For it would indeed be a Divine Miracle if Katie Holmes had a healthy, human baby. You may have heard that Tom Cruise has become something of a black market physician with his quasi-legal purchase and use of a sonogram machine. What, prey tell, would an unlicensed lay-person do with a highly sophisticated, extremely expensive piece of medical equipment like that? Besides, of course, donate it to charity after he’s done?

I have two theories. My first theory is the happy one. I imagine Tom and Katie punch drunk late at night, romping around their Versace-sheeted bed, laughing as they take turns sonogramming the teddy bear Katie has shoved under her shirt. In this happy scenario, no one is having a baby except the media, the sonogram machine is a convenient way to avoid any medical record of the pregnancy, and Tom and Katie are laughing uproariously because on the sonogram printouts they can just make out the wads of cash and strands of jewels they’ve stuffed into the teddy. Presumably they’ve done this to try and hide a bit from the Scientologists.

My second theory is a bit more unpleasant, and a bit less plausible. It goes like this: Tom is sick of being under the thumb of Scientology. His insecurity over being short has lead him to believe that if he were just a little taller (but no more handsome, for indeed, how could he be?) he would be free of the shackles that unjustly bind his huge-box-office-smash-hit ankles. Late at night, after Katie is asleep, as the falling rain and roaring thunder work to cover any sound he might make, he secrets next to her, cranks the machine to 11, and gives her dose after massive dose of sonogram waves, hoping beyond hope that he will create the first of a new race of Super Mutant Cruises, at least 4 inches taller than himself. Why, if his knee-quivering good looks were combined with awe-inspiring height, he would be unstoppable!

OK, maybe none of this is true, but it still makes a lot more sense to me than anything L. Ron Hubbard ever wrote.

But enlightenment, and advancement, is very hard won. Reading today of Rosa Park’s death, I was reminded that we live in a nation where the simple, humane idea that all men are created equal was not truly codified into law, whatever the Constitution says, as few as 50 years ago. Even today I could not say with sincere conviction that this humane notion is part of our national consciousness.

It’s about tolerance. The idea that we should all live and let live. Observe today the struggle waging in a Pennsylvania courtroom over whether “intelligent design theory” should be a mandated part of the biology curriculum.

Proponents of intelligent design claim that it is a legitimate scientific theory, and therefore deserves to be recognized and taught. They claim that the concept is “religion-neutral”, and that many of its supporters are secular.

Yet no legitimate scientific body recognizes intelligent design. No articles on the subject are published in the peer-review journals that are absolutely critical to the acceptance of any idea in the scientific community, excepting false peer-review systems consisting solely of intelligent design supporters. In fact, when in August of 2004 the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington published an article in support of intelligent design, the response was so negative, the debunking and dismantling of the shabby pseudo-science so vociferous, that the journal’s publisher later disavowed the article, promising to uphold proper review procedures in the future. The managing editor responsible for publication of the piece left the journal during the scandal. Not surprisingly, he is a member of the Baraminology Study Group, a creationist organization.

Scientists are kept busy every day working to defend themselves against so-called “creation science” in the various forms it has taken throughout the centuries. On the one hand, debate and rigorous defense can often strengthen that which is under attack. I take no offense to the existence of creation science; our struggle to understand the universe is at the core of what makes us human. I can therefore forgive the fact that those scientific energies could instead be put towards more measurable advancement. What I cannot forgive is that these energies are not being distracted by philosophical or scientific debate, but are instead being siphoned off to fight a never-ending culture war.

And this is where the intolerance becomes clear: The nebulous “culture war” we are told we are all soldiers in is as real as it is unreal. Perhaps my naive love of humanity is to blame for my firm belief that Americans, as much as any other people on Earth, simply want to live their own lives. We don’t care if our neighbor is Muslim or our mail man is atheist, so long as we are allowed to be whomever we want, to live our lives in peace. But no! The viral minority shouts at us with their majority voice “we are under attack!” Their bullhorn announces that Christianity is oppressed (of all the ludicrous ideas) and the only way we can ever be free is to reshape every bit of matter, every protocol of law, every aspect of society and every thought of human kind into a reflection of their own. If God made man in his own image, shouldn’t we be able to make all society in ours?

There is a simple, complex, loaded word for this: fascism. Intelligent design supporters claim their theory is secular while at the same time making it quite clear to their constituents that the fill-in-the-blank “designer” is God. The fight to keep intelligent design out of the classroom is an important one, because with each creationist success another toehold is found, another hole is ripped in the fabric of religious and educational freedom. The end goal is to devolve back into the cocoon, to bring God back into the classroom, and to change not just the teaching of biology, but the whole of education and by extension the whole of American culture.

