Alex Nichols
September 30, 2014
English 102 (4)
Prof. Gani
Essay No. 2
For two hundred year, political parties have been an integral part of America’s democracy. Donkeys and elephants, liberals and conservatives, democrats and republicans just to name a few of the political party names and nick names. Politics have and will continue to play a huge role in American society for years to come, what makes up your view of how you chose your political standing is completely up to you. Unless you were to ask George Lakoff that is. George Orwell, was no doubt an amazing literature writer, way ahead of his time for his writing skills. George Lakoff, seems to take for granted that Orwell lived in a time period long before we knew anything apprehensive about the brain. How it works, thinks, reacts, is the mind different from the brain? These are all things that are still under study today even with the most extensive equipment we cannot figure out everything in the human brain. So who is Lakoff to say Orwell was wrong in his ideas, unfortunately Lakoff is biased in his own opinions but is never frank and direct about them, leaving the reader to only imply what he is saying. According to lakoff, everyone starts out as a liberal or democrat and then is converted into a conservative or republican by the things that influence one’s mind. National news, social media, advertising, just to name a few are things that Lakoff points out that all have a tremendous effect on the human mind or brain. In this regard, lakoff is absolutely correct, all of them have significant influence on the entire world but to say that it causes mental change to your brain in the way that you view your political beliefs may be a stretch. Although it may not be that far of a stretch. When a person sits down in front of a television and actually watches the news usually it can be agreed upon that the news anchor is someone mostly attractive looking. Why is this? It is directly correlated to the brain, what your eyes see as attractive is directly processed into the brain to remember it more than if someone with less provocative traits was speaking to you. A person associates the good looks with good news, or things of importance, to remember therefore drawing you into the television and always bringing a person back to pack the brain full of more useless information. Not only does a person see these things in the news, they are everywhere, newspapers, billboards, stickers, everywhere in the surrounding word. Therefore always keeping your mind attracted to it and keeping it leaning one way or another, whether it be for or against the subject matter. In What Orwell didn’t know, George Lakoff makes it seem as if Orwell is the root of most of our political problems and the way that we view things today by stating “It is time to exorcise Orwell’s ghost. We all need to understand how the brain, mind, and language really work (Lakoff 250)”. This statement is somewhat nonsense in the fact that you are referring to an author from the nineteen forties that his theories are all wrong and making it seem as if they still have an influence today. On top of it Lakoff is saying that everyone needs to understand the human brain, mind, and language. Still to this day that is still impossible for a person to completely understand how the human brain and mind work because even the most advanced technologies haven’t understood it yet! He furthermore, goes on in the paper talking about how “Orwell’s old-fashioned views about reason and language also haunt the democratic party. Really!? So lakoff is saying that today, the twenty first century, democrats in the democratic system and those that are just supporters of the democrats are still being haunted by views and words that were prescribed almost one century ago? Maybe that is what wrong with today government, they are s stuck in the old way that they cannot even possibly move on in
