Metaphor Matters

Metaphor is a craft of language, but helps us organize concepts in our head. That symbiosis is ethically fraught and we're occasionally vulnerable to being tricked, so I want to explore that a little here.

Shift of metaphor can be helpful to understanding. But we conceive of understanding as involving perceived truth, and metaphors are tricky because parts of them, by design, are not literal truth. In a metaphor, you have to know which part is the intended structural truth and which other part is just along for the ride.

An impromptu metaphor

If you and I are out in a forest and have brought a picnic lunch, you might say “Where do we eat? There's no table or chairs.” To which I might respond, pointing to a fallen log with two large, well-placed stones, one on each side, “Pull up a chair.”

The stones are not chairs. They probably cannot even be pulled. To process this metaphor, you must sort out which parts I intend (that a chair can be sat upon, that the arrangement of the stones and the log is such that they might suffice to accommodate an impromptu lunch), and which parts I don't intend. Pulling up a chair is again metaphorical. I just mean “sit down” but have worked the idea into the prior metaphor. The sense of the log as a table might work for sandwiches but if we'd brought soup, which requires a more level surface, it might not have.

We use language to play these games routinely. You are not tricked by this metaphor because you see the context, what it's being used for. It will be gone soon enough. All good.

The “Facebook friend” metaphor

But there are situations that are more complicated, that persist, that have very powerful implications. Facebook offers us the ability to have “friends.” You may not see this as a metaphor. Many people enumerate their friends and assume the terminology is literal. But it is not. It's a metaphor.

A friend arrives, someone you like well enough, but they do not socialize well with your other friends. Are they not then your friend, if you do not add them at Facebook? If someone is annoying after they're added and you remove them, are they no longer your friend?

I have come to see the Facebook paradigm as a bad metaphor, even an obfuscated one. It's hard to notice that it's a metaphor at all. This leads to problems. People feel bad about “unfriending” someone because it seems like they are telling the person they are not their friend. That was avoidable, I think, by better choice of metaphor.

I think of “Facebook friends” not as the role of “friend” but “party guest.” I find this makes things easier. Facebook could have used such a metaphor. It's OK that it didn't. But it matters that you see that they could have. Because then you can think about “Facebook friends” in a way of your choosing.

Once you see it's a metaphor, you realize only parts of it apply. Not all of it. Rather than “unfriend” I think about kicking a guest out of a party. It's hard sometimes, but it's not friend-level hard. And it explains why some people that are Facebook friends are not in fact my friends. Sometimes parties have extra people along. It's not a commitment.

Metaphor is important. It helps us understand new situations. Facebook got a lot of mileage out of using the friend metaphor because people immediately understood the space of how to use the system. A lot didn't have to be explained.

The “computer desktop” metaphor

The same success happened when computers adopted the “desktop metaphor.” People knew about file folders and about organizing things in groups, so the older idea of a hierarchical file system organized in other ways, like as a book outline, was suddenly the less interesting way to think about things. The graphical view had immediate appeal.

But sometimes the desktop metaphor breaks down. I was once helping my mom understand the Apple desktop and she said “so when I open a folder, that means I have it in my hands and no one else can look at it, right?” Well, no, it doesn't mean that. But maybe that's a misdesign. The metaphor certainly suggests that's a reasonable interpretation. So there are limits to even benign metaphors in what they can do for us.

The “membership” metaphor

If you're a member of a club, you can join it online and talk to its members. But have you wondered why your gas station wants you to join? It's because in competition in marketplaces, they've figured out that people like to do things with things they feel part of. So they have a better chance of you going there because “you're a member.” Never mind that there are no meetings, and you have no interest in talking to anyone that works there. That one fact will do something in your mind that changes your perception. Metaphor at work.

It also explains why charities want you to join them. Isn't it enough that you gave them money? No, because it might have been a one-time thing. If they want more money later, it lands differently if a stranger says “hey, you gave me money, so you have to give me more” or if an organization you joined says, “hey, we haven't seen you in a long time, old friend. how about a bit of support?” And yet those are pretty much the same except the latter is through the membership metaphor. It makes you less mad at a communication being unsolicited.

So watch for metaphors. Understand their implication. They offer powerful good, and they risk tricking you. You even might find that being a member of a religious or political organization makes you feel like you need to get along with and support others in that organization, even when that organization gets captured. Membership metaphor at play again. Beware. It might still be an organization you're caring about. You might want the contact. You might want to help. But do it by thinking, not by reflex.

