From http://www.atheistlloyd.com/SecularFrames.html   SML48 

by Lloyd Harrison Whitling

Thanks to Diane, Robert and Donald for nursing this along!

Because atheism is not a belief system nor a philosophy, we who are identified with the label ‘atheist’ suffer a lack of shared ideals necessary to unite a cohesive group. That, in turn, prevents any likelihood of sharing a common destiny.

Well, maybe not so much our destiny, since it is common that atheists will deny any existence to that. Let us call it a commonly held goal, and speak of the path we walk to get there. The problem, if you can visualize this, is we don't share a path to a commonly-stated goal. What we share is more like a parking lot with a gravel pit in the middle: It represents the same overall ideals, the same common base, but we walk all kinds of directions getting across it. As a result of that, and of not becoming mindful of our commonality, all we see of ourselves is a hodgepodge of philosophies that all seem unrelated. We see ourselves as victims and remain oblivious that the responsible culprit is not “them”, it is “us”.

When we think the most difficult idea to convey to other people is that non-belief isn't as negative as some might assume it could be, since we perceive it only as an absence of something additional, as absence of added baggage and not as the expected void the religious envision, we feel perfectly comfortable to go on without replacing it. We generally, although not wholeheartedly, adopt the edicts insisted upon by our cultures, and deem it fruitless to adopt a positive message of self-reliance and objective self-improvement via constructive criticism. Why would we, unbelievers, accept the edicts of belief without first engaging them with rigorous investigation?

The likeliest answer is that we have thoughtlessly adopted the name ‘Atheist’ religion has handed to us as a self-identifier, and now we think of ourselves as 'Atheists' first, and then of ourselves as a particular kind of 'atheist'. By the time we get to our shared ideals, we have thrown off so much smoke they become invisible. As a result, all we can discuss is the differences between various flavors of atheists, who is “more atheist” than whoever else, and argue the rights and wrongs of minor nuances and the wrongs committed by theists that we get blamed for.

We generally agree that religion is a form of mental slavery that’s wrong for all the reasons we're aware of. We wonder that it makes no difference to a religious penitent whom we perceive as addicted to a ritualistic routine that reinforces a narrow, false perception of reality. We view existence as complex, our understanding of it as incomplete, and gripe about the great numbers whose simplistic view of life is pre-determined by the nature of their religion.

Because we don't understand our own shared ideals well enough to paint a vivid picture of them, we fail to see how their ideals support such features as that. To the religious penitent, the results of his/her "ritualistic routines and frames" requires a vision of the evils we so forcefully criticize, and so they (in turn) will never understand why we see them as "addicted" and "ignorant mental slaves" and "wrong". And, insane.

If they look upon themselves as "good" as a result of performing according to their instruction sets, all of the killing, maiming, violence, war, thievery, chicanery, and the rest, only serves to rid the Earth of the "evils" we are seen to be defending. That we disagree with them, to them, is only another example of our evil ways.

Unless we can offer people a means to discover an alternate to their societal religious conformity, they won't feel compelled to change their routine or give "our way" a passing glance. We cannot do that with evidence that holds no meaning to them. This page is about why we cannot understand that. Even more, it’s about why we have such a hard time trying to comprehend our own failure to get a real grip on the problem, and a first step or two about what to do about it. If we can get past this stage before it gets too late, we cannot fail. Truth and reality are on our side, and will stand up to any honest critical investigation.

Wrong-headed as they are, theistic people are very ideals-oriented, and serious in their beliefs. They are not exposing themselves to our ridicule, nor to all the ills their own beliefs afflict them with because it is fun. It is because they have such a heavy investment in their beliefs by the time they reach a mature age that they react with such vehemence when their beliefs are disparaged. Vested interests play a huge role in all people's lives, no matter who they are, and all of us will defend our own vested interests with vigor, opinions about right and wrong notwithstanding.

We are as wrongheaded as they, just not in a duplicate manner. We see the religious as resisting scientific truth; they see us as evil deniers of their various gods. The only way we secularists all express and share that as a common sentiment, is because we look at things in a black/white "us versus them" way. The word "atheist" was handed to us from them, and they put us into this bubble for their own purposes.

We make it too easy for them to stay the same, and for ourselves to be their victims, by being too willing to play the game their way – especially when we do it wholeheartedly and unwittingly. What we need to do to get beyond that is to stop seeing the world from the eyes they handed us, and develop our own vision for it. We need to get our own picture. We need to learn what’s in it by heart, and the names and meanings of all the features it displays. We need to put it in a brand new frame and feel proud to show it to anyone interested enough to take a look. What would it be a picture of?

It seems difficult, but not impossible, to consider a change of paradigm. If we view ourselves as sharing a sense of inherent selflessness and adopt a view of shared humanity, we can begin to sense a potential picture we could develop, a picture of us as vivid as they have of themselves, but with uniform verifiability, a picture that’s not an artist’s rendering, not a mere sketch of mythical human reality, but a photograph that shows our perceptions of existence to be real, whole, wholesome, healthy, and not to be condemned because it doesn’t match our worst dreams and nightmares. We need it to show, not just tell, why the secular progressive picture does not lead to the exclusionary axioms of most religions that prevent them from actually advancing humanity. Those axioms have, instead, induced hundreds of years of harmful actions that have poisoned any chance of war-free existence. The religious mindset is that of induced control, reinforced with fear, punishment, promises of false rewards, and dedicated practices of magical rituals, identifiable as the “Strict Father” paradigm.

