Quality of life, a frame that works for me

I like "quality of life" as a frame for progressive action. Especially if our "quality of life" values apply to all people, with a goal of producing good quality of life in all communities and in all levels of society.

While I like the idea of using "quality of life" to express values, for me it isn't quite as clear as I would like for it to be. If someone said that to me without really going into any detail, such as you have here, I really wouldn't know what type of values they were referring to.

My concern is that I can easily see it being used by conservatives, and construed in such a way that would conflict with what you have in mind here. For example, a conservative could (and undoubtedly would) argue that the war is an effort to sustain a certain "quality of life" from an economic standpoint by trying to keep oil prices down. Along the same lines, they could argue that by keeping minimum wage low, they are ensuring cheaper production costs, and thus the average American would be able to afford a consistent "quality of life."

Perhaps we should look into finding a modifier for "quality of life" that would immediately let the listener or reader know exactly what values the speaker or author possesses. I don't think simply changing the word quality would work, even if we said "standard of living," we'd run into the same issues. Without putting too much thought into it, I would be more inclined to say something "advancing the quality of life," though even that would require at least some level of further explanation being that we're interested in steadily progressing the quality of life in this country. This would also work in comparison with the two conservative examples I have given above. Whereas each of these uses of "quality of life" would be an effort to maintain the status quo, "advancing the quality of life" would be just that, an attempt to move the country's values forward.

Ideally, we would want something that would immediately explain itself such as "pro-choice" without any explanation at all, but I definitely see "quality of life" as a step in the right direction with the proper qualifier.

Well, I'm pleased that y'all see value in the concept.

So far I've used "quality of life" mostly as a way to organize my own thoughts, and then as a way to establish a shared frame of reference in conversation with others. I hope it's versatile enough to be extended or modified for a particular dialog, audience, and situation.

As Steven noted, I've certainly encountered self-described conservatives who say their ways improve quality of life. It seems to me, however, that many of those ways seem to improve one person's quality of life by sacrificing another's. (Often, many others, actually.)

Hardcore neo-cons have been known to acknowledge that explicitly, as in, "Yeah, so what?!" Casual conservatives, however, seem to prefer to maintain their strategic ignorance* about such disparity. Exposing that and making it an explicit topic of conversation can be useful, I think.

That can lead to, "Remind me again how conservatism is compassionate? Because I'm having trouble seeing it."

It can also lead eventually to a reminder that "what goes around, comes around". And that gets to Naturegal's observation that it has to work for everybody. Ideally that would be a fundamental principle, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Finding an example of a way that a conservative policy hurts even some conservatives can be a way to personalize the experience and make it uncomfortable.

That's how I might use "quality of life" to frame an open-ended conversation. If I were a candidate I would certainly consider "advancing the quality of life" as a slogan. "Advancing" seems like a word that invokes American self-image. In conversation I like "improving", but as a self-contained unit I can see value in "advancing quality of life".

Cheers

I saw the phrase, "strategic ignorance", in a recent Washington Post article by Joel Achenbach. Perhaps a hat tip is in order?

I would consider "advancing quality of life" as a frame. (No need to limit it to a slogan.)

We might also want to make it "our" quality of life, as in "advancing our quality of life".

Yes, this board could use a comment preview feature and a comment editing feature.