The fight in Pennsylvania is just one of many in recent memory. Similar struggles have played out and continue to play out in Kansas, Arizona, Ohio, Illinois, Alabama, Nebraska, Texas and elsewhere, with small victories and defeats on both sides.

There is a concept called “god of the gaps”. It describes how as science concretely proves more and more observable aspects of nature, the remaining gaps in our knowledge become smaller and smaller. What was before attributed to supernatural phenomenon now has a comprehensible explanation. Yet somehow, what gaps remain are still stuffed with religious meaning. The gaps threaten to tear us apart.

Take, for example, the Wedge Strategy. Engineered by the Discovery Institute, which is also known as the leading organization in support of intelligent design theory, its purpose is to provide an action plan for the social and political mutation of our culture into one that is based around God. This strategy is now infamous in the creationism vs. evolution debate, and the Discovery Institute sluffs it off as having “outlived its usefulness” despite one of its offshoots being the Santorum Amendment to the No Child Left Behind Act. Although the amendment was modified and does not have any legal impact, it promotes the teaching of intelligent design in schools.

If tearing apart is your goal, I can think of nothing better to stick into a gap than a wedge.

This whole train of thought came about because I wondered why there was even a debate over evolution and creationism. I wondered why creationists couldn’t either be happy to hold their religious beliefs as their own, without forcing them upon others, or alternatively why they could not see evolution as part of God’s creation. Did it ever occur to anyone that perhaps God created evolution itself?

I was surprised to learn that this is actually one form of creationism, and even more surprised to learn that there are at least four major branches of creationist belief with myriad subdivisions. “Theistic evolutionism”, or “evolutionary creationism” broadly posits that what science observes is both correct and at the same time the creation of God. Evolution is His tool. I wasn’t surprised to learn, additionally, that within the realm of creationism this form takes undue flak. It’s no wonder. After all, we are in a culture war.

In the game, you would choose which government type your nation operated under: despotism, anarchy, monarchy, communism, republic or democracy. Each had its strengths and weaknesses, and was more or less suited to nations in particular stages of development. For example, democracy was not a choice for a pre-bronze-age nation. And when you finally were ready for it, you had to deal with the fact that under a democracy your citizens were unhappy if too many military units were deployed in the field.

And why should they be happy? A deployed military pisses off virtual citizens as much as it does real ones. For one thing, it fractionalizes the direction and spirit of the nation; conflict without creates conflict within. People miss their loved ones, they are uncomfortable feeling like a target. By the time you see democracy, it’s not 100 BC anymore, and people aren’t going to swallow that crap about their militaristic struggle being the righteous and inevitable conclusion of divine will. Or at least not as much of it as they used to.

Furthermore, a deployed military is a drain on the nation’s resources. Everything needed to overextend the limb of the nation siphons from those projects and endeavors that might benefit its heart. Today we measure this in the hundreds of billions of dollars, but the impact is truly much greater than that, and not measured in any currency.

Making citizens happy is one of the most important parts of the game in Civilization. If you don’t keep your people happy, your nation will not produce, and if you do not produce, you will fall behind the world in all things: scientific achievement, economic growth, military strength, environmental cleanliness. Once you’re behind, you’re the dog. If you don’t manage to kick international scientific ass and colonize space before everyone else, forget it. All your resources will, and there is no doubt of this, end up belonging to some other nation.

In Civilization, you, the leader, are the one playing the game. You’re the boss, the elite, the dude with the palace who makes the rules and calls the shots. That is, until it seems like a long time since your palace has been renovated, it’s been a while since Rome wasn’t in civil disorder, production on your great achievements has halted, and England is demanding your knowledge of nuclear fission at the threat of war.

Is Civilization anything like real life? It makes some assumptions, of course, such as the idea that all nations must be in a persistent state of war until they become one planetary government. Sid Meier thereby joins a multitude of media, art and thought creators who have made this assertion throughout history. This multitude is a subset of those people whose words anyone has ever bothered to record, which itself is a tiny subset of all the people that ever had something to say. At least in the case of Civilization we’re dealing with an interactive work, a different sort of fiction if you can look at it the right way.

But if you look at it another way, it’s a simulation of an historical record. The history that drives the simulation model of Civilization is true, at least in spirit if not in fact. What worries me more is whether it is also a model of the future. To what degree will our lives be at the mercy of the player? The player often makes bad decisions. Power flows like an eel through the hands of those struggling to play tug-of-war with it.

Civilization was a game I played on a glowing box, a mark of my own nation’s scientific achievement. I find myself playing the same game on a similar box today, only this time I am not the leader. I am the citizen.

The long and the short of why the Internet even exists is the military. It is a scientific achievement that was created in support of missile systems. The internet is a distributed system, designed specifically to mitigate the impact of any one node, or any several nodes, being destroyed by an opposing force.

