Avoid the building metaphor: Difference between revisions

Latest revision as of 17:18, 7 September 2004

To avoid the building metaphor is to avoid implying that other processes are like building, e.g. barn-raising, building a community as these imply that creating social capital is like creating infrastructural capital.

One should avoid extending metaphor in general, which is ironic since the idea of enhancing or expanding one metaphor on another is difficult to describe in English using any word but "building". So the EPOV may be biased very strongly towards such metaphors.

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-To '''avoid building metaphor''' is important in any life or death situation.  If one [[conceptual metaphor]] is allowed to act as [[precedent]] for choice of another, then, it is very easy to justify arbitrary actions of any kind at all:
+To '''avoid the building metaphor''' is to avoid implying that other processes are like building, e.g. '''barn-raising''', '''building a community''' as these imply that creating [[social capital]] is like creating [[infrastructural capital]].
-There is no guarantee that the [[empathic integrity]] of the original choice of metaphor will be retained in those which rely on prior metaphors to make sense.
+One should [[avoid extending metaphor]] in general, which is ironic since the idea of enhancing or expanding one metaphor on another is difficult to describe in English using any word ''but'' "building".  So the [[EPOV]] may be biased very strongly towards such metaphors.
-For example, to invent the idea of [[virtual community]] is to liken a simple [[group editing]] system to a physical place.  Since physical places have the risk of violent confrontation and exclusive property rights, those who accept the idea of this "virtual community" also can be made to accept the idea of "police" or "security guards" to "protect" people who are in fact in danger of nothing more than having their feelings hurt by harsh words.  Or, worse, that such "police" or "security guards" (i.e. a [[sysop power structure]]) can or should be trusted with when to perform otherwise reprehensible behaviours, e.g. [[outing]], that would be unjustifiable if they were not being compared to physical behaviours by their real world analogs, e.g. beatings, torture, and etc.  By comparison to "real thugs" the "virtual thugs" seem quite benign but in fact have justified quite dangerous behaviour by '''building metaphor'''.
-Sometimes building metaphor is inevitable and appropriate, however, e.g. the overloading of the term "[[trolls]]" to identify heretics and outsiders in net fora, literally forces those so labelled to respond by building a mythological response with such elements as a [[world tree]], [[Raganarok]], and so forth:  this defensive use of metaphor to rally those oppressed by facists is not only excusable, but desirable, as long as it is avoided when it is not necessary.  If there is [[no confusion with group entity]] then the risk of becoming overly identified with the mythological troll race is low.
-Unfortunately, those who identify with police or paramilitary groups, and secretly wish to have powers to do unaccountable physica harm to others, seem to revel in the [[sysop]] role and actively invite confusion of their role with that of some real [[authority]], often becoming enraged when there is [[no cooperation with authority|no recognition of that claim]] by those who consider them [[usurper]]s.