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Cultures engendering metaphors of death and dying
Metaphors To Die By (Part #5)
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There is of course a vast literature from the cultures using death as a metaphor or offering understandings of the process of dying. As with the framework of Gareth Morgan and W. T. Jones, other patterns of understanding of dying could be explored (Systems of Categories Distinguishing Cultural Biases, 1993).
The euphemisms and metaphors indicated above could be fruitfully clustered by the cultures engendering them. The following image tentatively suggests one possibility.
| Indicative schematic of the "cultures" cultivating metaphors of dying (suggesting the pattern of metaphoric borrowings between them) |
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Military and security services: With its traditional mandate for killing to protect the collectivity and its members, this culture has long provided a rich source of metaphor for death or threat of death -- most evident in the Mutually Assured Destruction which framed the Cold War. Death has been intimately intertwined with honour and the sense of dying honourably.
Sport and game-playing: As a substitute for mortal combat, sport and game-playing have borrowed many metaphors from the military context. Most obviously the sense of: You win, you live; You lose you die. This may be reinforced by pre-game threats, with risk-taking enhanced by gambling on the outcome. This pattern extends into card games and online video games.
Politics of strategic management: Business and politics have borrowed many metaphors from the military and sporting environments. Business language makes frequent reference to "slaughtering the competition" and "making a killing". The language of this culture is readily understood to have dominated events leading to the financial crisis of 2008. "Losers" are readily reframed as "dead" -- only the "winners" are "alive". Moribund groups and societies may well be ignored as irrelevant or reframed for asset stripping. "Vulture" is used in describing this process. Every effort is made to "kill" any opposition, with little sense of the valuable complementarity associated with diversity. Given such language, it can be usefully asked whether other kinds of metaphors are required to ensure the sustainability of global initiatives (Enhancing Sustainable Development Strategies through Avoidance of Military Metaphors, 1998). Are the "power words" of this culture inadequate to the challenge (In Quest of Uncommon Ground: beyond impoverished metaphor and the impotence of words of power, 1997)?
Public relations, marketing and propaganda: This culture of "spin" specializes in highlighting what is valued to the exclusion of alternative perspectives -- whose validity is denied, possibly to the point of ensuring the elimination of those proposing them. Inadequacies are vigorously reframed, possibly with force (see Wikipedia Typology of cover-ups). It is this culture which engages in memetic warfare to frame the necessary death of competing groups -- ensuring legitimacy for just war, and even for various forms of genocide.
Architecture and construction: This culture is fundamental to celebrating in physical form the deaths of past exemplars and the justification for future death, notably as dubiously associated with sacrifice (whether human or otherwise). The design is typically conceived as an aid to inidividual and collective memory (Enstoning in Memorials and Monuments, 2012). Buildings and monuments are however themselves potential metaphors of death through their structural failure, deterioration and eventual dismemberment.
A striking example is provided by the architecture of Ancient Egypt, in particular that of Padiamenope -- Theban Tomb TT33, the largest non-royal site in the Valley of the Kings. Unusually, as noted by archaeologists, the inscriptions instruct those of later generations: Those who will yet be born, may they enter the tomb and see what is inside. You who enter this tomb, look and try to understand. Read and restore these inscriptions.
Agriculture: The culture of harvesting, with the death of plants that it implies, has appropriately engendered the metaphor of the Grim Reaper as the personification of death. Curiously the emergence of genetic modification of crops has given rise to genetic use restriction technology (GURT), colloquially known as "terminator technology" or "suicide seeds". This restricts use of genetically modified plants by causing second generation seeds to be sterile. Agriculture, most recently through the strategies of agribusiness, has sustained the dubious associations of "development". This has been successfully framed as life-enhancing -- despite late recognition of the loss of vital biodiversity consequent on "clearing the land" and eliminating "pests".
Animal husbandry and fishing: The early cutture of hunting and fishing has ensured a degree of dissociation from death and dying -- most evident with respect to the operations of abattoirs and slaughterhouses.
