©2005 by Lloyd Harrison Whitling

‘Framing’ is, itself, a framed word: It gives us an image of a picture held in a frame and placed where it can be viewed whenever the person who possesses it needs to understand something else in accordance with it, as in the development of a ¹memeplex. Other images that get presented to an individual get compared to framed images for relevance, acceptability, and usefulness, and then adopted into or rejected from the memeplex according to the results of that comparison. All human minds work like that, and so it is useful to understand the process and see what it might mean to each of us, even if only to understand how others may be attempting to manipulate our minds.

American right-wing fanatics have advanced their ability to market their extremist parasitic dogma by the use of this very natural and very human process called ‘framing’. Human thought gets expressed as frames, author George Lakoff states. The frame prompts a mental image about what a word means to those who hear it, and comes from the use of 'frame' to refer to a certain image in movie photography. A ‘frame’ is one image as shown when the projector is stopped, and that is how words and their associated meanings get filed in our brains. Get the picture?

He used the word ‘elephant’ for his example: When you hear that word, or read it, you mentally see a large, rotund gray animal with a trunk and stumpy legs. Your image may be more or less detailed, but that is the basic view in your mind. Why is this important?

What you remember about a word or phrase will be included in the mental frame you have recorded about it. Anything you may hear later that is not in the associated frame and cannot be made to fit will be rejected without further consideration, even though the new information may be factual and the framed information completely false. Whenever you later hear that word, your mind will present the picture it has related to it and, no matter how hard you may try to see something differently, you will use that word or phrase as a metaphor from then on.

EXAMPLE: Words get used as a marketing tool for creating slogans. Heard often enough, the slogan will get attached to the product or idea it is meant to promote and become a metaphor for it. If the slogan elicits a vivid and believable image, repetition will reinforce it in spite of a lack of verifying data. If a slogan elicits a hazy or unbelievable image, or disagrees with frames already in place, it will simply get shoved aside within the information flow.

If a slogan presents a negative image, it will build resistance to the product or idea (handy for generating propaganda against competing ideas). That same negative image may actually yield a positive metaphor in the minds of those who already favor the defamed object. Framing images, then, requires careful consideration of the intended result before a picture gets conceived and presented to the public. It pays to know one's audience, and to go accordingly.

All conversations and materials created for the purpose of spreading ideas (purposefully created memes) frame the picture gotten of them by the manner of their presentation. Since all ideas are managed according to their frames in human brains, people wanting their ideas to become understood and accepted need to learn how to control the way their listeners will frame them. That mainly gets done by presenting the ideas already framed so they will fit into memeplexes already in place within intended listeners' minds.

Dogmatic doctrines drawn from already existent descriptions and beliefs about imaginary or invisible other-worldly realms are ready-made for framing by building upon similar concepts already present in the public’s consciousness. Those who oppose the resultant frames will make the mistake of aiding their spread by using them to argue against the ideals they represent. Those who accept them as a part of reality will argue for them and thus help to spread them. Because both sides adopt them and spread them by repeating them, frames make potentially powerful tools for the promotion and marketing of tangible, religious, or political products, ideas and concepts. For frames, no publicity needs to be regarded as ‘bad’.

Because our concepts are derived from a humane view of tangible reality, progressive secularists have not felt inclined to study how to frame a presentation of our views, thinking that proof and demonstration of correctness ought to be convincing to any sane and reasonable person. While that may be correct, it may also depend on one’s definition of ‘sane’ and ‘reasonable’. On the one hand, the kinds of frames held by those whose ideals are grounded in accessible reality will define saneness and reasonableness according to the natural setting in which humans live; whereas, on the other hand, authoritarian notions of sanity and reason require a deeply religious view of life imbedded in the supernatural realm answering to the decrees given down by one’s god(s). The two hands, it is easy to see, are incompatible and will instantly reject each others’ frames. Most of us operate from within the gray areas between those two extremes.

Tangible proof does not make an idea meaningful if it fails to fit the frame in which a listener views it. Because arguing against a framed idea serves only to reinforce and spread it, an opposing idea must be presented in a new frame that avoids conflict with listeners’ frames, and so get presented in an entirely new way that sheds its own light on the picture a presenter wants to be seen, in the way it needs to be seen in order to be understood. By avoiding conflict with already present frames, the presenter does not put the presented ideas into the realm of hostilities, and so avoids the results of pitting “us” against “them”, and also avoids the reinforcement of ideas already framed in opposition.

Related frames that work together can be used to build a ‘framing system’ or 'memeplex', a self-reinforcing set of frames that can serve to build a world view for those who buy into them. Such self-reinforcing systems already exist under the name ‘religion’; the resultant world views are known as ‘religious’. In spite of a secular resistance to calling themselves ‘religious’, the world views of atheists, agnostics, and other secular persons are products of frame sets, some of which are religious. To avoid the terminal argumentation that will result from such a realization, let us stick with a strict definition of religion as those frame sets built upon unverifiable pictures of reality, and with Blaylock’s description of atheism as a religious term referencing something that is truly nonexistent (The Honest Man’s Philosophy, AuthorHouse, 2005).