Final Thoughts

So I'm saying metaphor matters. Whether metaphors, or their employers, are friendly and helpful or trying to trick us is hard to cleanly define. I'm not trying to tell you how to do that. I'm saying it's worth knowing you might need to. Life is a jungle. Sometimes it helps to have a map or guidebook, sometimes a machete—metaphorically speaking, of course.

 

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Author’s Notes:

If you got value from this post, please “Share” it.

This post began as part of another post I was writing. After a while, some of these get long, so breaking them off and giving them a life of their own seems like the way to go.

The image generated with help from abacus.ai's ChatLLM (Claude Opus 4.8 as primary assistant and for vision/analysis, Nano Banana Pro for image generation), with light post-processing in Gimp to do cropping, prefer grayscale, and add back desaturated color, and finally to scale things down for reduced image size and ultimately faster web download, The image analysis was needed because there were some editing errors that Nana Banana Pro kept making, and I had to show them to Claude for it to see what instructions to give to repair them. That only sometimes worked, which is why I had to do more of the final parts by hand than I usually do.

What is Love?

It's Valentine's Day. A day full of love—whatever that is. I don't think there's any one, uniquely right definition of “Love.” People probably vary widely in how they approach the concept. Far be it from me to tell anyone they're going about it wrong. I think it's one of life's big mysteries, to figure out how we're going to confront the concept. In that regard, it's perhaps more a question than an answer. What I offer here is my own answer, not any Grand Unified Plan for Love you are obliged to subscribe to, just a written record of how I personally approach the matter.

A question that often fascinates me is “Why do you love me?” It's interesting because it seems to presuppose a certain kind of answer. “I love you because you're a good cook.” Or perhaps, “I love you because you're beautiful.” Or maybe, “I love you because you're such a good singer.” Personally, I find this a dangerous way of approaching the concept. If one defines love in terms of a service provided or a characteristic that may be transient, it might be that if circumstances change, there will be no love. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if some people do define love this way. Some might say such love is shallow—I don't know, that's perhaps a value judgment. I'd like to steer clear of that. But I will say it sounds fragile, waiting to be broken by an arbitrary change in circumstance.

Some people appear to perceive love as simply a more intense version of like. “I like you. I like you a lot. OK, it's so much I guess I love you.” This too seems fragile, but more than that, I think it doesn't create a space for the commonly observed place where we can sometimes find ourselves loving someone we do not like. Certainly that's not well-explained by simply saying that love means intense liking. So I don't use the word to mean a kind of intense liking.

In fact, I think the part where one can love someone they aren't liking gets closer to the point. It takes commitment to have that kind of feeling that allows love to span the rough times. Whatever love is, it had better somehow explain this whole business of commitment.

I think of liking something as a sensation of positive feeling, disliking as a negative feeling. But love is more like a decision. It's a switch I can decide to flip. I can choose to love. The decision may be for an arbitrary reason. Maybe I liked your smile in that moment. It could be I think you're a great cook. Or perhaps we just shared an amazing experience, like climbing a mountain or building a house together.

I guess what I'm saying is that the reason one falls in love doesn't have to be the reason one continues to love. If we climbed a mountain, we don't have to always climb mountains. If we do, that love is fragile. Or so I claim.

To my mind, the liking of something expresses a positive sensation that can be more or less strong. But the loving of something is just there, or not, or at least it is to me. It's notable for its constancy. I make the decision to love, and after that there's no more work to do. I just love. That's the commitment part. It's a decision that the love will be there regardless.

This formulation neatly gets around the thing some people have where they pester you every moment of the day to find out if they are still loved. Love is not supposed to be that changeable. I don't have a problem about expressing that I love, but I do feel the expression should be pro forma. The person should just know and rely on it. What other point is there to it? If I can love you at 2pm, not love you at 3pm, and love you again at 4pm, then what is it I committed to? It needs to be more durable, not to mention more relaxed. It needs to reinforce the other things I do for you, especially things that require effort, not call into question the validity of doing those things.

Love has hysteresis. (No relation to hysterics. A minimum of hysterics is just fine thank you.) Many people don't know this concept of hysteresis, but it's a good one and worth learning. You see it in a thermostat. Something you want to do with a thermostat is to set your furnace to go on, let's say if the temperature falls below 68°F. But suppose the thermostat reaches 68°F and then hangs right around there, fluttering up and down. Should the furnace go on and off? Thermostats are designed so that they don't. Once the furnace goes on, it stays on unless there's a much bigger change than it took to get it to go on. Small changes don't affect the decision once it's made. It should tend to stay set and not move capriciously back just because you waver a little. It requires a big motion in the system for it to back out.

