Mind and replace -
Over the last year i’ve been considering the importance of language, specifically metaphor; how it shapes our perceptions and expectations. We use all kinds of metaphors all the time but rarely stop to consider them, here are some examples that have stuck with me.
Build with Grow?
I spent much of the summer in France supporting a community project in Burgundy. An insight struck me as we chatted over breakfast in front of the chateau, discussing how the estate could be developed to generate community, creativity, connection to nature and general well being.
Someone mentioned Building the community but I sensed that building was the wrong metaphor for describing the process of community development. I challenged the speaker to supplant Build with Grow because I felt a community of people, specific to a particular biome and site is a complex process of interrelationship with more in common to organic growth than material construction. Growth is cyclical and construction is linear. Crucially, If a community was a building it would be made of replaceable modular pieces extracted from elsewhere rather than an ecosystem that evolves through self fertilisation with few inputs.
The project got off to a faltering start due to people being plugged in from different places instead of cultivating the local entities — trades, food and people. These local assets can been seen as seeds to be germinated. Tellingly the early stage of the process dominated by a Build metaphor came up with a kind of rural co-working/hospitality project and the team of siloed skills that was plugged together didn’t cohere. The project has returned to its roots and is looking to host a locally needed farmers market which can sprout all kinds of social gatherings and feed into the running of a restaurant which in turn can become the catering outfit for residential retreats and so on..
This reflection led me to discover Ecolinguistics, “Ecolinguistics explores the role of language in the life-sustaining interactions of humans, other species and the physical environment”. I found this a powerful inspiration to seek more dynamic and compassionate metaphors by considering ecological sources.
This is profoundly important; our language is not some froth or foam on the waves of our behaviour it drives the tides of social change, it modulates our norms and fashions all that we form in the world. I implore you to exercise an awareness of the metaphors you choose and therefore live by.
Brain with Mind?
A friend once kindly told me that I have a great Brain, while grateful of the compliment I know that she didn’t mean that organ in my skull, she meant my Mind which is a far more apt concept, a holistic conception of intelligence and creativity that is embodied. Mind seems to point to the less physical aspect of our being and yet it’s a complex whole whereas Brain is a discrete part of my physical body.
Perhaps this sounds pedantic but my brain is not a ‘part’ like the engine of a car, it is ‘part’ of an inseparably interwoven system. I am nothing like a car, if you separated all the parts that comprise me you wouldn’t be able to put me back together again, unlike a machine, I would die.
Talking about having a good brain outside of anatomy is a hangover from the mechanistic and materialist conception of the world. One that has forcefully separated interwoven organs, organisms and environments to the detriment of life on earth.
This observation is difficult because my dear friend was not wrong in using Brain as a signpost to point to my intellectual ability but It’s become another valuable observation on this linguistic journey. We live in an age of systems and need to find language that acknowledges the interconnection and complexity of a systems world view. We cannot separate our nations like the parts of a machine, from them must emerge a mind that can cope with the global whole just as the Mind encompasses and conducts the beautiful concert of our organs.
On with In?
We talk about living On the planet rather than In the planet; this is really important for how we relate to the ecological crisis which we are IN, we are not on top of it. I’m In the atmosphere, In the biosphere, not outside the world able to rearrange or ‘fix’ it from some imaginary and disassociated vantage point. Consider these spatialising metaphors, you get into a box set but on top of your life, maybe that’s as it should be… We tend to see distance as a failure of emotional engagement in important areas of life but all the separating language of materialism necessarily creates distance.
Language is slippery and changes as we use it, but that’s ok, incompleteness is vital for change to occur. I don’t believe there are any perfect metaphors because all is in flux, is the mind best understood as a computer? is an argument always a battle rather than a dance? Industrial or ecological concepts suit different contexts so we must practice a mindfulness with our language and notice where we can choose to perpetuate damaging concepts or inject/plant new ones….
Here is a poetic fragment, just a sketch really where I planted the first seeds of these thoughts -
Mind and replace
Find and replace —
Brain with mind
I need to remind you
You say it all the time
Brain’s but an organ
Mind is life
Life of the mind
Depth and height
Sound, smell, sight
Touch in the night
Undiscovered senses -
All mind centred
Find and replace
On with In
Live In the planet
Place rubbish On bin?
Find and replace
Build with grow
Do we Build relations?
Hammer, blow by blow
Blunt force,
Dumb matter,
Fractures from that battering
Feel of the soil,
sprout seed circle scattering
Growing relations
All attention on their happening
Find and replace
Process with patterning
Sequence is pattern
Process is flattening
Unfolding pattern —
Is a different kind of mattering
I have advocated for ecological metaphors, growing instead of building and so on, I acknowledge that green language isn’t best in every case but due to the crisis of our time it requires deeper consideration.
The difference between Industrial or Ecological language can be understood as Dominating or Generating and by these terms from game theory — zero sum and non-zero sum respectively.
Domination: A zero sum game is a win/lose scenario, for instance war is a zero sum game where one side wins at the others loss. Argument is metaphorically understood as war, you defend your position, beat your opponent, destroy their argument etc. This makes sense where the subject matter is true or false but many of our ‘arguments’ especially around social issues require a synthesis of positions on a topic, a blending or a resolution through their dynamic interaction and tension, perhaps war is not the most fitting concept for reconciling conflict just as it may not be the best means in the physical world.
Generation: A non-zero sum game is a win/win interaction, where all parties benefit as a whole. Organic growth is win/win because the ‘losses’ or deaths of organisms fertilise and feed others which creates a net-gain of resources in the system. Just think, this earth was once a ball of rock, life has generated more and more of itself over time, the colourful jewel of our planet has been generating increasing life through non-zero sum processes for billions of years.
If we are to grow out of our adolescence as a species we must adopt generative ways of doing things. Solar power is generative but fossils fuels are extractive, we can see the technologies of our maturity emerging, our salvation practically feasible.
Now we must mature our concepts so they attune to the generative abundance of life, consider the metaphors you live by.
I leave you with poem showing where these thoughts wound up at the end of the year, I was chatting at an event and asked some new friends why do we call it the human race…?
Human race
What is the human racing for?
Race for more order, slaughter, war?
It’s not the dolphin race
but the dolphin play
The verb of a species has a lot to say
What is the human dominating for?
To separate deeply
and understand more
To climb more steeply
Escape velocity
Explore OUR stars!
The human is a race to break through evolution
Biological finish line
Machine solution
Digital simulation
Equivalent creation?
I’m unsure
We can’t stop this accelerating pacing
But we can make room for other rhythms and spacing
Lets tie tight our laces
Get braced for take off
Enhanced abilities
Interstellar affinities!
I want extended life and reach!
Just as much
as I want the stillness cows teach
Sit under the oak tree
Climb the beech
There are no either/or choices for me
Forever peak AND trough
Of the fluent sea
Sing a hymn of biophilia
In the Anthropocene
