Reality is not absolute. All input received through our senses is filtered through an extensive series of interpretation. We could not function otherwise. The amount of information coming through even our painfully limited senses is so overwhelming that it must be put through some refining process before the mind can even begin to make sense out of it. One level of this filtering process is the reality set or a set of instructions for interpreting the world and experiences of the world. For instance, the reality set governs what details one will notice about a situation or object, and what sort of interpretation one will put on that event or object. An extreme example of this is the appearance of a supernova in the sky. Scientists will interpret the light as the dying gasps of a star too overburdened with its own mass, children will remark on the bright new evening star, and some religion will invariably call it a sign of apocalypse or rebirth. Which of them are right? What is the truth? There is no such thing as truth. Humans cannot help but interpret things through their reality sets. The reality set is the only thing coming between the human mind and utter chaos, but it also works to invalidate all arguments that there is such a thing as objective truth.
Part of this reality set is a device called a metaphor. Most students encounter metaphor in conjunction with the formal study of literature. A metaphor, as I will be using the term, is a statement that compares an experience, sensation, or object to another, more familiar experience. For instance, in a relatively unsophisticated science text, the atom will often be shown as a lumpy conglomeration of protons and neutrons. It bears a striking resemblance to a raspberry, which is also a spherical, lumpy figure. The child encountering this for the first time will probably notice this resemblance to fruit, and because raspberries are familiar and the concept of the atom is not, will create an unconscious statement, "Atoms are like tiny raspberries." The logical extension, therefore, is that molecular structure is like a raspberry bush, with the berries held relatively still by a network of vines. Later studies may invalidate this metaphor, but for the moment, it has allowed the child to be a bit more comfortable with a new concept.
A metaphor can also have unintended ill effects. There are people in any society who are not going to be totally familiar with the metaphors of society and the ways that the society uses the metaphor, such as small children, foreigners, and the like. This is a problem with parents who use sleep as a metaphor for death, as in, "The vet had to put Rover to sleep." As Suzette Haden Elgin says in More on the Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense, "You can't count on the child to match up the metaphor, sleep=death, at those points you were thinking of--the ones about rest and freedom from pain and the happy end to a long hard day. The child is likely to go straight to the part of the metaphor that matters most to children--the waking up from it so you can do things--and is going to be immediately aware that this is a place where the two halves of the metaphor donÕt match. So far as the child can determine, Rover is not going to wake up from this new kind of "sleep" you are suggesting." (182). This gives the parent who uses this metaphor "an excellent chance of finding that the child is now afraid to go to sleep." (182). This illustrates the care we should take in choosing metaphors when dealing with people who are unfamiliar with the metaphors you are suggesting.
A society, in the barest definition of the term, is a group of people who have common metaphors and reality sytatements (Elgin, 173). Out of a multitude of choices, there is one that is picked to stand as the standard. The process of choosing a metaphor is not totally understood, but it is somehow accomplished, and a majority of the people in a society will hold similar metaphors. These common metaphors can be seen most clearly in a peer-group situation, where a consensus must be reached to keep peace in the group, but also takes place in the larger context of a nation. The metaphor consensus is easily seen in national perceptions of conflict with other nations. Because the average person is not able to check into every dealing that the society has with other societies, and because the government has a large amount of control over the information the average citizen receives, international relations become a prime spot for metaphor to take over. For instance, in the gulf war, the war was justified by several metaphors. George Lakoff, in "Metaphor and War", examined many of these metaphors. Kuwait was seen as the damsel in distress, which the United States, as the "white knight" had to ride off and free. There is the metaphor of the state as a person, with wealth equaling health, and seen as having friends, enemies, dispositions, and personalities. Therefore, the United States did not march off to war to protect its own interests abroad, but went to rescue the pretty, rich damsel, and punished the evildoer that held Kuwait captive. The war was fought because it would do the country more good than harm to defeat the villain (the cost-benefit metaphor), and because our enemy had hurt one of our friends (the state as person metaphor). Iraq was seen as immoral, rapacious, and lazy, and this attitude was unfortunately directed at those in this country who have ancestors from that part of the world. Those who ordered the troops into the Persian Gulf operated under two potentially conflicting metaphors: the damsel in distress metaphor and the cost-benefit metaphor. The conflict arises not in the ultimate outcome of following the metaphors to their conclusion, but in the depiction of the enemy. In the damsel in distress metaphor, the enemy (or captor) is of necessity irrational. The enemy can be sly or cunning, but one does not attempt to reason with a madman or enter into negotiations with him. In the cost-benefit metaphor, the goal is to "increase the cost" of occupying Kuwait to those who rule Iraq. This assumes that Saddam Hussein is rational, and that he can realize when the cost is too great to keep on fighting. If Saddam is truly irrational, then this metaphor breaks down, because madmen do not act predictably. He might order the troops to keep fighting even when the cost has become overwhelming. (1-10)
There is always a choice made of the metaphors in any conflict. There was at least one metaphor that was not chosen because it would not serve the purpose of a government that wants to create positive feelings about American roles in conflict. This metaphor is the metaphor of war as violent crime; war as "murder, assault, kidnapping, arson, rape, and theft." (Lakoff 8) It is not that this metaphor is not used to describe war at all; rather, it is used to describe war as waged by the Iraqis, not war as waged by Americans.
