LINK TO ACTUAL LECTURE BY LAKOFF ON FORA.tv

Sitting by the fire this morning trying to tear myself away from the book I've been reading since late last night when I pulled it off my shelf of "been meaning to reads" (it was a gift from my friend Dr. Moira Amado-Miller for my birthday two years ago) and started at the beginning. The book is Moral Politics, by George Lakoff, and I'm reading it in an effort to understand a conversation that is going on between two friends about the differences they see between their own political leanings and their understanding of their own philosophies of the world. This conversation has been going on between them for a number of days and was the result of a poem that one of them wrote recently. The poem is one of many that my boss Rob Gray has written recently in response to what he is seeing and hearing around him and in the news as this election furor becomes more and more the obsession with everyone both here in the deep south and nationally. The conversation that they are having is concerned more with the perceptions that these two men hold as sons of the deep south but it is also atypical in a million ways as they attempt to understand both one another and themselves through a lively and lengthy email exchange. I've asked them if they would allow me to blog about the exchange and have not actually heard back from one of them (my boss is not having anything to do with it one way or another except to the extent that he has made the email available to me and allowed me to contact the other person for their permission.

If and when I am given that permission I'll let you in on the ongoing dialogue and it will be posted on another of my personal blogs (one that acutally uses something called Comment Press as a way of facilitating more point-by-point conversation, or at least I hope it will do so). In the meantime I'd like to take the shortcut to an examination of the book I'm reading and direct you to a few reviews and conversations about this book that I've discovered along the way - I found a link to Markos Moulitsas's DailyKos blog that is actually a diary by Kos himself about this book and the ensuing conversation which is enlightening (as opposed to an unfortunate number of dailykos diaries that veer off into insanity before any quality discussion can ensue). This diary actually makes a number of clear points about the essence of Lakoff's book and talks about the other book that he is more well known for, Don't Think of an Elephant, which some say is a shorter version of Moral Politics, but updated and focused as more of a guide to conversing in this volatile political environment. Dont' Think of an Elephant (which I also own but haven't actually read) has been discussed and reviewed so often that I probably know most of what Lakoff says in that book without even reading it, but Moral Politics takes the whole concept much further and because I wanted to understand these two men I've been observing in their attempt at dialogue I decided to read MP from the beginning.

(More links than you'll ever read - but some  handpicked from good sources for you):New York Times Review of Books on Moral Politics ;An Alternet article (Feb. 18, 2004) by Lakoff on the metaphors associated with the word Marriage, a conservative blogger talking about Lakoff's theories, and the WikiPedia entry for Lakoff's book Moral Politics ought to keep you busy if you've nothing better to do.

Along the way I have had several flashes of recollection on my own political awakening and early upbringing and I am grateful for the experience. I'll touch on those in a bit but for now let me say that Lakoff's work is based on his research in cognitive science and he is engaged with many of the top thinkers (both those that agree with him and those that don't) in the academic world. As he is still highly regarded despite many attempts to discredit his theories, I have no hesitation in recommending his ideas to you. So let me get back to the book and I'll look forward to any comments and thoughts you might have on this and the upcoming (I hope) dialogue that I am working on in that other blog site. The best way to keep up with this is probably to sign up for updates to this blog (see the box at right down at the bottom).

9:33:23 AM