The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality--judiciously, as you will--we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
If you leave out the sociopathic and/or narcisistic level of hubris in there, I think there's a real nugget of truth that the blogs have largely missed or overlooked by mocking "reality based" as though the alternative was "unreality based" or "faith based." I don't think that's what the guy meant.
when we act, we create our own reality
I've always interpreted it to mean basically what you're saying here. In a way, this is what politics and leadership are. If our leaders tell people to be afraid, they can start wars from nothing. If they give people hope, they can open worlds of possibility. That's the very essence of power and, unfortunately, the right seems to understand that better than the left at the moment. Moments can't just be siezed, they can be created. Maybe we can eventually make language a complete impediment to understanding. -Hobbes
Empires do create plain facts, or better "accomplished facts," that we are brought to reckon with.
But facts are contingent as Hannah Arendt points out in "Lying in Politics." Facts don't stand around screaming unequivocal truths, they just hang around to be used, abused, hidden- or ignored as much as possible. When facts get in the way they're often dismissed as opinions. It's a tough job for the more judicious to chase truths out of facts. It's a backroom job, far from the action.
So the aide missed a caveat. Rude facts can get in the way. It may be a fait accompli that the US is deeply involved in Iraq or that Saddam is undisputedly dead. But creating the conditions- or seizing the opportunity (e.g. 9/11)- to get there involved a massive disinformation campaign that far exceeded the bounds of Rhetoric. Basing an empire's actions on confidence tricks, overwhelming propaganda and the verbal diarrhoea of over-motivated wingnuts has its drawbacks. Basing action entirely on a lie drives the liar to dismiss, even remove, the simple truths he wishes to distort. He ends up believing in a "reality" no longer based on perceptible facts. Pigs looking at a wristwatch, as Tyler Drumheller described it. Unfortunately with misguided empires we all suffer the consequences. Throwing a Libby or two in the dungeon is no comfort for the damage.
Creating solutions based on the judicious study of discernible reality, that is plain facts, would have done the empire better.
I think you've hit on the core of rhetoric here: hèuresis, inventio, creativity. What makes the difference in speaking is the inventive capacity of the speaker, her capacity to invent and order notions yet conceal her craft, heighten interest and empathy, persuade and convince the audience.
Of course timing is of supreme importance whether it be the best moment to put forward a theme or the best moment to win over the audience. Successfully seizing the moment involves technique and mastery, foresight and wiliness, courage and strength.
I couldn't agree more. I've said basically the same thing in many arguments, mostly about framing. These ways of communicating effectively should not be conflated with lying, propaganda, or spin. You can effectively tell your side of the story without it being manipulative. And when you have discernible fact on your side, people will know that.
Right now in the US, many people are still falling for spin, but I think it's because they're only being told one side of the story. We need rhetoric, framing, narrative, all those things, because it's the only way to effectively communicate facts, which sometime speak for themselves, but not very damned often with big issues that the average person can't observe or hasn't studied. Maybe we can eventually make language a complete impediment to understanding. -Hobbes
I remember how people responded to Suskind's article; it seemed to confirm the image of the neo-conservative as a sort of right-wing Trotskyite, exporting a vision of free-market revolution and damn all else. But there is a sense in which the statement itself is right. (The scary thing is not how creative imagination is trumpeted but how "reality" is dismissed.)
I'm reminded of something Bruno Latour wrote about science: that it is because facts don't speak for themselves that facts need the scientist, who acts as the facts' spokesperson, lawyer, mouthpiece. And also of a line from Barbara Herrnstein Smith: that in the battle between belief and evidence, "belief is no pushover."
The problem isn't so much the size of the issues- I agree that if democracy depends on all of us being experts on all the issues, we're lost. It's the death of the crap detector that's the real problem---and the solution.---and an understanding of these two excellent posts can really help. An understanding of some of the common rhetorical devices is an integral part of the crap detector.
The decay of U.S. education into a parrot factory project has created a situation where we fail to provide students with a skill- the skill of identifying the lies- or the liars.