So, why bother with "changing their mindset"? We shouldn’t. We need to identify or change our own mindset first, frame our own ideals to express common beliefs shared by all secular persons, and do it according to the values these beliefs represent. Right or wrong, truth or lies is beside the point when dealing with people whose entire belief system is built upon mythology, manipulated versions of history and picturesque descriptions of invisible realms inhabited by all kinds of malevolent spooky characters.

We must realize that, and crawl out from the comfortable bubble in which they have entrapped us, and (knowing full well a factual version of reality) frame our own honest vision of a fully formed set of values derived from the natural discoveries of material science. We can dare to identify the unknown as "UNKNOWN" and apply that as its label. We can dare to identify a personal opinion as an "OPINION" and give that to it, and even go so far as to assess its current standing, and assign it a number according to a system we might devise, and assign that as part of its label. We can even go so far as to say, about various conceptions, "I do not yet possess a fully-formed image of that in my mind because:

"(A) I can't get myself to feel interested enough;

"(B) I just don't understand it;

"(C) I think its a ridiculous idea;

"(D) Nobody else seems able to explain it to me in a believable fashion;

"(E) This is the first time I've ever heard about it;

"(F) The science is not yet complete on it." There will be more.

We can demonstrate our progressive values as being real in the here and now, if we frame them honestly and with an intention to maintain fidelity to the facts of life. If we look at ourselves as 'secular progressives' instead of 'atheists', and at the opposition as being 'immaterial regressives' instead of 'theists', and start thinking along that line, all kinds of other insights start to occur to us. TRY IT! TEST IT OUT INSTEAD OF JUST POOH-POOHING IT. Using that as a reference frame, we can more easily list a set of values (what we believe in rather than what we don't believe), and what that means to us and could mean to humanity and the future of the human race, if we would apply that.

The model offered in the previous paragraphs pose a "nurturant" mode versus a "strict father" mode. We generally espouse a nurturant view of human relationships, whereas those we call 'theists' expound upon a "strict father" view. Google those and see what you can learn, and why learning to forcefully express a vivid view of nurturant values is important to us. In the link below, 'immaterialists' are referred to as "other-worldly people". http://www.atheistlloyd.com/NakedTruth 

Don't be too surprised when you discover that some of "them" are also progressives and share many of our values! Compared to the weirdos on their team, they are more “usses” than they are “thems”. Try telling that to either side!

Identifying as ‘secular’ rather than ‘atheist’ increases our numbers by far. Whereas our percentage of any population as strict ‘atheists’ will be in the lower single digits, we will achieve multiples of ten percent as secular progressives, and often exceed half when all progressives are accounted for (by any poll without an agenda beyond factuality). Most progressives, aside from god-beliefs, are definitely on the same side of most issues, if a minority does not go around throwing up barriers to prevent that from being seen.

When most of us first heard about Lakoff's work, we intuitively agreed with him. If we're really honest we have to ask ourselves, "Was Elephant simply written in a wily way that makes it impossible for progressives not to agree with it?

"Is it really so new? —or is it yet another clever "framing" of ideas that leftists/progressives already suspected/accepted, and therefore was bound to resonate with our crowd? A part of us should see and question the Democrats as trying once again to find the magic silver bullet, the single, simple reason why their obviously superior message has once more failed to resonate with a majority of voters. We should question our own eager acceptance. Is Lakoff’s ‘framing’ just another Ivory Tower analysis that’s never going to provide the one key answer we need? Does it only serve to preserve our illusion that if only we could get people to UNDERSTAND that we are so obviously right, they'd be voting for us in droves? Is this just our own little delusion? We view ourselves as slightly outnumbered in this country by people who hold the opposite beliefs. Why do we insist on thinking that, if ONLY we say it right, everyone will realize that our views are inescapably correct?

Well, maybe they see themselves as right, and us as unquestionably wrong. We know we don't see their side as seamlessly on-message. They commit way more than their share of gaffes. Their ideas are supported by Orwellian double-think concepts. Should we simply admit that there's just something about American society today that causes the Republican corporate plutocracy to somehow resonate more strongly with the American majority than does traditional Democratic humanism? It can’t possibly be anything we’re doing wrong. Right? We wonder to ourselves, “How can such an obviously mean-spirited group be more attractive to voters than those whose main operating slogans include the words ‘kindness’ and ‘caring’?

In the words of Diane, from Michigan:

“When my baby died people came out of the woodwork to just simply let me know they were there and that they cared. I was floored, because as a hard-core cynic I didn't have a lot of tickets to be cashed in, as it were. When I was called to the ER because my entire immediate family (spouse, 2 kids) had been admitted after a serious traffic accident, doctors, nurses, and just people who also had found themselves unexpectedly at the ER were there with their arms around me. This was not the time I needed a rationalist. I needed human empathy, and, undeserving as I was (cynic and misanthrope tho I tend to be) there were compassionate fellow humans who made it possible to continue.

“And I'm sure that anyone who's reached the half century plus mark, as I have, will have had similar experiences. We secularists, viewing ourselves as an oppressed minority, can tend to get way too self-righteous, if you ask me. (I think) striving to be "kind" is striving to do the least harm possible. Just because something seems like a simple idea doesn't mean it's immediately dismissible. What is morality if not a weighing of the relative amount of benefit to harm?”