Health and safety: As noted by April D. Marshall (Metaphors We Die By, Semiotica, 161, 2006):
Medicine and language have had a tumultuous relationship at best. The two fields inform and describe each other. The methods of each have been applied to the other at various times in history. The medical symptom and the linguistic sign have much in common and yet are not the same. Nonetheless, literature offers us a perspective on our cultural perceptions of certain realities and disease is unmistakably one of the most ambiguous of those realities. The unique combination of medical thought and linguistic expression present in literary metaphors incorporating or referring to illness reveals a conceptual understanding of health that informs our interpretation of related signifiers. This study is an attempt to identify and explore some of the most prevalent metaphors and metonymies related to disease and through the process, comprehend the way in which culture thinks about the more general concept of health.
Raymond Fox (What is meta for? Clinical Social Work Journal, 17, 1989, 3, pp 233-244):
Metaphors provide bold, rich and distintive windows on the world. They offer dynamic and dramatic views beyond the surface of things into their deeper significance. This paper offers guidelines for discovering and developing metaphors in clinical practice with individuals and families. It also demonstrates how dramatization techniques are used to extend, enlarge and shape metaphors for effective diagnosis and treatment. It builds upon real case material of active metaphorical work with individuals and families for illustrative exposition.
Specific discussion with respect to "nervoso" (nervousness) is provided by Nancy Scheper-Hughes (Nervos and Fraqueza: Metaphors to Die by, In: Death Without Weeping: the violence of everyday life in Brazil, 1993).
Law and legislation: As might be expected, legality frames death in a variety of very particular ways, most evident in consideration of the controversial issues of homicide, capital punishment, abortion, and euthanasia. The issue is fruitfully explored by Steven L. Winter (Death Is the Mother of Metaphor, Harvard Law Review, 105, 1992, 3, pp. 745-772) in a review of The Wallace Stevens Case and the Practice of Poetry (1991) by Thomas C., Grey. Related insights are offered by Richard E. Vatz and Lee S. Weinberg (Metaphor and Law, Law and Society Review, 21, 1987, 5, pp. 845-847) in a review of Lying Down together: law, metaphor and theology (1985) by Milner S. Ball. Metaphors can be used as a basis for creating models in legal theory, as argued by Finn Makela (Metaphors and Models in Legal Theory, Metaphors and Models in Legal Theory, Les Cahiers de Droit, 52, 2011, 3-4).
Technology, engineering and systems sciences: "Dying" and "death" are recognized metaphorically in obsolescence of parts of and systems -- especially in the event of system failure. Notably evident in this respect is a standard Google Chrome error message in response to a dead link or faiure to load a page: He's Dead Jim. Failure is explored more systematically by John Gall (Systemantics; how systems work... and especially how they fail, 1978).
With respect to engineering, valuable commentaries on geoengineering have been is provided by Rusi Jaspala and Brigitte Nerlich in various works, whether separately or in collaboration.
Geoengineering promises to alter global climate patterns and thereby avoid the potentially catastrophic consequences of climate change... However, we should not forget that it is also a linguistic problem. As I. A. Richard said in his Philosophy of Rhetoric, a command of metaphor plays a role in the control of the world that we make for ourselves to live in (see p. 155). This means that we make the world we live in by the language we speak in it, especially through the use of metaphors. Metaphorsmake us see one thing in terms of another and then act in specific ways according to this new way of seeing. What does this mean for geoengineering? What language is emerging in the context of geoengineering? How might people respond to such language? (Geoengineering and (un)making the world we want to live in, Geolog, 31 July 2013)
Using examples recalling the approach of Gareth Morgan, the authors ask in particular:
... how this option for dealing with the problems posed by climate change were framed through the use of conceptual and discourse metaphors and whether one can argue that these are metaphors we "live by" or metaphors we might "die by". Findings show that an overarching argument from catastrophe was bolstered by three conceptual master-metaphors, namely The Planet is a Body, The Planet is a Machine, and The Planet is a Patient/Addict, linked to a variety of discourse metaphors, older conceptual metaphors, and clichés. (Metaphors We Die By? Geoengineering, Metaphors, and the Argument From Catastrophe, Metaphor and Symbol, 27, 2012, 2, pp. 131-147)
Philosophy: A collection of commentaries on the final thoughts of 200 philosophers and their understanding of death has been compiled by Martin Crowley (Dying Words: the last moments of writers and philosophers, 2000). The collection is frustrating in that the author repeats the the strong point made by Cicero that to study philosophy is nothing but to prepare one's self to die.
