Thursday, March 23, 2006

More on the Family Metaphor Regarding Politics and Society

Props to my buddy Jay for pointing this article out to me. The writer goes on to make the point that we understand complex systems (like say politics and society) via metaphor. And the metaphor given to politics and society is a familial one...

From the Rockridge Institute website... In American culture there are two opposed and idealized models of the family, the Nurturant Parent model and the Strict Father model. The metaphor of the Nation as a Family maps the values and relationships from those family models onto our politics, creating 'liberal' and 'conservative' political positions that we understand through our models of family structure.

It's a fascinating short read.

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