And love needs a lot of hysteresis so that it can be depended upon. Perhaps there are circumstances that can break one out of love, but they should be rare and extreme, not common everyday things.

Love provides predictability, constancy, stability, commitment. It's there and not going anywhere. It's not something to worry might slip away if you say or do some little wrong thing. It can be relied upon.

Love is also something to celebrate.

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Originally published February 13, 2011 at Open Salon, where I wrote under my own name, Kent Pitman.

Tags (from Open Salon): philosophy, love, commitment, definition, why, like, emotion, decision, intensity

Fresh Thoughts on Kissing ... and Beyond

I was pretty nerdy in my youth—unlike now, of course—and so my parents confronted the issue of sexuality with me by doing the obviously right thing: They handed me a four-volume encyclopedia on the subject and told me to read up.

I wish I could remember the name of the thing, but alas I don't. A lot of it was stuff that was boring to me at the time, like the details of reproduction. I skimmed it but didn't really care a lot about the details. I never really resonated to biology—it always seemed messy and imprecise.

There was a section on dating, though, and I read through that pretty thoroughly in case it had any useful tips. It did. It's funny the kinds of things that stick with you over the years, but this did because of the practical and specific nature of it. It defined the confusing term “fresh” (a sort of interjection that was supposed to get uttered just before you got slapped in some mysterious circumstances) in the only detailed, serious way I've ever seen anyone try to define it. I checked the dictionary just now and it merely says very vague things like these:

15. informal forward or presumptuous
Random House Dictionary

15. Informal Bold and saucy; impudent
The American Heritage ® Dictionary

12. improperly forward or bold; “don't be fresh with me”;
WordNet® 3.0

This encyclopedia, instead of offering just a word or two, offered a full description of how things were supposed to work and why the word was significant. It was highly specific in a way that I doubt people will readily agree with—many will quibble that the numbers are arbitrary, and I suppose they are. But I was able to read past that and to get the essence of what it was getting at.

The article just came straight out and said that it was permissible for a boy to try to kiss a girl on the second date and to try “petting” on the eighth date. I have no idea where they got these numbers. They seemed arbitrary and unmotivated to me, and I knew even at the age of 11 or 12 when I read this that they were probably not universally agreed upon. But the point was that there was some such number. What was interesting was that the article was very clear on the notion that you had no entitlement to succeed in these things. It did not encourage you to be pushy. It didn't say that someone must submit. What it seemed to imply was that there was a time at which it was not out of bounds to think it might be proper.

So, as the article explained, it might be that a girl will kiss a boy on the first date, but he ought not try. The relationship is too fresh. After the first date, he may try, but she may still decline. Likewise, it might be that the girl would engage in petting on the eighth date, but maybe not. The relationship was too fresh before that to really consider the matter.

By the way, I'm recalling all of this from memory, but I don't recall it talking about discussing, only trying. It might be I was just reading selectively, but more likely they were just acknowledging the obvious truth that it's enough trouble having to be a bumbling adolescent without having to be articulate about what you're bumbling about.

And that was a lot of dates out—I don't think I ever got to that many dates. I did count, though, even knowing that my date probably didn't have access to my encyclopedia and that all my counting was probably for nothing. I wasn't going to feel emboldened after that time, more likely just like I was timidly missing out. Being a kid is rough. It's a wonder any of us survives to adulthood.

Anyway, I think my encyclopedia's definition of this obscure word highlights an important detail that is often lost in a lot of dialog between the sexes at any age. Lessons in interpersonal communication rarely distinguish between the correctness of a bid for doing something and the entitlement to do something. This leads to the magical and unrealistic notion that people will “just know” when it's right, and that if either party tries something when it isn't “just known,” that's wrong.

Great emphasis is placed in our society on how important it is for men to respect a “no” answer from a woman. And I agree. But equally great emphasis should be placed on giving respect to the fact that there will be questions that, in due course, need asking, even if the answer will ultimately be “no.” Whether by word or by wordless bumbling deed, the mere asking of those questions at the proper time and without attempt to pressure is not disrespectful, and the need to ask them must be respected in the same way that the answer must. Respect between caring individuals goes in both ways.

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Originally published April 26, 2009 at Open Salon, where I wrote under my own name, Kent Pitman.

Tags (from Open Salon): language, linguistics, vocabulary word, usage, word usage, meaning, semantics, definition, terminology, fresh, dating, kissing, petting, caress, touch, felt up, feel up, felt out, feel out, getting to first base, get to first base, getting to second base, get to second base, encyclopedia, dating, social, advice, manners, etiquette, polite, politeness, impudent, bold, saucy, sex education, sex ed, first kiss, first time, sexuality, kissing on the first date, kiss on the first date, first date, eighth date, appropriate, inappropriate

Whatever Should Be, Should Be

A technical standard is a very precise document that is used as a reference for how something should work in the technical world. I spent several years of my life working in this arena and I’d like to relate a peculiar thing I learned in that time.