Frame sets develop from two versions of reality, most times intermixed. That which is demonstrable as true, we will herein present as the secular frameset; and that which must be held in faith as true, we will present herein as the authorized (by one's religion) frameset. Reasons for choosing this term should be noted: while only one truly secular frameset is possible, authorized framesets range through all the realms of beliefs held by people the world over. Whatever one(s) the reader chooses to acknowledge will be the one he or she has authorized, or that has been authorized by those whose indoctrinations provided the frameset upon which he or she relies for guidance. It will not be the same as a frameset authorized by other persons or leaders in other places, or even in other households. It is this that makes us "different" in our perceptions.

Please let me note also, while I’m at it, that a frameset will be much the same as has been previously known as memeplex (Susan Blackmore’s books, particularly The Meme Machine), and as an ideoplex by older writers. The idea behind memetics, while credible, got off to a bad start when all attention got directed toward the notion of idea viruses, which put it into a frameset that did not fit at all well with the common worldviews of the religious nor the scientists, as well as inciting distracting, irrelevant discussions about the problem of understanding what was meant by copying, and so it faded into the relative oblivion of special interests and oddities.

Our interest in this piece is not about religions, however, but is about the way framing can be used by those with nefarious objectives to manipulate how a majority of an intended audience will view a product (or a political candidate or concept) relative to all of those against which it competes for dominance. Wise marketers, very aware of the nature of their product (a term under which we will also include candidates, concepts, marketable goods, et al), will learn the best ways to apply framing to its qualities. Those who succeed earn big dollars.

In this category of framing, framed conceptions are known as realistic and Orwellian. Realistic frames are developed from pictures known to be true. Orwellian frames, from the concept of DoubleThink presented by the author of 1984, pose ideas that are not necessarily true, but that divert attention away from matters in a way that cannot be argued against without adding the value of reinforcement to the framer’s position, and because they most often have nothing to do with the discussion at hand. This makes for a very effective promotional tool, currently being finessed by advertisers, political promoters, and those with a religious agenda.

It is extremely effective for those with Orwellian ideas, or who do not mind prevarication while stacking the deck against rather naive opponents, who come out slugging against what they perceive to be a campaign of lies while still wondering what they got hit with, and what happened. Democrats have been the victims of such campaigns of recent years, as have people with secular interests of all kinds, such as defending the constitutional principles upon which the USA was founded. They invariably take the bait and argue against the Orwellian frames, and thus end up reinforcing them, thinking that proof and the truth ought to be sufficient evidence to use as weapons.

No matter how they are responded to, frames are devised in ways that support the case they are made to present. Frames that prompt true images are devised to support the truth; frames which elicit believable false images are devised, by those intent upon betraying the common trust, to support lies. Only by the development of one’s own agenda by stating the case that supports one’s true interests, and by gaining an adequate understanding of one’s own true interests, and then developing frames accordingly, can one learn to overcome, rather than reinforce, Orwellian frames from one’s opponents.

Such Orwellian frames most often originate in camps that support authoritarian doctrines. Those whose doctrines fall more into alignment with progressive nurturance are more apt to support a secular world view, and to choose evidence and proof as their arguing tools. Evidence, proof, verifiability, demonstrability, repeatability, correctness, rectitude, verisimilitude— such terms are meaningless to their opponents, who see them as nothing greater than more things to develop Orwellian frames against to demonstrate the stupidity and evil nature of their secular, nurture-supporting victims.

Unfair? This is about love and war, related to concepts.

An example of such framing, and the resultant leg up it gave one of the representative world views, is the notion of opposing the term ‘conservative’ against the term ‘liberal’. Once this was given enough spread to take root in the distant past, Conservatives were enabled to present tax-weary voters with the notion of themselves as the careful, faithful watchdogs over governmental spending and growth as opposed to their Liberal opponents who promoted Big Government with lots of programs, pork, and free-for-all giveaways to those who do little or nothing to earn a living. In today’s world, the opposite can be demonstrated as a truer picture, but the idea sticks, even though some of those called “Liberals” are more accurately defined by the word “Progressive” because of their interests in advancing the causes of humanity and humanitarian ideals, as opposed to the expensive and burdensome warfaring  interests expounded by Conservatives.

Because of their reliance on tangible, natural truth in the form of verifiable evidence, correct thinking which results in rectitude, and a tangible view of reality, Progressive secular people will remain at the mercy of the Orwellian Framers until we understand our own actual positions, worldviews, and doctrines well enough to discover how best they can be framed— and how forcefully frames can present a verifiable worldview derived from the truth as it can be shown, with the uplifting of humanity as its positive aim, and exposing the high human costs in regression and losses incurred with radical Conservativism at the helm.

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Secular Pictures and Framing