Down and dirty

Continuing this post, some of you might be wondering: WTF does this have to do with politics? Effective framing is about reaching a wider audience beyond our insular community. If we want to motivate others to not only understand what we're about but to some sort of political action we need to speak their language. That is, frame to the demographic with the requisite emotional value language.

The typical language we use in our developmental communities is pretty much technical and sophisticated in an attempt to develop better and hopefully more effective models from which to launch practices to enact our hopes. But in our endeavors we must beware of our elitism and exceptionalism, much like Thompson talks about the exceptionalism of Buddhist modernism. This can be quite an obstructive blinder.

Hence we also need to translate all that sophistication 'down' to broader demos that are the majority of voters who decide who gets to represent us and thereby enact our agenda or not. To paraphrase Crowley: Inflame the frame! I'd add: The frame ain't the same for every game.

PS: Down in the trenches where most people live things can get pretty down and dirty. We need to learn to let our frames play in the muck too. Fuckin' A, eh?