Outside What Box
The Prisoners of Metaphor
All metaphors can be misleading. Some more than others. And when they become overworked, and little more than cliches, not worth much. Then they themselves become fair game and worth mining for the nature of their distortions.
Take “thinking outside the box.” Reject limitation? A Houdini escape? To what and where and how?
We live within multiple “boxes.” Society is a densely woven fabric of niches, retreats, and vacations from the world. Think: boxes within, overlapping and outside each other.
For what it is worth, my warning is this. Don’t take a victory lap when you have merely peaked through the tissue paper, largely decoration wrapped around your own place in the world.
The danger is this. We often close our mind, because we have shown a willingness to open it. Reaching a new “safe place,” is not how we can best contribute to the renewal of our institutions and a strong response to a changing overall environment.
And this is only one way that the metaphor fails us. One might just as well consider the actual value of a “box” for its guideline protections. It is often the voice of experience and draws a clear line between solid ground and quicksand.
And, surely, there is no bright line to our enchantments, to our limitations. We do not so much escape, like over a fence, as see clearer and farther than before.
Oh, and also consider that the metaphor assumes a potentially deceptive dichotomous distinction between perceptions. “Conservative” (stay); “liberal” (step outside). Both are fresh choices. All are explorations. New understandings of the familiar as well as new discoveries of the unknown. All are new territory, even when sacred ground.
The choice is always more than being brave or bold. However one uses the metaphor, the goal is new experience, and how well one processes and learns from that experience.
And no victory laps.
Come, my friends,
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
-Tennyson, “Ulysses”
Come, my friends,
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
-Tennyson, “Ulysses”
I'm convinced that at least some us-and-themisms aren't entirely self imposed limitations. There's some kind of cult-like mechanisms at play when loaded language, thought interrupt cliches, and demands for purity that do more than close minds. I'm thinking of the book: "Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of "Brainwashing" in China" and how it applies to what's going on around us.