.
Goosalini has a lot to tell us about communicative strategies. Even though he was just doing what a gander does when he wants a predator to leave—draw attention to himself and away from his mate, attack first and ask questions later—he was able to communicate the “go away” part of his message to me pretty well. We all communicate all the time, even when we don’t give much thought to what we are saying or how we are saying it.
Because Goosalini was unable to use what we would call rational powers of persuasion, he communicated by going straight for the more primitive parts of my brain—the parts we shared as human and goose, the center of our gut feelings. The first time Goosalini attacked, I backed off because he was successful in communicating an intent to harm me, which caused me to feel fear, that most primal and visceral of human emotions.
The first key to unlocking the communication code is to understand that when we communicate, feeling comes first. Emotions will always trump intellect, at least in the short term.
This emotive form of communication, however, ultimately didn’t get Goosalini the response he wanted. On its own the attack wasn’t very persuasive. Instead of shooing me away, Goosalini got me angry.
Effective communicators know how to get the response they want because they understand how to tailor a message to the person who’s listening. They know the second key to unlocking the communication code: the meaning of a communication is the response you get.
Because Goosalini couldn’t tell me his story, I had to imagine his story for myself. The first story I came up with was that he was simply a psycho goose, trying to hurt me for no reason I could understand. The second story that I came up with—after talking to my neighbor—was a story of a dad protecting his soon-to-be hatched goslings. Both stories accurately described what was happening, but the stories led to very different endings. The psycho goose made me angry; the dad goose made me feel protective of Goosalini himself.
In this book I call such stories “maps,” and the world the stories describe as “the territory.” The third key to unlocking the communication code is: the map is not the territory. Each story captures a different piece of reality; no one story captures all of it. The key to effective communication is to find the best story to use to convey your understanding of the world to the greatest number of people.
In politics we tell each other stories all the time. If you think about it, politics is really nothing more than a set of stories.
The United States of America began as a story that the Founders and the Framers told about a society that could live in harmony around the principles of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This country was held together after the Great Depression and through a war by a story told by Franklin D. Roosevelt, which he called the New Deal.
Ronald Reagan told a very different story—one we are still in—that he called the “free market” story. In Reagan’s story our corporate CEOs should run our society instead of our elected representatives because, as Reagan pointed out (and believed), “The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would hire them away.” .
Most of the stories we hear in the media today are scary. We are told to be afraid because the world is a bad place and people are untrustworthy. Every goose is a Goosalini—without understanding why.
These scary stories are profitable to our infotainment industry and to the politicians who are typically allied with the barons of the infotainment industry.
There is a different story, however, in which every Goosalini is a proud papa. It is a story of a world that is interconnected and of people who are fundamentally good. This is the traditional American liberal story, which has been told and understood since the first telling of it during the Enlightenment by thinkers like Jean Jacques Rousseau, John Locke, and Thomas Jefferson. It’s the story that reaches directly back to the founding of this country.
My aim with this book is to give you the tools to tell the liberal story—and tell it well. I will show you how the process of communication is coded—actually hardwired into our brains—and help you crack that code to become a brilliant communicator.
First, though, there are a few concepts it’s important to master.
Everybody wants the best outcomes, and their behavior reflects the best tools they have to achieve those outcomes.
Another way of saying this is that people always make what they think are the best choices given the circumstances and the tools they have. All behavior has, at its root, the goal of a positive outcome.
As a practical statement, this means that conservatives and liberals are both working toward the best world possible.
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Comments
Thom Hartmann is an amazing communicator. His language skills, his knowledge, and his wisdom may be second to none.
But...
The communication problems and information quality problems in the US have become highly refractory to solutions. In simpler, less information polluted cultures such as Venezuela, it may be easier to find examples of Rollo May's "Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy, and mutual valuing."
In Building Socialism from Below: The Role of the Communes in Venezuela, an activist says:
Not everyone is socialist. Actually, a minority of participants in the comunas are socialists. We have to attend to the issues that matter to them. This can only be done through practice, and this is the way people get involved.
In the US our schools, infrastructure, media and culture are at the most complex levels that humans have yet produced and perhaps because of that complexity each different ideological "community" is deeply dug in and intermixing of narratives is increasingly rare. Moving from one ideological community to another requires almost a quantum leap rather than a process of gradual transition.
I explore this in "Town Hall Meeting: Class war, Culture war, or Holy war?"
Words, memes, or frames that work across multiple ideologies are very hard to find.
I think I have found one such meme or frame. I call it "Green Free-enterprise". This is basically a way of talking about economic democracy and participatory economics (basically, worker-owned enterprises) that draws on language from the American free-enterprise tradition.
I would post these things here but my use of graphics and tables makes them impractical to post on this forum. If anyone cares to read the links I'd be glad to discuss them back here.
Poor Richard
"Progressive Framing"
Poor Richard's Almanack 2010
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DISCUSSION THREAD: Progressive media, "preaching to the choir," The book "Cracking the Code" -- Call-in to talk-radio on these topics!
http://tinyurl.com/2fzqltt
Has Thom corresponded with George Lakoff e.g., BOOK: Don't Think of an Elephant!: Know your Values and Frame the Debate-- The Essential Guide for Progressives?
The works similar to 'Cracking the Code' need discussion (as well as specific examples of progressive memes and message framing); scheduling once-a-week on-the-air discussions e.g., just like Sen. Bernie Sanders is scheduled once a week on Friday's.
