Metaphoric entrapment and impoverishment?

Walking Elven Pathways: enactivating the pattern that connects (Part #2)

---

[Parts: First | Prev | Next | Last | All] [Links: To-K | From-K | From-Kx | Refs ]

---

Much has been usefully made of the role of metaphor in framing understanding, relationships and policy initiatives. Suppose that many of the major challenges to the future of modern society, and to individual fulfilment, were to be seen as arising from the inadequacy of the metaphoric language through which we seek to communicate about them and effectively create new realities. There is certainly evidence for this. Political discourse seeking to reconcile opposing perspectives could benefit from richer frameworks. Inter-disciplinary discourse between academic realms is severely handicapped by the absence of any effective language. Inter-faith dialogue is in a pathetic condition at a time when conflicts based on religion are a major concern.

In that sense to what extent have we entrapped ourselves by excessive reliance on the "vision" metaphor? It is clear that we benefit and depend on other senses for effective movement around our world. To the extent that we use all the senses metaphorically to describe capacities to navigate our social, knowledge, strategic and spiritual environments, are we neglecting our capacity to "hear" the future, to "smell" it, to "feel" it, to "taste" it?

We are happy to talk about a "vision" for the future -- as framed by powerpoint and billboard visuals. But there is a quality of unreality to billboards of which we are rightly suspicious, having been exposed to the contrast between the promotional literature of urban development and the sterile emergent reality of urban sprawl. But what is the "sound" of the future -- as implied by worldwide enthusiasm for music? Or will it be a case of universal noise pollution? How will the future "smell" -- or will it "stink", as do some of the strategies "envisaged"? How to describe the "feel" of the future -- the excitement beyond any "feel good" sense? Will it "feel" like home -- or be totally alienating? And for those with educated palates, how might they want to express their sense of the "taste" of the future -- or will it echo the bland sameness of fastfood franchises? The process of tasting, through "drinking in", has been associated with the process of grokking (cf Authentic Grokking: Emergence of Homo conjugens, 2003).

What is the role of "listening to the future" in relation to envisioning it -- given the credibility attached to the predictive power of prophets, "channellers" and others capable of hearing the "timeless" voice of divinity, or listening to the "voices of the future"? In Quaker meetings importance is attached to listening to the "sense of the meeting". The process of "deep listening" is advocated for CEOs [more]. The poet David-Michael Cook asks the question: "When will we start listening to the voices of the future?" [more] How is it that so much significance is attached to the role of "keynote speakers" -- and so little to the role of "keynote listeners" in endeavouring to detect the "sense of a meeting" (as in the Quaker decision process).

Corresponding to sensing the future through "foresight", is there a neglected "forehearing", "foresmelling", "forestasting" or "foretouching" of the future -- to say nothing of any "sixth sense" capacity in this respect? Are there traps in failing to recognize the contrasting insights from different questioning modes about the future: the future as "what", the future as "where", the future as "which", the future as "when", the future as "who", the future as "how", and the future as "why"? Is the future a noun or a verb?

Such sensitivities may contrast to a high degree with the "vision" that emphasizes a form of control -- "supervision", "overview" -- perhaps to be exemplified by the military metaphor of "target acquisition". Is the future distorted by use of the sporting metaphor of a "goal" to be achieved, implying a game to be won -- in contrast with the infinite games so ably advocated by James P. Carse (Finite and Infinite Games: a vision of life as play and possibility, 1986) [more more]. Does the implication of a common "objective" inhibit the emergence of any meaningful intersubjectivity? The associated naming of the envisaged future, and the defined path to it, is to be contrasted with the much-quoted first line of the Tao Te Ching: "The way that can be named is not the way".

In favouring the vision metaphor, we readily forget the strategic deficiencies of vision in comparison with other senses, namely the challenge of sensing "around corners", "in the dark", or "over the horizon". These have their metaphoric equivalents. Why do we forget the defects to which eyesight is subject -- in addition to total blindness -- especially given that many of the "visionaries" depend on spectacles to compensate for shortsightedness, longsightedness, astigmatism, colour blindness? These also have their metaphoric equivalents in "envisaging" the future. There is no requirement that visionaries have their envisioning "eyesight" tested -- indeed there is no test analogous to that done by opticians. Nor is there any obligation for any necessary corrective spectacles to be worn when envisaging the future -- despite the dangers to which this may give rise when visionaries are at the helm. Can their 20/20 vision always be assumed?

A further irony of the vision metaphor is that it is primarily associated with the "head". This exemplifies the extraordinary extent to which collaboration between groups and sectors is inhibited by entrapment in seemingly isolated metaphors -- as illustrated by the antagonism between the academic, so-called "language of the head" and the "language of the heart" of many alternative communities. This battle between the "heartless heads" and the "headless hearts" has lost sight of the metaphoric underpinnings that establish a context in which both head and heart are vital organs -- but are themselves insufficient for system functionality.

The long-recognized role of sensing the future "in my bones" or "in my guts" is exemplified by the haiku poet Matsuo Basho who would "enter into the object, the whole of its delicate life, feeling as it feels. The poem follows of itself." (Shinkichi Takahashi, Afterimages: Zen Poems, 1972). Also relevant are the insights of David Abram (The Spell of the Sensuous: perception and language in a more-than-human world, 1997).

The argument is therefore that we need a multi-sensual approach to the future -- as increasingly echoed by enthusiasm for multi-media communication. The latter also stresses user "interactivity" based on the range of senses -- another implication for knowing the future? Also of particular relevance is the implication of the associated thinking styles (cf Fiona Beddoes-Jones, et al. Thinking Styles: relationship strategies that work, 1999) determining peoples' cognitive and linguistic preferences and levels of flexibility in terms of 26 ways of thinking or dimensions -- suggesting the variety of ways through which the future may be sensed (see also Systems of Categories Distinguishing Cultural Biases, 1993).

Vital insights into the "sensory thinking" fundamental to understanding of autism have received considerable attention as a result of the work of Temple Grandin (Unwritten Rules of Social Relationships: decoding social mysteries through the unique perspectives of autism, 2005). Given her widely publicized success in the field of animal welfare, and to use an appropriately distasteful metaphor, it is worth considering whether inappropriate human responses to the future could be better understood through the insights from her own autism that she was able to apply to the condition of animals being driven to slaughter. Another pathology that could offer insights into potentially dysfunctional relationships to the future is that of the various forms of amnesia -- understood here as the incapacity to "remember" an imminent future (cf Pointers to the Pathology of Collective Memory, 1980). Switching metaphors again, perhaps the challenge is to move beyond a collective tendency to face a vision of the future like a rabbit caught at night in the headlights of a rapidly oncoming vehicle -- on the way forward!

---

[Parts: First | Prev | Next | Last | All] [Links: To-K | From-K | From-Kx | Refs ]