Creating Language for Peace

After watching the documentary Peace One Day, on the creation of Peace Day, September 21, I was inspired to "do my part." I put together a presentation about creatively finding new ways to express ourselves that don't borrow from metaphors that have violent or war-based implications. What follows is a summary of this presentation. I am available to give it to groups. Please send me a comment if you are interested in having me present to your group.

Premises

Premise 1. Our speaking creates our experience of the world. What you say is so, is so for you. It doesn't mean that if you say "the trees are purple" that they will turn purple. It's more like if you say "my boss is a jerk" s/he really does seem to be a jerk to you. You have just created your experience of your boss by uttering those words. That's how I mean that our speaking creates our experience of the world.

Premise 2. We live in language the way fish live in water: we use it constantly but not consciously. Language is so second nature to us that we rarely stop and think about how it works, what the assumptions are that underlie how we string words together, and how it affects us personally and socially. Language is an "invisible architecture" according to Jean-Francois Noubel.

Premise 3. The unexamined aspects of language keep us stuck in current modes of thought. In this hub, we will examine them so that you can free yourself from them.

Premise 4. Recall the quote by Einstein that says, essentially, you can't solve a problem using the same tools you used to create it. Let's invent something new.

Intentions

• To expose the underlying metaphoric structure of our language and how it influences our worldview
• To begin to generate new ways of expressing ourselves that rely on metaphors fostering harmony, connectedness, and peace

In Metaphors We Live By, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson explain how our everyday language, not just poetry, is grounded in metaphor. But what is metaphor? They say: "The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another."

Poetry uses explicit metaphors, where it is clear that one thing, say love, is described in terms of another, for example, a rose, a warm puppy, or a rollercoaster ride.

Everyday language, however, uses implicit metaphors. Lakoff and Johnson say, "Metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action. Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature."

Let's look at the difference. Shakespeare wrote, "All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players." The explicit metaphor is obviously that the world is being compared to a stage. When we use the implicit metaphor that LIFE IS THEATER in our everyday speech, we might say something like this: "My date was so boring--just following the usual script: dinner then a movie."

What are some common implicit metaphors?

TIME IS MONEY

• "I'd love to spend some time with you."
• "I'm so busy I can't afford to take a vacation now."
• "You're wasting my time."
• "This gadget will save you hours."
• "I need to budget my time better."

IDEAS ARE OBJECTS

• "I couldn't grasp his point."
• "I picked up on what he meant."

THE MIND IS A MACHINE

• "He broke down."
• "I'll have to pull that information from the old memory banks."

LIFE/AGING IS A JOURNEY

• "Life has been a long, uphill struggle."
• "You never know what's around the corner."
• "Life gets easier once you're over the hill."

You've gotten the point, right? Okay, so now let's get to the point of this essay. Let's look at how we talk about ordinary things in terms of violence or war. Here are some common implicit metaphors:

• ARGUMENT IS WAR
• POLITICS IS WAR
• COMPETITION (SPORTS) IS WAR
• ILLNESS IS WAR
• LOVE IS WAR
• WEATHER IS WAR

Let's investigate the kinds of things we say that draw upon these implicit metaphors.

Argument is war.

• "Your claims are indefensible."
• "If you use that strategy, they will wipe you out."
• "I demolished his entire thesis."
• "She attacked his character."

When you are arguing, either seriously or for fun, you are not literally at war--you're just arguing, expressing a difference of opinion. There are certainly less violent (and perhaps more entertaining) ways of expressing what's going on. Here are some examples, but use your creativity to make up more of your own.

Alternate metaphors:

• ARGUMENT IS COOKING: "Your case is so broiled."
• ARGUMENT IS EXERCISE: "They had a sweaty verbal workout."
• ARGUMENT IS DANCE: "Those two sure had a raucous tango."

By phrasing things differently, you can also imply different things. For example, the war metaphor implies that there has to be a winner and a loser. By switching to a dance or exercise metaphor you can imply that there is an ongoing give and take, and perhaps no one loses and no one wins.

Competition/Sports is war

• The Bears pummeled the Packers...
• In golf, the loneliest, most solitary of sports, elite Australians don't have the chance to feel the euphoria of being part of a premiership-winning team or getting into the trenches with comrades at a world cup.