However the commentaries on each philosopher are not especially helpful in enabling anyone to comprehend the scope of the understanding of a given philosopher with regard to death. Typically this is reflected only in a succinct, even laconic, phrase. Given the range of philosophies represented, also missing is any typology of attitudes towards death -- understandings with their respective coherence, however much this may be questioned from another perspective.
With respect to the semantics of dying, James Sexton notes:
In suggesting the use of "given back" as a metaphor for death, Epictetus [in The Encheiridion, p. 14] brings to light several points regarding the nature of our conception of death and dying, which neither he, nor other investigators of death, seem to have taken any further: he recognizes the role of metaphor in providing a foundation for our understanding of the "unknown"; he recognizes these metaphors as culturally constructed, and culturally reinforced; finally, and perhaps most importantly, he realizes that these metaphors, since they are our own creations, may be replaced when they no longer offer us the increased understanding, or at least reduced perplexity, which they are intended to provide.
Epictetus was on to something. However, it would appear that he, as well as much of the world's thinkers on death and dying, have not pursued his discovery further. In doing so it appears that they may have abandoned a critical factor in our personal and cultural understanding of death. They confuse, as in the ancient Zen saying, "A finger pointing at the moon for the moon itself." (The Semantics of Death and Dying: metaphor and mortality, A Review of General Semantics, 54, 1997, 3, pp. 333-345).
Religion: There is obviously both a deep concern with death within most religions and a very extensive literature as a consequence. It would seem that most religions typically focus either on some understanding of the "afterlife", on appropriate advice to the dying (whether as consolation or in preparation), or on the process of grieving for them thereafter. The process may well be seen as a final opportunity to ensure conversion to the faith and/or expression of regret for inadequacies in life in order to "set the mind in order". There is seemingly relatively little concern for the experience of dying, other than might be framed as "coming to terms" with it, "putting one's affairs in order".
The literature can be clustered as follows:
- contemplation of death (as discussed below)
- the art of dying (as discussed below)
- manuals variously recognized as "books of the dead" and descriptions of the afterlife (Stanislav Grof, Books of the Dead: manuals for living and dying, 1994; James Lewis. Encyclopedia of Afterlife Beliefs and Phenomena, 1995). These appear to focus on the experience of the person immediately after death, offering advice on attitudes and decisions that may be made in response to them. These have been preceded by rites of passage, common in many ancient and modern primitive cultures, reflecting transitions during the life phases of birth, puberty, marriage and death. Of potentially greater relevance is the understanding of such commentaries in relation to the experience of life as a form of dying continually experienced. In this sense they suggest ways of thinking about the period leading up to the moment of death.
- Christian: Ars Moriendi texts of medieval Europe, emphasizing how the devil would attempt to interfere with the salvation of the dying.
- Islam: Understandings reflected in various works (Abd al-Rahim ibn Ahmad Qadi, Islamic Book of the Dead: a collection of Hadiths on the Fire and the Garden, 1977; Jane Idelman Smith and Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, The Islamic Understanding of Death and Resurrection, 2002)
- Judaism: Ma'avar YaBok (written by Rabbi Aaron Berechiah in 1626) is the classic Jewish text on death and dying (Simcha Paull Raphael. Jewish Views of the Afterlife, 1996; Rabbi Menasseh ben Israel. Nishmat Hayyim: The Soul of Life)
- Hinduism: The Sraddha: the Hindu Book of the Dead. (1995)
- Tibetan Buddhism: Bardo Thodol
- Egypt: Book of the Dead
- Mayan: Popol Vuh (Dennis Tedlock, Popol Vuh: the definitive edition of The Mayan Book of the dawn of life and the glories of gods and kings, 1996)
The focus here is on how death is framed or reframed, for the person engaged in the process, or for those observing it
Potential complementarity of perspectives of "cultures" on dying: There is a case for experimenting with configurations of "languages" through which the experience of dying is framed. The following is one such experiment, adapting "languages" of governance as previously explored (12 Complementary Languages for Sustainable Governance, 2003; (Enabling a 12-fold Pattern of Systemic Dialogue for Governance, 2011).
Example of a tentative elaboration of a 12-fold array of clusters of complementary options | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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