I learned that the word “should” means “don’t have to.”

I was receiving comments one day from a colleague who had read some text I’d written. He had drawn a red line through a number of sentences I’d written and I couldn’t figure out why. “Why did you do that?” I asked.

“Those sentences don’t say anything,” my colleague explained.

“Of course they do. They tell you what you should do.” I protested.

“Or what? What happens if you don’t. Is it a requirement?”

“No, it’s not a requirement but—”

“Ok, then. Now this phrase over here uses ‘shall.’ Because of the use of ‘shall,’ the user has to do something. It’s in the imperative mode, and so it’s a requirement. And this one here, with ‘must’—another requirement. But the rest of this stuff over here uses ‘should,’ so that’s not a requirement. Nothing happens if the reader ignores your advice.”

“He’s supposed to at least try.”

“But he can decide not to. So from a requirements standpoint, there’s no difference.”

“Right,” I admitted.

“So ‘should’ really just means ‘doesn’t really have to,’ ” he emphasized in triumph.

“Right,” I admitted sadly.

“So take out the text. It has no meaning.”

Although it is routine for Libertarians and Republicans to speak of self-reliance and financial independence, it is never the case in a modern capitalist society that the wealthy have achieved anything on their own because by definition the entire society is based on the consent of others to indulge an economic system in which such wealth is even possible.

I speak of the modern capitalist society because certainly in times past, when the world was underpopulated, there were vast wildernesses available for conquest, and it was theoretically possible to find a place in the woods where one lived without contact with civilization on one’s own. Although even then, it was common to take with one the tools of civilization, such as clothing and weapons, as well as society’s more abstract fruits, such as health and education. The likelihood that a human being, left alone in the wilderness with none of this would survive very long is vanishingly small. So probably even then, and certainly now, we are all beholden to society for our success.

“If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.”
  —Carl Sagan

Since at least the time of the New Deal and the Great Society, we as a nation have tended toward acknowledging the importance of the role of government in protecting our weakest members.

Nor is this mere charity on the part of government. Government derives its power from the consent of the governed. For example, simple mathematics tells us that it cannot be the case that the majority of the population has above-average wealth. That means that the majority of people, upon agreeing to participate in capitalistism, have agreed to take a financial position that is less than average. The theory is that by allowing some to get rich, others will benefit, and the wealth of the country will improve.

It should be easily seen that if large numbers of people are failing to see their basic needs met, while a few profit in a manner that is grossly out of proportion, such a society cannot long stand because at that point the social contract permitting the accumulation of wealth has been violated. A government that draws its power from the consent of the electorate will naturally find it in its own best interest to assure that the price of success on the high end is that basic human needs are serviced on the other end.

The stronger among us must therefore always remember that their wealth is a benefit provided under a contract made with all of society, that the wealth will be used for the betterment of all. Well, not every dime of it. If we required that all the money a person made went to charity, that would be like not giving a person the money in the first place.

And yet, many suffer now after the failure of companies from which a tiny number of individuals have seen handsome profits. What must those who have profited do? What is the moral obligation of the well-to-do in the present times? Is there a special obligation on the part of those who have directly profited from the situations that have bankrupted others?

Well, let’s not speak of obligations, shall we? How rudely pushy of us. It’s true that some may be cast from their homes or have nothing to eat, but really—must we be so rude as to speak in the imperative? If someone made an enormous profit, that’s their money. They have earned their right to do with it whatever they wish. So let us avoid the impertinence of imperatives and speak in a more polite way. Because this matter certainly calls for politeness. Let’s just offer polite advice and they’ll know what must be done with that advice.

They should care about the fate of the poor. Whatever else they do, they should make it their business to assure that their enrichment does not come at the expense of others.

There. That’s it. Just some advice. Nothing pushy. Not a requirement. Just a request that they try.

I feel better now, knowing we all share a clear understanding of what should happen.

“No man is an island, entire of itself...any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
  —John Donne

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Originally published Dec 17, 2008 at Open Salon, where I wrote under my own name, Kent Pitman.

Tags (from Open Salon): politics, class, class warfare, contract, social contract, breach, rich, wealth, wealthy, well-to-do, strong, poor, weak, weakest, obligation, duty, imperative, shall, should, must, modal, semantics, polite, politeness, rude, rudeness, profit, proportion, proportionality