A Change of Perspective

I know from experience that that a change of perspective can come from looking at and challenging the metaphors in life - the ones that we choose and the ones that are part of all the dialogues around us. Early in life, for example, I started seeing employment as the business of selling my labor, and that made it feel different. Those who refer to themselves as wage slaves or even call their supervisor a boss (he or she would be a customer to me) probably suffer more from their work and feel less free to change it. To some extent I adopted the perspective of life as an adventure as well - mostly unconsciously - and that made for a better experience than when life was job or duty or journey through a valley of tears.

But we often miss the metaphors in life. They slide by in print and conversation without us even noticing their metaphorical nature or that "meta-metaphors" that they indicate. I was reminded of this recently while reading an article in Forbes magazine. Prior to this I had read Metaphors We Live By, the ground breaking work by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, and I credit that book with opening my eyes and tuning me into the metaphorical language all around us.

In this case, the article was about a legal service company, and the writer started it like this: "Mark Harris identified a multibillion-dollar market, built a business to attack it and was enjoying some success when he realized he was laying the groundwork for defeat." That is just one sentence, and yet it says a lot about the perspective of the writer, which is reflected in the metaphors used and - I would argue - formed by them as well. See if you can identify at least two or three metaphors in the quote.

The most obvious ones are "attack" and "defeat." These come from what Lakoff and Johnson would call the "structural metaphor" that "business is war." If one thinks on those terms it almost certainly has to lead to subsequent thoughts that are different than they would be from the perspective of another structural metaphor, and that means something ion practice, not just in theory. For example, in a war we tend to adopt a "win at all costs" approach, which can be seen in the questionable ethics of some businessmen who take this perspective. If your ruling or structural thought process started with the idea that business is a servant to the customer or a valuable social program, you would quite naturally find different ways to make a profit. A change of perspective is inevitable with a change of metaphors in life, and leads to a change in what we do.

Apart from those two examples, you may have noticed that to say he built a business is metaphorical. It may be the easiest way to understand the process, but it is not the only way. We could say that he grew a business, using the structural metaphor; a business is a plant. We could also get away from such explicit metaphorical approaches and simply say that he developed or organized a business, or even simpler, that he did business.

There are other metaphors barely noticeable in the sentence as well. Laying the groundwork is such a common thing to say that we forget the metaphorical origin - most likely from laying out a foundation on the ground. Even the expression enjoying some success is really metaphorical. It would be said even if he had been clinically depressed all of the time, because it refers to the metaphor of profit as being inherently pleasurable.

Look at the metaphors in life. Look in the news stories on television and in magazines. Listen for them in speech. Think about the alternatives and you'll have a change of perspective.

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