I feel certain that if you google among the religious websites, you will have a hard time finding that description of it. Kindness is one word that is part of a subset of the linguists’ Nurturant paradigm. Nurturance is what most progressives mean when they express sentiments betokening ‘kindness’. Lakoff expresses that in his political descriptions of the Conservative/Liberal-left/right values systems, the "strict father" model as posed against the "nurturing parent" model. The terms are more or less self-explanatory, and we secular progressives are (ah, you guessed!) the nurturant folks in most areas of our lives and value systems.

The problem he recognized is that most of us are not self-aware enough to really be able to adequately describe our own value systems (we will go into details about factoids and evidence, but not about what all that actually means to us personally. We are more apt to try to *tear down* our opponents' beliefs than to actually present statements about our own. We will discuss what we don't believe, and describe what we do as factoids but not how that applies to the way we live our lives).

We could do a little exercise here to demonstrate how true that is of us: Kindness is a good, nurturing word you can use to describe exactly what it does to help you get through your life. How would you apply it toward setting up and developing a political system? Can you describe how some of your laws would be written? If that is hard to do, it shows you where we are weak and why the ¹RRRRR are beating us up at election times.

If we don't understand our own shared ideals well enough to paint a vivid picture of them, as that exercise requires, we fail to see how their ideals function to keep them focused on agendas that actually work against their own best interests. When we fail to understand that of them, we will never grasp it about our own selves enough to realize we work just as hard as they to be counterproductive in our own behalf. That should serve to show you how important this is to all of us, that we must not merely look at it without digesting it, and let it pass through us without any positive effects, that being how to make the smelliest kinds of shit.

In essence, while we want them to see their own beliefs as benign foolishness at best, and see ours as representing a factual view of reality, they deem us to be a necessary cancer to justify their fear of knowledge. It seems to us they regard the truth as some sort of disease that we harbor, but a disease that they need to exist so they can validate their superstitious fears of reality with the religious “one answer fits all questions” solution.

Sure. Likewise, we regard religion to be a plague destroying our world. It can be more properly presented as an addiction. A craving for something is one indication of an addiction to that particular item. I believe addiction is considered to be a kind of disease, though not necessarily incorporating germs or viruses. I have read where we become addicted to that which is most harmful to us. Take away the alcohol from an alcoholic and observe the very similar kind of reaction. Take away my chocolate ice cream, and watch my screaming hissy. :8^(

The addiction is theirs, not ours, and is an addiction to control (the father parent paradigm). Our paradigm is what is necessary to live the best kind of productive life (which we each must define for ourselves). Theirs is to take from us what they can use to their own advantage, while in the same action condemning the very ideals which brought most of that into existence. Religion, if you study its effects upon our world, is meaningless and empty without something to condemn. I feel certain that without our presence, they would have no problem inventing an imaginary evil of some other, invisible kind. And, oh yes, they might even give it a name, like Satan, Lucifer, Beelzebub…

Lakoff has done a pretty good job of showing how our rightwing-heavy government has made a mess of an immoral war waged in the middle east. Of late, increasing numbers of Americans have seen that for themselves. It’s too late for us to do any more than make things worse for the people there, and for ourselves, by pulling out if it now. At this late date, why not avoid discussing that altogether, and concentrate on stating our vision in an eloquent way that, maybe, they will view the next occurrence in accordance with?

Lakoff poses a method that magnifies our position without reinforcing superstitious thinking along religious evil vs. evil-haters’ lines. It looks like it would be a good place to start. We need to understand it, and be very critical about how we follow his advice if we want to have a hope at all to succeed. How do we go about that?

To use Lakoff's instructions, avoid their Orwellian 'frames' altogether by learning to express our own values, and then stating how a situation should be dealt with only according to that. Remember to stay mindful of the movie axiom, "There's no such thing as bad publicity", and learn to apply it by not giving them publicity. Do we actually have a common value system on our side? Sure we do, but we practice it because we learned it in a natural way without learning how to talk about it. We did NOT, as they claim, learn it from them.

Our lack of a common positive voice has to end. To be able to state things according to our own well-developed value system is the only way to be able to avoid restating theirs, and thus publicizing it. That requires us to figure out how to create a positive response not just to support progressive secularity, but to a paradigm that actually helps people without involving any strings or expectations of mental servitude. We have to, without mentioning specifics in their case, keep repeating to them, "Your values don't work. You've had plenty of opportunities for centuries to show us that your values are harmful to humanity. Here's what we have to do, instead of what you'd do:"

So, it's easier to say than do! We have to first convince ourselves before we'll ever be able to convince anyone else. Still, we have science as our base from which to derive testable concepts. We also have a side to their religious beliefs that they constantly avoid, that are supportive of views contrary to theirs, and supportive of our own views, that we need to keep them reminded about. "We are each of us temples that must be treated as such.

That has to apply to all human beings, not just a self-selected few. You can't expect great emanations of love, great health, and great works to come from a temple where suffering and oppression dominate." We have a view of ourselves as human beings who share form and a nervous system under which that form was designed to operate in Nature, so we can feel correct to assume that what makes us suffer will also have a very similar affect on others, and that what gives us pleasure will likewise (aside from particular tastes) enable dopamine in them. We can examine cause and effect to experiment with constructive versus destructive results where we don't have adequate understanding. We need to stop responding to their critiques of science as a "school of thought that doesn’t know all the answers", and recall to mind that (however incompletely), science still holds far more true answers than does any “revealed” religion that knows no true answers but only has opinions to enforce.

