Find the perfect modern metaphor for Life, The Universe and Everything

It was a perfect day for kite flying today so I went to the park. As I was sitting on my blanket feeling the light tug of the kite in the sky, I fell to thinking how it so perfectly resembles the balance of life. If there is no wind, the kite just sits on the ground, lifeless. When the wind is perfect, it hits the kite and creates just enough stress on the kite and string to make the kite dance in the sky. If there is suddenly too much wind buffeting the kite and too much stress on the string, the kite dives straight for the ground. The only thing that can keep it from crashing at that point is to totally release all the stress on the kite, let out all string. Let everything go and the kite will naturally right itself.

As I was pondering this, I was visited by the Three Graces as if to confirm my wisdom. They appeared in the guise of three little girls ages 4 to 7. They liked my kites and thought they were “pretty.” I asked them if they had ever flown a kite, and they said “no.” So I showed them some basics and let them at it. The oldest picked up on my technique of letting the spool fall to the ground and just holding the string. She then discovered on her own that if she ran, the kite would fly sans wind. As I was helping the two younger ones fly the diamond kite, she ran around us with the box kite screaming with wild abandon. The only thing is she left the spool on the ground and was thus unknowingly wrapping us all in string. I discovered this about the time the two four year olds got their sandals caught in the tail of the first kite. The wind picked up, the kites tried to fly and the string and tails tightened around us. Everything came to a tangled halt. We were all one big ball of string, kite, and kids. It took a while to extricate them and myself and they scampered off looking for other adventure.

As I spent the next 20 minutes untangling string and repairing the kites, I had the distinct feeling I had just been given another clue to the kite metaphor but for the life of me, I couldn’t figure it out.

ww

Ok, I should really be working now but my mind is wandering while I wait on the computers to do their thing.

No matter which intellectual sandbox I seem to find myself in these days, the talk seems to circle around to how everything is symbolic. Unlike the past where things were considered to be fixed and certain, now everything we observe is an interpretation of the patterns we’re perceiving which can shift with a different vantage point and/or context. George Lakeoff has written a whole book on how language is metaphorical at its psycholinguistic roots. Physicists can only use metaphor to create an approximate mental image of the mathematical patterns that make up us and our universe. Mystics have always known the ineffable nature of reality and consider the only way to talk about it is in metaphors.

Are we barking up the wrong tree in trying to find the perfect modern metaphor when modern knowledge is telling us that everything is metaphorical in nature?

If you study the way the brain perceives things around it, you learn that we mostly live within our “structure of knowledge” or our metaphorical construct of the world around us, meaning that when you get up in the morning, you don’t have to think about turning the shower on, getting the water just right, soaping yourself. You do it all unconsciously because it is ingrained. You’ve done it so many times that you are not really doing it anymore and do it while almost asleep. You’re thinking about the nice cup of tea that’s waiting or the adventures of the coming day and all the while your body soaps itself, rinses, dries itself, etc. It is all internalized and you aren’t truly aware of the outside conditions except as a feedback mechanism. This is true of about 99% of the things that go on in our world. They are all automatic because we’ve internalized the reality. In essence we repsond to and live within known patterns, not the outside world. Again, if you study the brain, you come to realize that these common place patterns are in the same abstract family as high-brow physics descriptions and grand philosophical theories. They’re all essentially the same: internal patterns of perception, metaphors of physical reality. They’re just more practical and line up with physical conditions more obviously than the others and so we mistake them for reality. We truly do tend to live within a non-material (dream) world and are not really aware of it because it’s designed to mimic the physical world closely enough so that the “real” and “unreal” can exist seamlessly side by side as the continuum that they actually are.

So what is the perfect moder metaphor when everything is metaphor?

By the way, I find this of enormous practical value in dealing with life. So many times we look at a situation and feel one way or another about it because we perceive it as fixed and unchangeable. So many times, our problems just require us to pan back, step away, look at it from another perspective. When you realize that nothing is immutable, the world explodes into infinite possibilities. And, that is often what you need to change your life; to know that the situation can change and it can change in ways that you haven’t imagined yet. It helps knowing that this is a fact of reality and not just some airy-fairy, New Age affirmation. The universe (and your life) only seems fixed because that is the limitation you’ve been hypnotized to believe. Change your vantage point and your life will change in ways you never imagined.

This is actually one explanation as to why children play so much as kids. Playing is integral to human development because it teaches us to take the “reality” before us and say “What if” and more than that to say “What if” in outrageous ways. It gives us the freedom to let our minds run wild. This is the wisdom of “become as little children.”

Only by coming up with radical, crazy, ideas will one stumble upon that novel solution that has not been thought of yet. This is why a main rule of brainstorming meetings is to never criticize any idea as being ridiculous. Only by letting ALL ideas flow, will you hit on that one practical, out-of-the-box one you didn’t think of before.

