How does the "strict father" model of society work when Strict Dad is, say, a Point-Haired Boss or a Donny "The Mine Unsafety King" Blankenship?

DILBERT     by Scott Adams





by Ken

This weekend I've been wandering around issues of work and the employer-employee relationship, first Friday night, "Let's celebrate that great champion of the American working man, mining mogul Donny "Safety Is for Suckers" Blankenship," about the news that four years after the Upper Branch Mine disaster Donny B has finally been indicted for allowing the mine to be so dangerously unsafe; then last night, "Work sucks (pass it on)," about how work for most of us, you know, sucks. Tonight I want to make a trilogy of it, pulling those previous posts together.

I honestly wonder what goes through the mind of someone like Donny B, known (per Rolling Stone) as the "Dark Lord" of Coal Country, a man who knows perfectly well that the mines he's sending miners into are death traps, when he thinks about the lives that are in his hands. And surely he has to think about it, at least in some fashion, doesn't he? But he can't think of them as human persons who knowingly subject themselves to life-threatening conditions in order to be able to put food on their family's tables, can he? He must have to think of them as some kind of automaton, a unit of inventory, easily replaceable with other readily available units.

I have to conclude from Donny B's history of proudly ignoring his groaning stockpile of safety violations, even under the real-world conditions of exceedingly loose mine-safety oversight, that he's either indifferent to or openly contemptuous the whole notion of mine-safety regulation. Then I wonder whether his views on the subject might change if he spent, say, a month doing regular shifts in one of his mines. Actually, I like better still the suggestion of a commenter on my Friday night post: "The sentence Blankenship SHOULD get would be to spend the rest of his life tearing coal out of the ground in the very conditions he deems suitable for employment."


REMEMBER GEORGE LAKOFF'S "STRICT FATHER MODEL"?

As I've mentioned, I've been playing with my copy of Prof. George Lakoff's All New Don't Think of an Elephant!, and as you probably recall, one of the professor's basic tenets as a cognitive scientist is that we humans don't really hear words and "facts," we take in impressions of language which our brain takes in -- or doesn't -- according to the way they fit into ideas and understandings already etched into our brains. He argues further that that the conservative mindset is attuned to what he calls the "strict father model." I just wanted to review a tiny bit of his description of the "strict father model" that dominates in the brains of conservatives.

In fact, since the original Don't Think of an Elephant! was written, conservative friends of the professor's have clued him in that yes, there is indeed such a thing as the strict-father model, but he hadn't really nailed it. Now he thinks he has, thanks to a terrific tip: Go to the preachings of right-wing psycho-pervert "Dr." James Dobson -- you remember, the founder of Focus on the Family. "Dr." Dobbsy gets the whole schmeer, starting with the strict father's need to apply discipline to wayward kiddies, and he doesn't mean just metaphorical discipline, and including the inseparable link between religion and patriarchal control. (He's not totally slap-happy, though, our "Dr." Dobbsy. He tells us in The New Dare to Discipline, Professor Lakoff tells us, on page 65, "There is no excuse for spanking babies younger than fifteen or eighteen months of age.")

We're not going to get into this tonight, but let me say that the new explanation of the strict-father model seems to me much stronger and clearer. Let me also stress that the professor isn't saying the strict father model is right. In fact, he argues that it's not only demonstrably wrong in important ways but also immoral in important ways. Still, he considers it desperately important that we have some sense of what conservatives are hearing when they hear. Because he wants us to accept that while yes, conservatives do lie, in general what they understand and say isn't a matter of lying, or stupidity, or lack of thought, but what they honestly believe. He thinks if we have any shot at making contact with the less fervently committed holders of this mental model, it is essential that we accord their beliefs this degree of respect, no matter how strongly we may disagree with those beliefs.

So let's listen to listen to just a bit of Professor Lakoff's description of the strict-father model, after he has laid out most of the particulars. Here he is talking about "the conservative view of the moral hierarchy":

As we have seen, the rich and those who can take care of themselves are considered more moral than the poor and those who need help. But moral superiority on a wider scope is central to conservative thought. The idea is that those who are more moral should rule. How do you decide who is more moral? Well, in a well-ordered world (ordered by God), the moral have come out on top. Here is the hierarchy: God above man; man above nature; adults above children; Western culture above non-Western culture; our country above other countries. These are general conservative values. But the hierarchy goes on, and it explains the oppressive views of more radical conservatives: men above women, Christians above non-Christians, whites above nonwhites, straights above gays.

HOLD THAT THOUGHT AS WE GO BACK TO WORK SUCKING

In last night's post, I quoted The Frisky's Megan Reynolds, in the first column in a weekly series devoted to work issues:

Newsflash. Work is terrible. It’s something that we all have to do, but no one particularly wants to do it. It’s a cruel trick in which you have to go to a place and do things that you would never normally do, for a nominal amount of money that is usually too little, and for a select few, just right. Sometimes, you win the life lottery and the thing that you do for 40 hours a week in a nondescript office building somewhere in the city you live in is not a soul-crushing exercise in managing disappointments. Sometimes, you’re lucky enough to really, truly, love what you do. If you are one of these people, I’m very happy for you. Please close this tab and go to that special members-only club that exists for people who have found true career satisfaction. Let me know what it’s like in there.

Which brings us back to today's Dilbert, with Dilbert's rant on the Pointy-Headed Boss, and also to that right-wing strict-father model. What happens when Strict Dad is the Pointy-Haired Boss, or a titan of capitalist morality like Donny "Safety Is for Suckers" Blankenship? Isn't their dominating financial success proof of their dominant morality?

I admit that I'm already a tad skeptical about having to take seriously anyone's beliefs just 'cause it's what the person believes. Isn't this just an expanded version of what I think of as the Costanza Exception as applied to lying -- you recall George's explanation to Jerry Seinfeld, in need of crash tips on lying: "Remember, it's not a lie if you believe it." Start applying this to mental cases through history, and it sounds as if people like, oh, Adolf Hitler and Al Capone get points for sincerely believing whatever sociopathology they had in their heads.

Or maybe I'm wrong about those sweethearts, the right-wing strict-father modelists. After all, once that 18-month moratorium on infant corporal punishment expires and sick fucks vigilant dads like Dr. James Dobson get to start beating the crap out of the kiddies, don't they learn what it means to be moral? (Oh, I think they learn something, all right, but not necessarily what it means to be moral.)

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