There are some things we would have to arrive at agreements about, but they are no different under a secular value system than any other: Where something to benefit one party comes at a cost to another, how to determine the best compromise. That question interferes with all debates about this topic, Religionists pose it as a handy dandy strawman, and I would suggest in answer to it that we should treat it like all others: If no one can show a better way to handle it than whatever is already being done, to leave the current methods intact. Religion, after all, has not always prevented the interference of common sense into its domain. Why destroy what works just to prove a point, especially if that act ends up as disproof?

I might even suggest that developing a uniform secular values system with progressive ideals may not be as hard as it sounds. We already know what we deem to be right and wrong. All we have to do is learn to express that, and to firmly root it in natural science. All the little quibbles, excuses and obfuscation we indulge ourselves in only serve to distract us from that which would serve us better. It keeps us from enabling ourselves to climb above and beyond the ineffectual, destructive practices and self-effacing beliefs and edicts of religions. Is it easy? No. Is it worth it? Let's find out!

So, the big effort must dedicated to getting people onto the same page, whether it's my spot on it or Lakoff's. If what we have been doing amounts to spinning our wheels, we need to find another, less mud-slung path that takes us to the same place, IF there is a place ;8^).

If we think “Elephant" was written in a way that makes it impossible for progressives not to agree with it, are we not just acknowledging it to be a demonstration of how well Lakoff’s concept works? If, just the same as you may tell me things I already inherently believe, and so find it impossible to disagree, does that not show you the power behind the idea? If you express your ideas in a way that reinforces mine, should I not get very excited and go tell people. If you tell them in a way that shows me how to go tell people in an even better way than I have been using and --Oh, yeah!-- actually how to get new people on board that thought they disagreed with me, should I not hurry to go practice using them until I can get a really good handle on that?

Let me break in here with something I have noticed, after having chased Lakoff threads across the Internet: Everybody seems to have gotten stuck on the 'framing' part of it, which is nothing more than an expression of what we get taught in writing lessons: "Show, don't tell." Our mentors taught us (or tried to) that we have to use our words to paint images that people can visualize, or we will bore them with endless descriptions of places and deeds (and, in the average secular person's efforts) agendas, facts, and proofs.

So, as we go through life trying to explain ourselves and constantly inquiring of others, "Get the picture?" we are attempting what Lakoff described as 'framing'. Sure, it's nothing new. It's just a new frame to help us "get the same old picture", but maybe with the dust cleaned off and a clearcoat put over it to make it a little more vivid.

This is another part of what I noticed while venturing out into the vast Internet wasteland: We “obviously superior” Progressives did NOT get the picture. We found a new word and got stuck on it, and started working on the frame rather than the picture, just like happened with memetics. Sure, we are outnumbered by the people who worked on their PICTURE, while we worked on a text-rich message to wrap our frame around.

As a result, everybody is looking at our frame because the picture is the same old one we have always had for them--a textual message. Words. No picture. It doesn’t look right to the average person we ought to be able to convince with no trouble. Something looks wrong with that, and (s)he can’t be bothered to figure it out because (s)he can’t recognize anything with relevancy inside the frame. The message will get dumped. We will blame it on the viewer, not the framer. It will happen again and again if we don’t learn how to paint a recognizable picture with our words. Lakoff said very plainly how that recognizable picture gets painted out of values, not agendas and programs, not rehashes of what's wrong with the other side's picture, not evidence and proofs set in a context the other side devalues. It has to be about what we believe, not what we disbelieve; it has to be about why we believe that, not about why we disbelieve them. It has to be about why we care about things, not about things that get us upset but that they esteem.

What we see as essentially yet another case of semantics arises from the fact (and, it is a demonstrable fact) that we don’t get the picture, we don’t recognize the picture when it’s plain before our eyes, and so we do not understand the concept Lakoff presented to us. We cannot grasp what Lakoff meant by framed images, because we continue to look at the text in the message and see only semantics. Since the text in all our old messages is correct, we end up blaming "them" and not ourselves. Are we really as smart and knowledgeable as we think we are? Then, why do we have such a hard time seeing why we are getting stomped, especially with such a clearly written instruction set in our hands?

Okay, ‘semantics’: What do the words mean? Why is it so important to build a common secular value system based upon nurturance, and express it in a picturesque way?

Nurturance: The painting of the Progressive and/or Secular picture; in other words, the many kinds of actions required to do so. That is different from kindness, which represents only one element in a wide-ranging paradigm and is included as a supportive value. From American Heritage: Nurturant (synonyms):. (adj.) Marked by caring: solicitous ; compassionate;  considerate; kind; empathic; thoughtless (antonym); inconsiderate (antonym); unkind (antonym); mean (antonym)
Nurturance (synonyms): (n.) The act of helping something to grow or develop: cultivation; fostering; furtherance; promotion; refinement; elevation; stimulation
Nurture (synonyms): 1. (v.) To foster the development of: nourish; patronize; develop; encourage; forward; guide; nurse along; promote; further;

advance
2. (v.) To work and care for: attend; feed; look after; minister to; maintain; parent; nurse; provide for; serve; service; support; sustain; wait upon; keep; nourish; take care of
3. (v.) To aid in the growth of: incubate; nurse
4. (v.) To provide nourishment: nourish; fertilize; feed; compost; manure; mulch; nurse; suckle; breast-feed; sustain; victual; enrich; starve (antonym);  undernourish (antonym)
5. (v.) To hold or cultivate in the mind or heart: cherish; harbor; bear; carry;  cling to; nourish; nurse; hate (antonym); scorn (antonym)

Kindness: The attitude that supports and leads to nurturing actions. Kindness requires nurturance to be evident. Otherwise, it is self-serving.