I watched the Royal/Sarko debate in English for more than half of it, and it was hell. On France 24 the interpretation was so horrible for Royal that I turned it back to French (at which I am barely mediocre) and---shazam! Sarko was babbling like an overdosed speed freak. Suddenly the entire scene changed, and I was aghast. After ISOLATING MYSELF FROM HIS VERBAL CONTENT, what an obvious liar Sarko appeared. Personal response, sure--but it was my crap detector going off loud and clear, irrespective of whether I knew the real unemployment data, or the real results of the 35 hour week. Thanks to Jerome, Mig and many others here, I do have a fair idea, but the striking thing was that I did not need to know chapter and verse- just have a functioning crap detector. In this case, an ability to hear and see when a BS artist is trying to sell me by telling me what he thinks I want to hear. Good discussion here. Will reread it all. Thanks, Kellog. Capitalism searches out the darkest corners of human potential, and mainlines them.
Lakoff starts off with the example of asking or telling someone not to think about elephants. Of course, the listener is going to have a hard time not thinking about elephants. He then points this out as framing- but a very coercive framing.
Actually that sort of injunction is known as a double bind, such as ordering someone, "Be spontaneous!" Basically it's a self-contradictory statement that offers no exit. It's common to pathological communication in schizophrenics as Bateson and Haley sought to demonstrate in "The Pragmatics of Communication." I really can't see it as hitting the nail on the head when it comes to framing within the debate.
Lakoff's framing appears to me to be a petition of principle. It's an error in logic but perfectly acceptable in rhetoric in so far as it is efficacious (especially in an audience that is not aware of this rhetorical device). Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca give the simple example of a maid who has broken a vase and tells her employer that bad things like that always happen to her on Friday. Her employer replies that the vase was broken on Thursday.
How is this a petition of principle? Well, the employer is not contesting her superstitions, that is her premise, but is simply accepting it a priori to counter her own statement. In other words he accepts the way she framed it whether or not he is superstitious. In this case we have an argumentum ad hominem in so far as the verbal exchange is based exclusively on her personal frame. He's talking to her on her grounds. Were there a larger audience perhaps he might have pointed out her superstition, shared it with the audience, or to put it plainly, changed the framing.
But changing the frame can be problematic when there's a surreptitious trap. Take for example the invention of emotionally charged neologisms that are hard to counter. Such terms as "pro-life" or "the unborn" carry strong emotional contents that make it difficult to debate abortion. By qualifying the fetus as "unborn", the fetus surreptitiously acquires the status of a human being in potenzia that may be denied a right to be born. The word itself instils a bias in the debate, a petition of principle. Without flat out contesting arguments loaded with crafty neologisms one has to resort to a different vocabulary, such as countering with neologisms like "pro-choice". But in the end there is no debate, no common ground, no common vocabulary, on which to turf. What counts is who has the louder voice. Which brings me to another consideration.
Mass communication. A means of framing "discourse" that has little to do with rhetoric. Communication means giving a message, a slogan or a jingle maximum exposure. It's done with props, staging, the sheer domination of the means of communication. Citizens become spectators- consumers who get to play at the opinion polls. Pocinko! And cheap thrills.
A famous Bush jingle was launched in September 2002. One morning Judy Miller invented the "mushroom cloud" metaphor to falsely accuse Saddam of vying for nuclear weapons. Con delizia Rice repeated it at breakfast time. Before the day was over Cheney had used it too. An emotionally charged new brand was on the opinion market itching to sway Congress to grant war powers. All was needed was a Bernay front cashing in on the reputation of the New York Times front page, plus two seemingly independent authorities aping objective dialogues with the press. Whatever rational dissenting voice there was, it had no place to express itself outside of its designated function as a target for derision and outrage.
It's a frame you really can't deal with. It's the media that decides for you. Step in line or shut up. Did a single American news source, for example, carry the protests of the Niger government on Christmas eve 2002 against State's base innuendo that they were selling yellowcake illegally?
In effect winning American consumers to war was a culinary event: mushroom clouds with a generous side of freedom fries. Too bad they spilled all that good wine.
In conclusion it appears to me that Lakoff points out at least two types of framing: one that involves double binding, a psychological inhibitor, and another based on the petition of principle as used in rhetoric. Framing in mass communication depends on who's manipulating the control booth. But just as well the capacity of spectators to act as citizens and turn the damned tube off, frame and all.
It reminds me of the way I felt when I was told to "be creative" in School. Bush is a symptom, not the disease.