One of the limitations to a reality consensus is that because it controls how people see the world, it can limit the amount of scientific and philosophical advancement that a society can make. When Galileo came up with his revolutionary argument for todayÕs conception of the solar system, he was punished, not for any actual wrongdoing, but because he threatened societyÕs reality consensus, which included, "The earth is at the center of the universe." Defending the reality consensus is a reflexive action on most peoplesÕ part, knowing instinctively that a severe shift in the status quo can spell death for society.
Science and scientific research has a reality consensus all its own. Every so often, a discovery is made that sets all former observation on their ears, and a mad scramble is made to fit the new observations with the known theories. Sometimes, that scramble results in the creation of a new branch of science. Quantum physics was one of those observations that set science to dashing around. Finally, they decided that on a subatomic level, NewtonÕs laws hold no meaning.
Some are disturbed by this conclusion. It is a matter of semantics. The layperson thinks of laws as rules that govern behavior. There should be no exceptions to the rules, because then the entire set of rules is invalid. In science, behavior determines rules. They describe a "this is true in most circumstances" approach to observations. Science is not math, with neat little rows and satisfying equations. The world that science describes is messier than math.
Quantum physics is a strange, relatively new branch of science. One of the things that was found by scientists is that electrons act both as particles (or matter) and as energy. It is only the way that the observer looks at the electron that determines whether or not the electron is a particle or a wave form.
This is known as the "observerÕs paradox". The electron is both a wave form and matter, and neither, until the observer determines which it is. The observer imposes her reality frame on the electron.
This concept is illustrated in the metaphor called SchrdingerÕs cat . Suppose a person has a specially designed box. Inside this box, there is a vial of poison gas, and a sample of a radioactive substance that in a given time period has a 50% chance of emitting a particle that will hit a trigger on the vial of gas and loose the contents. Now this hypothetical person put an equally hypothetical cat inside the box, securely closes the lid, and leaves the room. At the end of the time period, there is a 50% chance that the gas has been loosed. There is no way to tell whether the cat is alive or dead. The cat is in the same state as the electron. It is neither alive nor dead, and both alive and dead. The only way to tell is by observation, and observation imposes the reality frame of the observer on the cat, effectively forcing it to be either alive or dead.
Take the experiment one step further. Suppose the observer goes in and opens the box, ready to force the two equally possible states of the cat to resolve themselves into one. There is a surprise when the person opens the box. The cat is gone! (Adams 152-5)
There are many explanations for the cat going missing, some dealing with a dead cat, some with a live cat, and some require the cat to be neither alive nor dead. So the observer has no way to tell if there is a live cat somewhere, or a dead cat somewhere else. The observer now has a logical dilemma. There has been a yes-no question asked, and both answers are irrelevant.
In Zen Buddhism, there is an answer to this question. The word for this answer is mu (pronounced muh). It means not-yes, not-no, "that a yes or no answer is in error and should not be given. ŌUnask the questionÕ is what it says" (Pirsig 288) . This answer says that the question is too small for any answer, and the question should be enlarged appropriately.
Mu is something that does not appear in Western reality consensus. The question "Alive or dead?" has two answers, because there are two possibilities for this particular. English has a few answers that might be ventured for the mu answer, "maybe", "sort of", and "I donÕt know." Yet all of them hint at the possibility of a spectrum between the extremes, and say that the answer is in the context of the question, but that it just escapes the knowledge of the answerer. What mu does is point outside of the question. There is a larger question that should be asked instead.
There is no doubt that metaphor is a powerful tool. Yet it can be used to manipulate perceptions of situations, as demonstrated above in the metaphors of war. Ad designers manipulate in part by playing on the metaphors that many people hold. For instance, in a magazine targeted at a female, teenage audience, there appears an advertisement for hair spray that shows an attractive couple embracing. The ad doesnÕt call attention to the hairstyles of the couple (presumably held in place by the advertised hair spray) as much as the appearance that they are romantically involved. One of the metaphors that young girls grow up with is that of Prince Charming; one day a man will appear and make everything all right. The ad plays on this metaphor for love relationships. The ad implies, without a word, that if a girl uses the advertised hair spray, her Significant Other will materialize out of thin air. While this is nonsensical on the surface, the ad is a serious attempt to link the product to the metaphors of its target audience. The human mind is not logical, and the booming ad industry is proof of this.
The only weapon against manipulation is understanding. If one understands what techniques for manipulation are being used, then one can often avoid making the leap of logic (or illogic, as the case may be) that the manipulators wish one to make. As Deborah Tannen says, "The observer stance is particularly useful if you find yourself in a situation you donÕt like . . . A motto might be: If you canÕt fight it, study it."(191) As one can hardly fight the use of metaphor, useful as it is, one must study it to avoid being taken in by those who wish to influence our perceptions to their ends. Metaphors are not bad, but it must be kept in mind that they are not reality. Kuwait is not a damsel, the United States is not a knight riding an white F-16 rather than a horse, and the government is not a person and capable of independent thought or morality. If the metaphors are hiding important facts rather than simplifying complex truths, then the metaphor should be discarded and the facts allowed to take precedence in the mind of the culture.