We are talking about different aspects of the same thing, here. The attitude of kindness is fine, but kindness is a child word under nurturance, that requires nurturance for it to be evident and meaningful. There are other aspects of nurturance, though, that are as important as kindness. One, for example, is responsibility. To take responsibility for your own place in the world around you is to apply kindness and concern about what happens to it, the actions of caring. How about learning?--to learn the consequences of our actions, and to apply them in either constructive or destructive ways. Kindness, caring and responsibility will lead us into nurturance with what we learn. Lack of those (and others) will lead us into self-centeredness, where we may attempt to impose our strict father will onto the world around us for whatever reasons we may deem fit. Can you pick a progressive value up from that?

The people who showed so much support to Diane were demonstrating kindness, of course. They showed they cared about her for that moment in time. They acted responsibly toward her, and nurtured her with all of their care and concern. They painted the picture for her that nurturance matters most at the times it really counts, when human beings bend away from the directions in which they have aimed their lives, and expressed and acted upon their concern for another one of them. The frame–the rationalizing–to express their emotions only with words–a text only message-- would only get in the way at such a time. The words, "I love you", if not accompanied by appropriate action, are meaningless. Warm hugs and kisses paint a picture that, without them, "I love you" means nothing. It is, as Lakoff stated and which every *~^`&!* body seems to have overlooked, the human values that count. The attitudes (kindness, caring, responsibility, empathy--EMPATHY!) behind nurturance grow from our values (the picture) that we present to the world and to each other in the frames that hold them.

We oppress ourselves with our failures to understand everything we know. We allow the oppression as a result of our inaction (the absent nurturance) which results from our preference for words (text, descriptions, reasons, history, telling, labels) over the much harder, elusive, and emotional effort required to get our hands dirty in the painting of a picture. If we don't have a really good grasp on how to apply the words, we will fail to visualize the picture and will get stuck with an empty frame for a label no one will find interesting or useful.

The main difference between nurturers (the growers) and controllers (the strict father people) is that the former views the sea of humanity as being like a self-tending garden, in which each person is both a member and a caregiver, whereas the latter views the world in strict terms of predator, prey and parasites, of which each person chooses which role to occupy. Aware as gardeners are of parasites, nurturant people tend to regard the controllers as being gluttonous parasites driven to thrive upon and destroy their hard work and ruin the garden for everybody involved.

"Striving to do 'kindness' is nurturance. Striving to practice honesty is nurturance. Striving to do the least harm possible to meet our needs and of those for whom we deem ourselves responsible is nurturance. Just because something seems like a simple idea doesn't mean it's immediately dismissible. What is morality if not nurturance?" [paraphrased]

See what I mean? We describe the so-called "Golden Rule" but not the why's, wherefores and how-to's. "Striving to be kind" (the effort to nurture) may end up doing more harm than good without a comprehensive value system to direct it. That requires more than our words, it requires an understanding and acceptance of our place in the world. We have no god to define that for us, no priests to claim one as 'revealed', and so we are left to gain it for ourselves. The picture is ours to draw and paint. We have millions of words to describe it, but where are the artists with an understanding of the task?

You, and I, and everyone who posts messages, writes letters, expresses our opinions in any form of printed or handwritten media, wherever or whatever it may be, must accept that we—writers everyone of us—bear the onus to gain that understanding. The responsibility to care and learn, and then to act, is ours. We have the frame, yes. We must learn to fill it with a picture, not just another document.

We must understand our own message so completely that people will look at the picture that results, and be filled with that understanding themselves. We should glow with the progressive secular message, and avoid the irresponsible bitterness with which we douse it in each other. The onus is ours: We gain as much as we put into the creation of our picture, we lose according to our shirking of a duty that goes to ourselves as well as to our fellow human beings.

I find nothing wrong with people’s choices of words. To state them, however, is not to use them, and to define them is not to understand them. They must be applied within a supportive system to be understandable. Yes, Lakoff's dialog was incomplete. Other dialogs have added to it, but it remains incomplete without the picture. That picture is a painting of secular-progressive values, something we seldom hear mentioned. Without those well-defined values, we are all about words and inaction; we are stumbling all around and conflicting each other when we do feel an urge to act.

This dialog, too, is incomplete; even as much as it attempts to add to the display, it still remains only words. I can write to my senator or mayor or congressperson and tell them why they are wrong in a very factual manner, perhaps, but my if picture comes not from a well-understood set of values, and just from a hodgepodge of absolutely correct facts and opinions, my messages will get dumped. No connection with the picture my intended readers already understand will be made. Sure, just like you and the rest of us, I can behave in a manner society finds acceptable, but that comes not from my secular values, but from someone else's often delusional dreams, and from a religion's practice of controlled thought that I (just like you) inherited. My secular values, if I stop to think about what I actually believe in (aside from what I don't), give me a feeling of irk and angst because the society that deems me to be such a well-behaved individual is causing me to do things and live in ways I know to be wrong. Those repressed secular values are the pigments that paint the secular picture. We ought to paint that picture before we concern ourselves with how to frame it.