Many of our sports games are conceived of in terms of war, and so the teams battle each other, defeat each other, pummel, trounce, kill, and destroy each other. Or so the media describes it in their headlines. But miraculously, the players get up and do it all again the following day or week. Nobody was really killed (although some people do get injured in the more aggressive sports).

Of course, in sports we want to have winners and losers. That's the point of the game, right, to get more points? That's it. To get more points. Perhaps there are other ways to express winning a simple competition to get more points.

Alternate metaphors:

• COMPETITION IS BLING: "The Bears glittered more brightly than the Packers."
• COMPETITION IS FOOD: "Cubbies savored the day."
• COMPETITION IS BUSINESS: "Investment in Brian Griese paid off in yesterday's game."

Illness is war.

This is one that I find particularly troublesome. We know that certain symptoms appear as a warning that something is out of balance in our body or some toxin needs to be eliminated. If we ignore them, then the imbalance gets worse and we then get a dis-ease. How can we presume to heal ourselves if we think that we are at war with ourselves/our bodies? Healing is an internal process. Granted, external agents can accelerate the healing process but ultimately the body has to do the work. So what types of things do we say that create the experience of being at war with the body during illness?

• "I'm fighting a cold."
• "The arthritis is attacking my joints."
• "All this stress weakened my defenses."
• "Join the fight against cancer."
• "Research will find new ways to combat cancer."
• "Malignant cells invade nearby tissue."

Alternate metaphors:

• ILLNESS IS A BOOK: "I have an epic of fever." "Your symptoms are pure fiction."
• ILLNESS IS INFORMATION: "My sore leg is telling me to slow down and rest."
• ILLNESS IS ECOLOGICAL: "My blood sugar shouldn't wax and wan so frequently."

Politics is war.

No wonder we can't get along with other countries--we can't even get along domestically because everything political seems to be couched in terms of conflict. Where are the metaphors for cooperation in politics?

• Bush wields veto threats to thwart Democrats
• Democrats brace for a long battle
• The Delegate Fight
• Fresh off defeat, Obama plans counterattack
• Did Bill Clinton's Call-to-Arms Rally Supporters?

Alternate metaphors:

• POLITICS IS A GAME: "Democrats scored more points than Republicans in this election."
• POLITICS IS COMMUNITY: "The families met to discuss health care for the elderly." (of course now this has mafia overtones--isn't it interesting how the reverse has happened there: a nurturing metaphor (the family) was co-opted by a criminal organization to "soften" it)
• POLITICS IS A HOUSE: "There's room for everyone."

Love is war.

• Battle of the sexes
• "She is so beseiged by suitors she has to fend them off." (don't we wish!)
• He is known for his many conquests.

Alternate metaphors:

• LOVE IS ART: "We have a colorful relationship!"
• LOVE IS MADNESS: "I'm crazy about him!"
• LOVE IS MUSIC: "She makes my heart sing..."
• LOVE IS A BOAT: "For years our relationship bobbed with the waves, but now it's smooth sailing!"

Weather is war.

• The warm moist air being drawn north is clashing with the cooler air behind the advancing front.
• As it brings a cool rain to the northern Rockies and thunderstorms to places to the south Sunday, the storm system is set to trigger severe thunderstorms across the northern Plains.

Did you know that when weather forecasting started to replace using the Almanac to determine whether it was going to be rainy or sunny for the family picnic, they intentionally borrowed the war-based metaphors of opposing fronts? So now every time a weather report mentions fronts, we think of the warm or cold air as an advancing army.

Alternate metaphors:

• WEATHER IS SEX: "The cold air is just flirting with the warm air, so the chance of precipitation is low."
• WEATHER IS CHEMISTRY: "We'll have a super-saturated Saturday, with 2 inches of rain predicted."

I have illustrated many of the mundane things we say on a day-to-day basis that keep the notion of war present in our consciousness. If we truly want to create peace, we have to start imagining a world that is not always at war! We have to find new ways to express ourselves that do not draw on the old familiar war-based implicit metaphors. I challenge you to be imaginative and create a language for peace. I leave you with these questions to ponder for yourself:

• What sort of world do I want to create in my speaking?
• How can I become more conscious of what I say and how I say it?
• Given the pervasiveness of violence in our culture, how can we prepare ourselves for 1000 years of peace, as many native prophecies have predicted?

For more ideas about creating new language, see my book, The One That Is Both.