Jay Doubleyou: story telling: creating narratives around climate change
Let's look in more detail at one of the pieces:
By Charles Q. ChoiSpecial to LiveScience
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Is a pound of stones heavier than a pound of feathers? Of course they both weigh the same, but the decisions people make are remarkably susceptible to how choices are presented or framed.
Now scientists are pinning down the centers in the brain related to how this "framing effect" can influence decision-making. The findings could have a big impact on economics, among other things.
"Classical economics assumed humans are fundamentally rational and never really considered emotions quite important, but this shows emotions are embedded in our brain when it comes to making decisions," said Benedetto De Martino, a cognitive neuroscientist at University College London.
How you frame it De Martino and his colleagues scanned the brains of 20 volunteers. At the same time, the researchers told the participants they received a sum of money and then repeatedly posed them one of two choices: Keep a chunk of money or gamble, or lose a chunk of money or gamble.
As expected, those told they could keep money or gamble were generally leerier of risk. On the other hand, volunteers informed they could lose money or gamble often were more risk-seeking.
The volunteers who were more susceptible to the framing effect showed greater activity in an emotion- and learning-related brain region called the amygdala.
People most immune to this framing effect had increased activity in other brain regions, the orbital and medial prefrontal cortex, "some of the most modern areas of the brain, the most different between us and the other primates," De Martino told LiveScience. When these are damaged, the resulting behavior can be driven completely by emotion and impulse.
Coping with emotions Emotions can help play a role in decision-making when information is incomplete or too complex, to serve as at times critical rules of thumb, the researchers said in their report in the Aug. 4 issue of the journal Science. However, in modern society, where making the best decision can often require skills of abstraction and examining problems outside their context, emotions can render decisions irrational.
De Martino stressed that people who could overcome the framing effect did not lack emotions.
"Some people think rationality is the opposite of emotion, but from our results, everyone had emotion, but some people were better at coping with their emotions," he explained.
© 2012 LiveScience.com. All rights reserved.
'Framing effect' influences decisions - Technology & science - Science - LiveScience | NBC News
The Framing Wars - New York Times
Let's look at money in a little more detail:
Framing the economy: the austerity story
SEPTEMBER 11, 2013 // WRITTEN BY:
Well-framed, well-crafted and often repeated, the austerity story is the dominant political narrative in Britain today. It shapes how most of us think and talk about the economy. It has convinced most of the country of the need for huge public spending cuts and presents a coherent vision for the kind of society we should live in.
The austerity story
The Coalition tells a powerful story about the economy to make the case for austerity in the media and public communications. It is consistent, memorable, uses vivid images and emotional metaphors, and is simple enough to be understood and retold.
There are several frames that underpin it:
Dangerous debt – the most important economic issue the UK faces is the size of public sector debt, caused by excessive public spending.
- Britain is broke – the UK’s public finances are like an individual household, which has spent all its money.
- Austerity is a necessary evil – there is no economic alternative to spending cuts.
- Big bad government – the bloated, inefficient and controlling government is getting in the way of progress, interfering in people’s lives and rewarding the undeserving.
- Welfare is a drug – like drug addiction, state support is tempting, but ultimately dangerous; benefit claimants are weak, reckless, undeserving and addicted to hand-outs.
Strivers and skivers – there are two kinds of people in Britain: hardworking strivers and lazy skivers, we each choose which to be.
- Labour’s mess – all the faults of our economy can be pinned on the previous (Labour) Government and their out of control spending.
Most of the frames in the austerity story resonate with millions of people in the UK:
- Polling data shows that month on month, no matter what people think about the Coalition, they continue to believe their spending cuts are necessary for the economy.
- Attitudes to welfare have hardened over time so that half the country believe the unemployed choose to stay out of work.
- Evidence indicates that more people may blame Labour for the economic situation we are in now than did three years ago.
This has tough implications for austerity’s opponents: when a frame is strongly held we tend to ignore facts that do not fit with it. The austerity story is a powerful narrative that is embedded in public consciousness. It cannot be challenged with facts. Only with new frames and a different story about the economy can it be dislodged.
Challengers to the austerity story
A number of organisations and individuals communicate alternative narratives to the austerity story. None have the coherence or appeal of the Coalition’s account of the economy, although each offers insights into how we might tell a different story. The challengers’ weaknesses tend to fall into similar traps:
- Framing – opponents tend to accept Coalition frames or rely on negative and reactive frames that put forward no new vision for the economy. Where they do create new frames they often do not start where people are or resonate with what they believe about the economy.
- Storytelling – none of the challengers tell good stories with simple ideas and powerful images, they are more likely to rely on academic language. There is little unity in the stories that oppose austerity, and few common threads.
- Messengers – There are more people vocally supporting austerity in the media than opposing it, and those who do oppose the dominant story tend to be less confident or credible. The messengers for austerity seem more coordinated than those against it.
Towards a new story
The austerity story can be defeated, if its opponents identify and activate their own powerful frames. The frames must be developed from values and resonate with public opinion. They must be tested and refined based on what works. We outline some frames we believe could be used to build a new narrative, and a story that brings them together.
- Casino economy – our economy is like a casino, it is in need of reform so that it can be stable and useful.
- Treading water – we are not making any progress as a nation; we are running to stand still, struggling but not moving forward.
- Big bad banks – our current problems are the result of a financial crisis that we, and not the banks that caused it, paid for.
- Big guys and little guys – there are two types of people in Britain, the little guys who work hard and don’t get a fair deal, and the big guys who have money and power and play by their own set of rules.
- Jobs Gap – the biggest issue facing our country is the jobs gap: people who want to work but can’t, people who work hard but don’t take home a decent wage and young people who cannot be sure of a good job.
Time for renewal – we need to rebuild and renew what made Britain great – from the railways to our education system. We need to invest.