Does scheduling fifteen minutes a week (same time frame) on Thursdays to discuss message-framing deserve serious consideration? That is Thursday's seem feasible; as on Friday's there is a rush to consolidate and evaluate the previous week's events.
Does scheduling fifteen minutes a week (same time frame) on Thursdays to discuss message-framing deserve serious consideration?
I strongly support the idea of a regular segment on message framing in Thom's show (preferably in the FSTV segment)
Poor Richard
My own take on framing issues:
"Progressive Framing"
"Town Hall Meeting: Class war, Culture war, or Holy war?"
"Green Free-enterprise"
Poor Richard's Almanack 2010
Airing carefully crafted memes can be a part of a progessive broadcast just as much as station identifcation, news-breaks, music selection, and fillers by production staff, and even commercials.
P.S. John Lennon's "Give Me Some Truth" resonated like memes put to music.
I think that how one approaches the subjects that are covered in "Cracking the Code" and this discussion will be best determined by ones' goal. Thom writes of crafting a well-tailored story and Poor Richard writes of the use of memes. Two ends of the spectrum... One of the problems that I see occurring repeatedly among progressives is that so many of us seem compelled to try to go into detailed, in-depth discussions of political, social, economic or whatever philosophy in our battles with the right even at times when such an approach is useless at best and all too often just ludicrous. Right now we are facing key elections in November that will undoubtedly be crucial in terms of the political direction our nation will take. In dealing with the goal of getting our candidates elected it is crucial that we asess our methods of persuasion in terms of whether it will actually work. Here I think it is important to take a look at the methods that have been so well honed by the right wing. After all, we are going after the same voters that the Republican Party is persuing--the undecided--right? What has been successful for them? They have made tremendous use of sound bites. These are catch-phrases, or memes that ring psychological bells, push emotional buttons among the undecided voters. The second part of this is that these memes are repeated over and over again. This is what they call "staying on message" if you will recall... I know--this is something that so many progressives simply hate. We love to philosophize, discuss, argue, use logic and reason, tell stories, etc, etc,--or are we just in love with the sound of our own voice and trying to convince others of our own intelligence? Again--What is our goal? We need to win elections! So many times lately, I have heard political pundits land on some brilliant sound bite and just blithely rant on without pause. These things, these sound-bites, these memes, are tools! When appropriate, they should be used! They all-too-often work and work well. Think of some of them that the right has used: Welfare Moms; Soft on Defense, Government Waste and Fraud; Tax and Spend Liberals; the Left-Wing Media--the list goes on forever. However, what these catch-words or phrases can do is tell a mini-story, show a different slant on an idea, cause someone to think...
I will propose a sound bite that one might consider: As a word: "Wealthfare" or "Wealth-Fare". I would love to see bumper stickers with the phrase "End Wealth-Fare" on them. It triggers many Americans' knee-jerk, negative reaction to the idea of welfare and so gives a disreputable connotation to the tax cuts for the wealthy. (I don't imagine that I am the first person to come up with the idea of wealth-fare so I don't claim it as my own.) Another one that I read this evening on MS-NBC was GOP written as: "Grand Oligarchic Party" though I wonder if oligarchic isn't too big a word for an effective sound bite...
To be effective in achieving our goals, we must chose our methods carefully and wisely and have the discipline to put them to work.
George Lakoff has been on the show, for example http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocrCaUs7_x4
Thom actually wrote "Cracking on the Code" on the air, doing a weekly segment and then using the transcripts of him and of callers as a basis for the book. The first transcript is here.
Prior to that he did a series of lessons on air about Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP). The first transcript is here.
Hello,
I'm new to this forum. I'm glad I found the Tom Hartman show on Sirus radio and this web site and bolg forum. I agree with you points Mark. I'm looking for a place where I can get some facts checked. I have some very conservative relatives who add me to chain emails with right wing propaganda. This provides me a look under the tent, so to speak, to read what is going around tea party members and conservative circles.
If you remember the last Congressional elections, you'll probably agree that there was a media barrage of twisted facts, fear mongering and out right lies. In my opinion, this is why Democrats lost congressional seats. It was the media message and now I believe it was a closed circuit of messaging that grossly distorted facts and formed opinion with emails with everyone on someone's contact list. It is being urged to pass along these vitriolic emails to everyone on the recipient's email contact list as well. You can't buy this type of opinion management.
I'd like to find a place where I can double check the "facts" that are in these emails so that I can confidently start to counter them with an email counter attack. Is this the place or can someone suggest a source for me? There have been emails about social security and emails about Governor Perry from Texas.
Hi mrquentin, if you post a copy of the email here, people may tell you where to get the answers. Or you may find somebody has already posted them at http://www.snopes.com/
I'm glad I found the Tom Hartman show on Sirus
I listen online because Air America Radio doesn't function anymore. Our local affiliate of AAR is AM 950 KTNF out of Eden Prairie, Minnesota. Unfortunately, that station cannot be heard locally in the Twin Cities.
For too long the far right has had a monopoly on the news both on radio and television. When AAR was on, it was often blocked by erratic electrical signals or other noises. Then, it had shows such as Al Franken who continually stammered throughout the show and put you to sleep with that endless babbling of his. When the shows were hosted by females they would spend half the show talking about sex rather than about substantive matters.
By contrast, Thom Hartmann does not stammer and does not spend half the show talking about sex or sexual deviation. He discusses significant issues and offers substantive solutions to the mess we see in society. We need more shows like this in order to inform people as to the truth about society. Let's hope people will bring back AAR and this time with effective, articulate, informative people who are interested in correcting society.