It is the mark of all warfare, and much progress, that consequences are, if not forgotten, inadequately considered. Or that’s one theory. Personally, I’m more apt to believe that the consequences are understood but dismissed. The issues we must deal with are here and now. We’ll deal with the repercussions later. Look at biological weapons, look at terrorism, look at all the pieces of the game in all their forms that are both the natural consequence of human social evolution and a direct representation of our failure to do what is within our power, to find peace.

And here in the Internet is a new kind of tool. I’m sure the U.S. Government knew full well some of the ramifications of the choices it made with the Internet. It acted out of need, knowing it could deal with any problems later. For example, this June it reasserted its authority over the underlying systems that make the Internet possible. The only alternative to this central, U.S. authority would be for multiple “internets” to be created, fractionalizing the global digital mind share into a patchwork of competing interests, a place without physical bounds that is somehow sliced up as neatly as the lines and colors on a globe. Observers of technology have also discussed another alternative: War over (or on) the Internet.

Of course, the Internet is already fractionalized, just in smaller, less distructive ways. There are certain channels of the Internet with different demographics. Places where only certain people go, or even know how to get to. The Internet is becoming more local and personal all the time, even as it becomes more global and encompassing. Then you have the private places of the Internet. And perhaps more interestingly, the anonymous places, such as Anonymizer, Inc., which provide the kind of freedom that lovers of law and order might call anarchy, or at least consider dangerous. Interestingly, according to this BBC article, our very own government pays Anonymizer, Inc. to promote their services in Iran and China, to promote free speech. Are they considering the consequences, or dismissing them?

I think world voices coming together is a good thing. I think free speech should find its way across the globe. I think the central power, that final state of peace that Civilization supposes, and players like Bush and Stalin and Hitler and Caesar were looking for, driven by reasons that had nothing to do with peace, should not be up to the player but rather be found in another place altogether: A place as solid as the lines on a globe, yet as distributed and redundant as all the individual minds that, ultimately and together, own this planet. A network of thought and decision and knowledge and peace strong enough that if one part, or even several, are destroyed, it will still stand.

Maybe the Internet will be part of that. Maybe it won’t. There are two choices: Civilization as the old model or Civilization as the eternal model. Personally, I’m opting for the former, and I’m going try and seize my chance to play. More importantly, let’s bring everyone to the board.

But I can’t watch Raven’s antics anymore. Not because of the show, as stupid as it is, but because of the commercials. There is a sinister brilliance to the marketing that drives the Disney Channel. I defy you to just sit and watch it for an hour or two, and see what you walk away with. It’s a very interesting picture, and I can’t help but wonder how well it truly reflects the lives and aspirations of the kids watching it, and what that means about American culture and its future.

The vast American marketing industry that makes sure we’re in a constant frenzy to buy buy buy has a number of tools up its sleeve. One of them is called “aspirational marketing”. It’s about tying your product to an image, idea, or thought that appeals to the viewer’s sense of self, or who they want to be or what they want to accomplish. The usual aspirations involve rising in the social ranks, expressing oneself, or finding fame and fortune. You’ve seen the techniques everywhere. How about the beer commercial where everyone was surrounded by hot bikini babes the minute the cap shot off the ice cold bottle? Or that time the salary man bought the right car, impressed his boss and got a promotion? Or how about the one where the parents bought their kid a computer and suddenly he became a college-bound genius, excelling at school?

We’re all looking for something in life. Some of us have a better idea of what it is than others. Those people that believe they have the best idea, and should make everyone else share it, are known as marketers. They know that some of us need a little help figuring out what we want and how to get it. We’re flooded with their messages every day, everywhere we look. It has become a part of who and what we are, to the point where our aspirations can only be reached through some purchase. Only a product can inspire us. Most people don’t think of it in those terms, of course, which is good for marketers. But you need only look at the commercial, consumerist nature of our culture to see that one way or another, we’re trained. We believe the message, and our actions prove it.

But Disney, they take it to another level entirely. It’s important to understand that the Disney Channel is purely a Disney vehicle. I’ve watched it for probably 10 hours this year, and in that whole time I can only remember seeing two commercials that were not for a Disney product. The shows support the actors support the movies support the music videos support the recording artists support the theme parks, and so on and so on and so on.

Almost all these commercials go behind the scenes. They’re about the kids who are involved in making the music, shooting the video, voicing the animation and realizing their dreams. Through Disney. Many of the stars talk about their love for Disney and the Disney Channel. Some are interviewed in the theme parks, talking about all the cool things going on there. Others talk about the important issues kids like them face (and sometimes, their parents). All of it occurs in the context of a Disney product.