- Austerity is a smokescreen – The Coalition uses the deficit as an excuse to do what they have always wanted to do like shrink the state and privatise the NHS.We cannot trust them; they aren’t out to help ordinary people.
The battle for the economic narrative will be won with stories, not statistics. It is time the opponents of austerity tell a story of their own. To win, they will need to do more than find their frames, they will need to be more coordinated, responsive to public opinion and find more credible messengers.
the economy: the austerity story | New Economics Foundation
Perhaps we could consider a fundamental question:
What is money?
Here is the classic explanation:
What Is Money?
Here's what Wikipedia has to say:
Money is any item or verifiable record that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts in a particular country or socio-economic context.[1][2][3] The main functions of money are distinguished as: amedium of exchange; a unit of account; a store of value; and, occasionally in the past, a standard of deferred payment.[4][5]
Money - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A very provocative book came out a couple of years ago challenging the ideas around money and debt:
Debt: The First 5000 Years is a book by anthropologist David Graeber published in 2011. It is a wide-ranging book, exploring debt's relationship with money, cash, barter,community, marriage, friendship, vassalage, slavery, morality, honor, law, philosophy,commerce, religion, greed, charity, violence, war and government; in short, much of the fabric of human life in society. It draws on the history and anthropology of a number of civilizations, large and small, from the first known records of debt from Sumer in 3000 BC until the present. It explores how debt has changed and been changed by the people and societies which have used it.
A major argument of the book is that when the imprecise, informal, community-building indebtedness of "human economies" is replaced by mathematically precise, firmly enforced debts, widespread impoverishment and violence are common results which only a few societies have managed to escape.
A second major argument of the book is that, contrary to standard accounts of the history of money, debt is likely the oldest means of trade, with cash and barter transactions being later developments. Debt, the book argues, has typically retained its primacy, with cash and barter usually limited to situations of low trust involving strangers or those not considered credit-worthy.
This book documents Graeber's argument that as far back as we can see in the historical and archeological record, people with power have often established rules to benefit them and impoverish and enslave everyone else. This trend has been occasionally interrupted when slaves or peons rebelled, often killing the existing elites.
To reduce the risks of rebellion, a Jubilee would be declared. This would cancel all debts but maintain most of the power and social status of existing elites.
Graeber insists that gift economies preceded barter and money, contrary to the popular claims of economists. Gifts incur debts, whose enforcement sometimes led to slavery, which occasionally led to rebellions.
He concludes that, "since Hammurabi, great imperial states have invariably resisted [Jubilees]. Athens and Rome established the paradigm: even when confronted with continual debt crises, they insisted on legislating around the edges, softening the impact, eliminating obvious abuses like debt slavery ... but [never] allow a challenge to the principle of debt itself. The governing classes of the United States seem to have taken a remarkably similar approach: eliminating the worst abuses (e.g., debtors' prison), ... but never allowing anyone to question the sacred principle that we must all pay our debts. [But] the principle has been exposed as a flagrant lie. ... [W]e don't "all" have to pay our debts. ... A debt is just the perversion of a promise ... corrupted by both math and violence. ... [N]o one has the right to tell us our true value, no one has the right to tell us what we truly owe."[1]
Debt: The First 5000 Years - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Are we slaves to debt? David Graeber on the history of spending more than we have
Almost forty years ago, on August 15, 1971 President Nixon took America off the gold standard, declaring, “We must protect the position of the American dollar as a pillar of monetary stability around the world” — which meant, among other things, that there were really no longer boundaries on the amount of money that could be printed.This began what anthropologist and author David Graeber says is the latest pendulum swing away from an economy based on hard currency to one based on virtual money, or credit, which can lead to debt spinning out of control —everyone’s favorite topic this summer.
Graeber’s new book, “Debt: The First 5,000 years,” traces the origins of owing all the way back to Mesopotamia, and explores how debt and morality became intertwined, among other intriguing details. Need to Know’s Alison Stewart spoke with Graeber to help explain why being consumed by debt is nothing new.
Video: Are we slaves to debt? David Graeber on the history of spending more than we have | Need to Know | PBS
Here's another video to follow up:
Conversations w/ Great Minds - Dr. David Graeber Debt: The 1st 5000 years P2 - YouTube
And an hour-long video:
Authors@Google: David Graeber, DEBT: The First 5,000 Years - YouTube
To finish: in the West, the idea of 'the free market' has been framed in a very clear way, but Graeber points several things out, including:
Graeber also makes what I imagine will be a controversial argument about Medieval Islam and free markets. Throughout the book, Graeber points out that the common sense view of 'market' and 'state' as diametrically opposing forces is false, and that "historical reality reveals (...) they were born together and have always been intertwined." Consequently, he is dismissive of the economists' idea of the free market, since markets are underpinned by state force, and historically were created by state action (typically taxation to raise armies to wage war). However, in Medieval Islam, Graeber does identify something like a true free market, that is, a market without any state involvement. But here, without the force of the state, the only guarantee for commercial activity is honour and trust. In the absence of coercion, market relations tend to be reabsorbed in the web of social relations, a 'moral economy', regulated by custom and reputation, and thus based more on co-operation than competition. Thus, paraphrasing the work of the Islamic scholar Tusi (1201-1274 AD), he writes that...
Thoughts on David Graeber’s ‘Debt: the first 5,000 years’
Debt: The First 5,000 Years is a fascinating chronicle of this little known history— in which we learn so many surprising facts, such as the information that Adam Smith had Latin translations of Al-Ghazali and Al-Tusi's works in his library, suggesting that the writings of the two Islamic thinkers may have been among his sources, for instance in his theory of the division of labour.
Book Review: “Debt - The First 5,000 Years” by David Graeber | Muslim Heritage
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