All secular people know all about what we don't believe. We still need to answer a couple of questions: What do we believe in?-- and how does that tell us the best way to walk our path through this world? Can we paint a picture with our words that people can look at and instantly know what we believe in and understand why?

We make it more than obvious so that almost anybody knows all about what we don't believe. Aside from kindness, we still need to answer what we do believe, and show how to put it into practice as secular progressives, and define the difference between our practice of those words which state our ideals and the way nonsecular people would put them to work. What, of all the ideas out there waiting for us to choose them, do we believe in?

One person wrote: “I believe in a foundation of Honesty. I can't think of a better place to look for a path.”

Okay, as an atheist and a reasonable human being, I completely agree with that. Still, it's just a word. Remember the question: "Can we paint a picture with our words that people can look at and instantly know what we believe in and understand why?" Those we look upon as our opponents also might agree with you, but look at the picture they paint of it, and you will see how the form of 'honesty' they proclaim is built upon myths, lies, manipulation of facts, hidden truths, and doctored manuscripts. Do you think people like that could have a smidgeon of a chance to understand a word like ‘honesty’ as we understand it?

Honesty, as we understand it, is just one more aspect of a nurturant philosophy: We are straightforward with one another, and truthful, because we care about each other, we care about cause and effect, and we care about ourselves. We are, on fact, quite often so straightforward it sounds like an internal war. We want to promote humanity and upgrade it, not control it or manipulate it. Can we describe a value system that shows the direct relationship of honesty to cause and effect? How kindness applies to cause and effect? How responsibility interacts with cause and effect? How cause and effect rewards nurturance and elevates existence for all humanity where it becomes dominant in practice? Can we start to write a values system–about what we do believe in–with our answers to such questions as those?

So, let's start with a list of words that build toward a picture of nurturance. Add honesty and consideration to that list, as they definitely belong there:

HONESTY– integrity, honor, honorableness, incorruptibility, uprightness, candor, bluntness, candidness, directness, forthrightness, frankness, openness, outspokenness, straightforwardness, sincerity, veracity, accuracy, correctness, faithfulness, fidelity, truthfulness, integrity, frankness, openness, sincerity, exactness, verity, exactitude, precision, and (somehow the thesaurus left out) rectitude.

CONSIDERATION: Inherent to honesty is consideration of causes and effects as a child of reason. Consideration is necessary to determination of the actual events that led up to the conditions in which others require nurturance and, in the light of that, to the potential results that are the effects various forms of interaction will yield, whether nurturant or done to impose controls. Secular people are reasoning people and, as such (we claim), consider all aspects of a subject before choosing a tentative approach or answer.

TRUSTWORTHINESS – the reliability inherent to reason with constant awareness of natural laws. We constantly correct our understanding of natural laws (if we are wise) but we cannot violate them nor change them, Even laws attributed to gods are human in origin and change over time. All who defend laws of the various gods are also always humans, whatever claims they make about themselves. Nature teaches us her laws with cause and effect, and they remain the same in similar circumstances the world over. Where they seem different, it is up to us to discover what is in the circumstances that make that appear to be so, so we can show that to others.

EMPATHY, COMPASSION – sensitivity, appreciation, empathy, identification, sympathy, concern, feeling, commiseration, tenderness, grief, sorrow, pity, the willingness to visualize yourself as wearing the other fellow's shoes is a hallmark of compassionate empathy.

CARING can be a synonym for compassion, or for nurturing; or for compassionate or nurturant depending on its context.

KINDNESS – favor, act of kindness, beau geste, boon, good deed, good turn, service, benevolence, kindheartedness, altruism, beneficence, charitableness, good will, kindliness, tenderness, goodheartedness, humaneness, all which serve to display the attitude that drives nurturance.

HOPE — a chance, recourse, expedience, refuge, resort, resource, recourse, anticipation, expectancy, expectation, hopefulness, eagerness, excitement. Given hope, most people respond with zest if they have not lost sense of the normal inherent forces that drive us to succeed.

CHARITY — generosity, bounteousness, bountifulness, bounty, charitableness, freehandedness, largesse, munificence, openhandedness, generousness, benevolence, liberality, help, giving; the moral impetus to give back to the community which aided your own achievements.

SHARING — participation, cooperation, involvement, joining in, partaking, collaboration, teamwork; all of which portray the tolerance often necessary for people to work toward a mutual goal rather than indulge in endless, fruitless competition.

UNDERSTANDING — insight, discernment, sagacity, sageness, sapience, wisdom, acumen, perceptiveness, perceptivity, comprehension, perception, awareness, alertness, consciousness, cognizance, perception, acuteness, realization, mindfulness, recognition, tolerance, acceptance, bear with, enduring, allowing, putting up with, comprehending, absorbing, apprehending, catching (on)(colloquial), digesting, discernment, fathoming, figuring out, following, getting (colloquial), getting the drift, grasping, seeing, taking in, compassing, knowing, getting the picture, making out, reading; the moral view of Nature as the supreme process in which we are all engaged, and to which we answer as we add our daily events into the mix.