But this is just good capitalism, right? Well, it gets a little more interesting when we start bringing kids that aren’t Disney employees into the mix. Many of the commercials are like micro-shows, and a short list of some I’ve seen include a piece about a kid who’s excelling at golf and winning trophies, one about a young rock star in the making who’s writing music in his bedroom and performing on stage, and another on a girl and her fabulous snow globe collection. There are many more. Often, the announcer will say things like “every day, kids like you are sharing their stuff on the Disney Channel” or “every day, kids like you are doing what they love”. Kids are getting the things they want, finding what they are looking for, reaching their goals and realizing their dreams. And the Disney Channel is there. It’s a part of their lives.

To the untrained eye, I believe these micro-shows about kids going for it and making it happen might look inspiring, healthy, almost educational. But I wonder if all they inspire is a drive to find your dreams through a product, through a cavalcade of marketing, through the incredibly bland brain-draining sitcoms that make up the bulk of Disney programming. After all, if you do nothing but sit on your ass watching shows about rich, happy kids getting what they really want, and commercials about other, “real” kids getting what they really want, will you ever get what you really want? Instead of watching a commercial about a kid excelling at golf, how about hitting the driving range? Instead of zoning out while images of a successful child musician float through your semi-consciousness, how about you strap on that guitar and practice your scales?

When I looked slightly beneath the surface of That’s So Raven, I saw a show within a show that had a wicked sense of humor. When I look slightly beneath the surface of the Disney Channel marketing, I see something truly wicked, and truly worrisome. It’s endemic in our culture, of course, but Disney has it down to a frightening science, and the veneer of “kids like you are trying their best and reaching their goals” gives Disney a plausible deniability that companies like McDonalds only wish they had, a great excuse for shoving their product into the dreams of children.

Personally, I think it’s pathetic.

“Don’t think of an elephant!”

And as his 144 page book of the same name begins, it explains that no student has ever succeeded in this. Words evoke frames: mental imprints of the thing the word represents. When you use words, you fire the neurons that store those frames in the mind of your listener.

In other words, when Lakoff says “elephant”, a mental image or sound or idea of some sort pops into the student’s mind. The elephant frame is evoked, and now that it’s there it might very well evoke other frames. “Elephant” might lead to “zoo” or “animal”, which might evoke a thousand other memories or ideas.

Evoking a frame is very powerful, and trying to negate a frame by using it is all but impossible. The first example Lakoff gives in Don’t Think of an Elephant is one of the best: In 1973, Nixon said “I am not a crook!” and immediately everyone thought of him as one.

The cover of Lakoff’s book claims it is “The Essential Guide for Progressives”, and in a way it just might be. It shows how conservatives have been utilizing the ideas it covers for decades, and how today their use of language is more powerful than ever. The first example Lakoff gives is that of “tax relief”, which not only evokes the frame that someone is afflicted, but also that there is a hero (Bush) who will rescue the innocent victims of the affliction. Meanwhile his behavior is the exact opposite: Bush takes from the poor and gives to the rich.

Social Security Reform. No Child Left Behind. The Clean Skies Initiative. All Orwellian double speak that hide the true agenda of the Bush administration.

But even as it hides the truth, the right’s use of language also reveals it. It shows their weaknesses (frames they avoid) and uncovers their strengths. We must understand these weaknesses, these strengths, and how to use framing to appeal to fundamental values that all progressives and even most conservatives share.

The book touches upon the bitter truth that those who oppose Bush and the Neocons and the destructive corporations they represent are factionalized and lack the strength of real unity. Bringing opposed groups together has been a hallmark of the Republican machinery for many years, spilling red paint into one state after another. They do it with values, and they evoke those values through framing.

But not all of the right’s values are unique to them, and neither are those of progressives. Lakoff spends much of the book discussing how the concept of family provides the metaphors for how we view societies and politics. It’s hard to grasp the true breadth of what “civilization” means, but it’s normal and quite human to understand it in terms of family relationships. Lakoff discusses two models of family: the strict father (conservative) and nurturant parent (progressive). He clearly demonstrates how conservatives have used framing to evoke values related to the strict father model, appealing even to those who are hurt by conservative policies.

By taking the power of language away from those for whom it is an Orwellian exercise and putting it into the hands of those who are interested in the common good of this planet and its people and its animals and its future, we can come together. We can frame the debate in progressive values, and we can spill some blue paint around.

Though you might not always agree with Lakoff (I didn’t), and you might sometimes wish he backed up his arguments with more hard science (for that you’ll have to read his other works, mainly Moral Politics), I guarantee that this small book will make you think, particularly about how you get the message out. Don’t use the language of your opponent, or you will evoke his frames and his values.

Sites like this are a vital part of the change we’re looking for. The blogosphere is changing everything. Together we can kill the Neocon agenda. Many thanks to Andrei for letting us all do our part here. This is a great place and it deserves to be more popular.

And if you want to read some of Lakoff’s essays that make up the book or learn more about it, check out The Rockridge Institute website.