So dream. Dream big. Dream crazy. Dream all the time. Imagine wildly. Imagine outrageously. Turn the valve of your imagination to the full open position and let all possibilites flood through you with the force of Niagara. Jump into it with wild abandon, be awash in and appreciate the torrent of ideas. Drink them in. Splash in them. Let them dissolve any crusty limitations you feel. The more ideas the better; the bigger the flood of wild dreams, the better. Eventually one is going to flow along side of you that changes everything. Snatch it up, merge with it and continue to be washed away by realities you’ve never dreamed of. Any time you perceive a problem, open that valve up again and let the ocean pour through.

ww

This is a response to a skeptic which I composed on another site. I think though it gives good fodder for our little project here. Some items for our collective ruminating.

From Carl: If you want to believe that you have been contacted by a dead loved one, go ahead. But there are simpler explanations than an undetectable yet durable soul…But explanations are wasted on people that believe. Belief is not subject to proof, so there is not point in arguing about it. If you want to KNOW, then we can argue about it. If you want to believe, then we can’t.

Carl,
I hear in your post a frustration with what you perceive as a refusal of people to “face up to reality.” You lash out a bit because you feel like they are not being honest but rather choosing to live in La La Land. You are totally correct that there is a difference between belief and objective knowledge but I would suggest that instead of disdaining those who choose to believe, that you delve into the nature of that belief and what it says in the larger scope of the human experience.

I have done the intellectual work. I KNOW where the experience of “God” comes from—I can reduce it down to the pre-natal development and experiences of the early brain. So great, wonderful, I can now offer you a physical description of the origin of a phenomenon. However, that is just as inadequate as saying that these words I am typing now are REALLY nothing more than the alternating voltages on the motherboard of my computer and that I am stupid for believing in the idea of “language” and furthermore the transmission of it over vast distances.

You have been duped by a conflicted idea of objectivity, a great mistake of our time that is yet to be corrected in the common body of ideas we all inherit. Because of it, you (like I did) are missing a bigger picture which is encompassed by varying levels of abstraction. If you truly want to be reductionistic about reality, attempt to view your world as it absolutely and physically is. You will eventually find as Descartes did that you live within a non-physical “prison” of your beliefs of what reality is, not physical reality itself. “I think therefore I am” was a whimper of defeat not an exuberant affirmation.

Let’s get down to facts. The ONLY physical reality that exists is what your body is firing off as sensations RIGHT NOW. There is no past; there is no future; the only PHYSICAL time that exists is NOW. The only thing that you can honestly say ANYTHING about is what your body is experiencing NOW. EVERYTHING else that you say to describe it is a mental concatenation and interpretation of years of memories of these individual sensations and individual physical “NOW” instances. However, the perception of these is so fast that you skip over them and mistake the mental illusions for reality itself. This is the great lie/mistake of the “objective” mind of our time. It wants to knock on wood and say, “This physical world is all there is. If I can’t touch it and feel it, it doesn’t exist” all the while ignorant of the fact that this “physical” world truly and absolutely only exists as an ongoing flow of a structure of knowledge in the mind based primarily on memories of previous stimuli. It is just as completely an internal and subjective experience as those claiming to talk to the dead, only it is based on different stimuli. The best that can be said for that stimuli is that they are so unsubtle and grossly available that they are easily repeatable where others might not be.

(more boring substantiating babble omitted)

So having established that objectivity ain’t what is used to be, do you see that your frustration with “believers” is misplaced? Yes, perhaps they have not done the homework of tracing the origins of their beliefs through the epistemological rabbit warren of logic but I would argue that you haven’t either or you wouldn’t be offended at their beliefs. You would see it in a larger and more grand scope of knowledge that encompasses ideas and levels of reality that we are only beginning to scratch the surface of.

Indulge me with one last (and very simple) computer related example. In computer networking there is a model for describing it called the seven OSI layers. These “layers” create a way to describe how the words I’m typing now turn into little charges of electricity from my computer and show up on your screen miles away as the words you’re reading now. Because this process is so complex and touches so many very different scientific fields of knowledge BY DEFINITION each component of this model is required to be a separate layer of abstraction from the other levels. This means there is NO sequential connection between the layers. There is an abstract gulf between them. Each layer is a language of its own not understandable from the other layers and only connected obliquely from a larger perspective. You can’t follow it with your mind (as you currently understand it) because of the jumps in abstraction involved. And yet, you can’t have an email message without ALL of the layers working as they do in their own little worlds. This is close to the true nature of reality.

If you choose to have a rational explanation for everything, if that is important to you, you have to become accustomed with passing through the mentally disorienting barriers of abstractions like these. You must learn the language of each. You must reconcile yourself with the necessity of abandoning sequential logic which feels so very insecure to our western minds. Like Neo in The Matrix, you have to awaken from what you accepted as reality. Only you must go through this process time after time after time (which to some can be exhausting and not worth it). Only then will you come to KNOW what reality is and you will find the truth behind what these “believers” are experiencing as well as the truth behind everything else. It is part of what I call “worldwalking”. It is hard as hell and I hold that it requires the practice and dedication demanded of any ballerina or musician to maintain. For me though it has been worth it because it’s my art and my calling. Best of luck to you in whichever path you choose.


ww