RESPONSIBILITY — obligation, duty, assignment, bit (British), burden, charge, chore, commission, contribution, errand, function, job, task, commitment, accountability, contract, engagement, compact, bond, pledge, promise, oath, word, debt; the moral relationship we all have with each other, the future, and with our environment.

RECIPROCITY – Equal treatment of all. Return reward for advantages taken; the moral requirement to give back according to what one has gained from our society and that which makes it cohesive, generally in the form of taxes levied by its government.

HUMANNESS – humane, benevolence, knowledge, philosophy, literature, art, human thought, culture; that which makes life pleasant and enjoyable.

NATURALNESS — aplomb, ease, informality, nonchalance, poise, spontaneity, unaffectedness, self-composure, self-possession, casualness, artlessness, ease, informality, nonchalance, simplicity, unaffectedness; the behavior to be expected in a society that thrives with a minimum of artifice and dominance, wherein natural order has been instilled and Cause and Effect have become commonly understood in practice.

ANIMALNESS —sensuality, pruriency, voluptuousness, hedonism, sense and yearning for actual creative freedom, appreciation of art and natural beauty, our sense of place and of past, present and future in a moral atmosphere that inspires and maximizes creative thinking and endeavors.

—and there are likely a thousand others, some of them synonyms, some more appropriate than others (just like this list) that we could fill our speech with, especially that with which we may attempt to influence others. Get a vision in our heads of the attitude induced by that kind of speech, and that vision will be the picture we are after. Can we state our own secular progressive values by now?

No?

To choose one word from such a list and regard it as preeminent is to choose one color to draw only one line in the picture we must paint with all our words.

After all of that, the concept still escapes most of us. My correspondent fired this back at me:

“I understand what you are saying but I'm not suggesting it be the only word. (The words in your list) are all wonderful characteristics but I think you can make a case for them all being the products of Honesty first.”

Alright, let me re-explain it by trying a different tack:

To start with, Diane (who did not write that argument) questioned Lakoff's view that opposes "Nurturance" versus (what edjicated people call) a "Strict Father" paradigm. Conservatives are proponents of the Strict Father view that comes from the idea that people are inherently evil and so must be punished and forced into being good people worthy of eternal Heavenly Bliss. Progressives (Liberals, Leftists, Whatever) are proponents of a view that assumes people can be nurtured into becoming the best humans possible with proper guidance, the imparting of appropriate knowledge, and an understanding of the proper methodology inherent to that knowledge. So, what we STARTED OUT discussing was that.

It is true that when you use honesty to replace old beliefs with new beliefs or to replace illusions with knowledge, then you have at least some chance for the self-correction necessary to thrive in this ever changing universe. My correspondent wrote, “Honesty being a self-correcting and therefore adaptive attribute makes it the perfect foundation in a world that is also ever changing. What picture did you have in mind?”

After all of the explaining about the relationships of various aspects of nurturance and the necessity to include all of them together to build a picture of Secular Progressivism, I find this response to be quite frightening. I really do. This is not rocket science, here. The other side has a handle on it. We don't. We won't, not if we don't get a goodly deathgrip on all of the foregoing, not just a little part of it, and don't leave go! I collected together all the messages on this thread, and have worked to see what I can do to make it clear, because I believe this is one thing that is very important for us to learn how to understand. The experience of writing the original messages that provided material for this page convinced me, in fact, and as intelligent as we deem ourselves to be, secular progressives do not possess the necessary folder in their mental filing cabinets to store and collate this information. It will take all of us extreme measures to get on track with it, to take hold of it and make it so much ours that we can sling carefully constructed zingers with the most practiced ²RRRRRR person.

Build a Mural in your Mind: As I stated earlier, Lakoff wrote about (1) how the radical right had learned to frame their Orwellian messages and make them both believable and unassailable in spite of being obviously wrong, harmful and counterproductive. He made it clear (I thought) that people think in images, and that if what they are hearing/reading does not fit their image of a subject, it gets instantly dumped. That's *people*; not just *them*, but all *people* including *us*. If a message does not fit in the frame we have for that subject, it gets dumped. Period. Gone. OutaSight. Forgeddaboudit! Get the picture?

Look: You may be learning something new to you, here. If that's the case, that explains a part of the problem. The remark about mental folders was said in all seriousness. Look at this information as a thing in itself, about which what you learn must be assembled according to what is demanded by *it*, and, like the very existence of your mind, may not fit the information you already have about the rest of existence. Try not to pass by things just because they seem strange to you: It is in those places that learning takes place. Create a mental folder in your mind (try to see a mental image of it) and put there only the things you read about linguistics, frames and memetics. You will later find it very useful, if you can make yourself accomplish that.

Lakoff also wrote about (2) how the radical right arrives on the scene with a fully developed set of shared values developed and honed over the course of millenniums. Those values elicit images in their minds of stuff they consider to be "good", and they spent oodle-millions of dollars over several decades learning how to frame those values and use them to win votes. The people whose votes they needed were "swing voters", which does not refer to mate swappers, but who are those middle of the road folks who sometimes view things in a "strict father" way, and other times in a "nurturing" mode. They are more “on the fence” than most of us. Get the picture?

