Framing Values -- Shaping vs Molding
There's a nice Framing Diary over at dKos by Cognitive Politics.
I'm a real sucker for framing, as it works so well for me professionally with my interaction with clients. It also is a great concept for improved learning and communication. Anyway, I got like half way through, about right here:
Trump is not a disciplinarian, but a strongman: a drill sergeant saying "drop and give me 20" has a different motive than "you're fired!" Trump's focus is punishment and strength, rather than challenging people to face their fears. His voters don't see themselves being asked of anything.
And came up with this reply:
You don’t have to do anything extra except obey.
Man, that’s creepy!
This reminds me of shaping vs molding in dog training.
Shaping
Shaping asks the dog to be the leader, to make good decisions, and pays them well for desirable behaviors while creating a potentially limitless sphere of behavior. This is an autonomous dog. A voracious learner who gets, very clearly, that behavior affects consequence, and creates many fun and interesting behaviors and social relationships as a result.
Molding
Molding is physically guiding, controlling, or forcing the dog to do a behavior. Dogs who don’t have the pressure often don’t do the behavior or avoid it. The sphere of behaviors is quite limited, and the dog knows that the boss will make me do it if I need to do it, and the dog doesn't seek out new experiences.
There is a quote by Colonel Konrad Most, father of German Herding Dogs. This is a guy who was about 30-40 years ahead of Skinner with a purely punishment based variant of Operant Conditioning depending on Primary and Secondary Inducers (personally I think both Skinner and Watson robbed him):
“Dogs need only know agreeable and disagreeable, and it is not desirable that they know anything more.”
Trump as Nurturant Parent
Donald Trump getting his nurturant parent on, I think, is like asking Colonel Most to allow his dog to choose. I don’t think it’s in the program — It doesn’t compute with the ideology.
Those values may exist in personal life, but public life can’t go down like that. There’s no room for humanity in Government —
The American Voter need only know agreeable and disagreeable and it is not desirable that they know anything more.
Comments
"By their fruits ye shall know them."
Consider carefully the results of the "shaping" trained dog versus the "molding" trained dog.
The "shaped" dog ends up more intelligent (in practice), more versatile, and more likely to remain faithful, useful, and good to have around.
The "molded" dog will commence falling apart, with unpredictable and possibly dangerous results, the second it is confronted with any scenario not foreseen by its original training.
It really is desirable that a dog know more than simply "agreeable and disagreeable". And dogs are quite capable of processing more than that, too!
I know which dog I would rather have!
Likewise, the American voter. There is indeed room for humanity in public life and in Government.
There's only one Presidential candidate in 2016 who reflects that fact, however. And it's not Trump, Clinton, Cruz, or Rubio. It's Bernie Sanders. But then, Bernie more resembles a cat than a dog anyway.......
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
I agree with everything you say here, but I have those dogs
and they are cool, but they also get into trouble.
It is an interesting sentence, that quote by Colonel Most. I find a bunch of truth in it. If the dog knows a bunch more than agreeable or disagreeable, things get mighty unpredictable and it requires a handler that is either OK with crazy shit going down, or a handler that is super skilled.
The Big Corporate & the Oligarchs are not smart enough and they don't have the patience or the lifestyle to live with a smart, operant dog.
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu
One day, voters started to display “intelligent disobedience”
http://www.seeingeye.org/puppies-dogs/seeing-eye-dogs/
So here's a frame for you
"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama
That is a great 'frame'
it's not messaging it's a humanistic mini documentary. It's a powerful truth. I not big on messaging, meme's, talking points or bringing people to heel. I read that Hillary's campaign after MI is reinventing their messaging as they misread what the voters we're saying. Ask me the last thing people want at this point is to be messaged with more manipulative bs framed, tailored and adapted to bamboozle people into thinking what comes out of a lying bent pols like the Clinton's (both of them) mouth is not what they thought they heard last week, year or for decades. I think a lot of people these days have had it with messages that do not reflect the reality ordinary people live in. Big Dog is a bad dog but most people are not dogs and don't want to live in a dog eat dog world.
Messaging
Trump is the anti-Kennedy. Trump approves and reinforces the sense of "being owed" implied in "what your country can do for you." As this country's leader, Trump promises HE will "make America great again," and what this (re)new(ed) country can do for his supporters is raise their self-esteem...at the cost of minimal effort, just voting, of their own. President Kennedy rejected this false patriotism by reminding voters of our citizenship responsibilities: "what you can do for your country" implies service, even to the point of sacrifice.
To reframe this comment in terms of dog training, technically, any dog learns what his human teaches. Some pampered pets learn to demand treats by performing tricks: Trump holds a rally (rattles the treat container), supporters show up to wave banners and cheer and chase off interlopers and make pledges of obedience (do tricks), and Trump dispenses his rhetorical red meat (and free samples of Trump steaks). Domestication has worked for millenia because it makes both parties to the relationship feel good about themselves.
Of course, it's possible that I don't really know what I'm talking about. I've always been a cat person.
Square peg + round hole = strong union