Lakoff wrote about (3) how progressives (and for us, I added the word 'secular') DO NOT express themselves in the way people's minds grasp. Our words do not match the images that nonsecular people see them in, and so they get dumped. We do not get heard, because we use "text messages" that may be entirely factual, correct, of honest intent and function, but elicit the wrong images in people's minds. In fact, we suffer from that when talking/writing to each other. We do not frame our messages so that a shared image arises when we say things. We do not paint pictures with our words, but send out only text messages. Text messages, if they elicit any pictures at all, will bring up only pictures that are already in place inside the other persons' heads. Now, do you get the picture? They won't, because your words give them images that are different from yours.

Lakoff wrote about (4) the reason is that we do not have a well-expressed system of values upon which we can rely to elicit the relevant images that enable us to share an idea, and so we end up arguing about actual inanities and get so distracted with that we can accomplish very little else. What you have been seeing in the thread from which this came is a perfect example of that: We have been talking about values (honesty, kindness, reason, etc.) in a textual way as though one value is more important than another. We fail to understand Lakoff's message because we get stuck on the framing part of it, and laugh off the values part of it. The ‘values’ part of it is the picture the frame gets put around so we can show it to each other, and so we can hold it up to the world and let them see what kind(s) of people we really are. We do not have a set of shared values, fully formed and stated, and so we do not have a picture. That is why one (and all) of us has to ask, "What picture did you have in mind?" Get the picture? Not yet? Huh!

Having no shared set of commonly understood values, we fail to grasp their importance. In fact, most of us deny their worth, even though we are quick enough to say when something is “right’ or “wrong”. We struggle to put frames around text, and we get stuck on the "frames", but the "frames" are meaningless because we have no recognizable images to wrap them around. We do not even understand values, which are best presented in a sort-of hierarchy: The over-arching value set comes as a system, in which "Nurturance" opposes "Strict Father", which has already been rather peremptorily explained here.

Those value-words that elicit images of control/punishment/supernatural/ heavenly reward/law/judge/cops/jury/and such are the "strict father" expressions. They're gonna get you and make you behave. You gotta be getting some kind of a picture by now. Right?

Those value words that elicit images of wellbeing/freedom/personal integrity/self-reliance/kindness/honesty/maturity/responsibility/concern/ empathy and all the rest in the earlier list are the words that elicit nurturing images. Rather than imposing a predetermined code of conduct upon our children and cudgeling them into obedience, we try to guide them, teach them in a non-injurious manner to care for their own futures, their places in their world, and to be self reliant and responsible, and the best kinds of self-determined humans they can be so that society will benefit from their presence and they can benefit themselves in a progressive way without the doom of Heaven and Hell and punishment and promise of reward in a nonexistent afterlife to induce that in them. They will have been raised to understand the relationships of cause and effect, and perceive the relevancy of their actions (long and short term) upon later events in which they will become involved. Do we yet get the picture? Oh, man!

Okay: As I hinted in an earlier message, these two opposed values systems can be expressed in a hierarchical fashion. In the progressive system, "Nurturance" is the family name. The children of Nurturance are all the words that have been bandied about, as though one sibling may be more important than another. Honesty Nurturance, Kindness Nurturance, Responsibility Nurturance, Trustworthiness Nurturance, Caring Nurturance, Empathy Nurturance… A family is not complete without all of the siblings present in every presentation. You may find, if you venture into this, there will be cousins, uncles and aunts. Not one is more important than any other. Every one of them must fit into the Nurturing Family Image, or it will get dumped by those we hope to convince with our words–and it matters not one teensy weensy bit what our preferences are about it! Do we yet get the picture?

No? That’s because narrated text does not suffice. The Devil’s data means nothing to someone avoiding evil. Scientists are seen as suspect by the lay population for the same reason you are having a hard time grasping this. Picture two scientists debating atomic theory as related to the production of energy, and see if you have anything inside your head that would make anything they say understandable. Picture two mathematicians arguing about any aspect of String (‘M’) Theories and making their points by using calculations drawn out upon a blackboard. If you are not experienced with those already, you will become lost. You will not get the picture as they see it. If we don't have a cogent, commonly understood picture, we have absolutely no need for a frame to present it with. Can you see it, yet?

You, as a secular person, may now have a vision of it, but all it amounts to in all you have read here is just words, words the opposing frame-system understands already according to their own picture. They will see their picture with our words.

That picture, I assure you, is not the one you see when you close your eyes. Without a show-not-tell picture painted with vividly descriptive words, you will make no impression on those who share a portion of your view but would still vote for your opponents and regard you to be an untrustworthy evil presence they would rather continue to avoid. You may not believe in good and evil, but they do. You have to paint yourself as good in a way they understand and that cannot be argued against. Slogans go a long ways toward expressing a picture, and I might recommend that as a good way to begin and to continue practicing. Read them, and you understand without explanation. That’s called, “I get the picture. Now, frame it before you show it to others.”

Toward that end, here a couple/three:

“The Right to Life begins at birth and ends at death, like it says in the Bible.”

“If hearsay isn’t admissible in a court of law, how can you expect me to live my entire life according to it?”

“I believe in Right to Life. Banish the Death Penalty.”

“Why are people who don’t believe in my right to privacy so secretive?”

“Why do they proclaim ‘freedom’ when they want to control every move I make?”

Did you get the picture? The picture           The Values

The Ten Rs of Secularity You've heard of the 3 r's all your life. Here's why our educational system is so incomplete as to be close to useless.
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