The Viper Strikes, and Lives

I have been fascinated by metaphor since I was an undergraduate linguistics major, when one of my professors assigned parts of Metaphors We Live By, by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. In that book, Lakoff and Johnson argue that, as human beings, we use metaphor to give structure to the world around us. They point out, for example, that we describe the process of having or making an argument the same way we describe war. As examples, they offer this list of expressions:

  1. Your claims are indefensible.
  2. He attacked every weak point in my argument.
  3. His criticisms are right on target.
  4. I demolished his argument.

Lakoff and Johnson don’t stop there, though. They go on to show that we don’t just talk about argument as if it were war; we actually experience it that way as well. Like wars, for example, arguments are won or lost; and the people on either side of an argument behave in some ways as if they are doing battle with each other, taking different lines of attack, or surrendering some points in the hopes of gaining others that will lead to victory. To illustrate by way of contrast, Lakoff and Johnson ask us to

imagine a culture where argument is viewed as a dance, the participants are seen as performers, and the goal is to perform in a balanced and aesthetically pleasing way. In such a culture, people would view arguments differently, carry them out differently, and talk about them differently. But we would probably not view them as arguing at all: they would simply be doing something different. (5)

Other examples abound. One of my favorite classroom exercises is to ask my students to list all the slang expressions they know for for getting drunk and/or high (the latter, of course, being a metaphor in itself). Here are some of the more common ones they come up with:

  • wasted
  • bombed
  • annihilated
  • blasted
  • blitzed
  • polluted
  • shitfaced
  • embalmed
  • hammered
  • pickled
  • plastered
  • smashed

Inevitably, my students are surprised not just at how violent the list is, but at the way these expressions portray getting drunk or high as violence one does to oneself–a way of structuring what it means to alter one’s consciousness that is very different from cultures that use such substances in religious or other spiritual rituals.

The story from Golestan that I have chosen for this week’s Sa’di Says is about the structure of power in a monarchy, and I think the metaphors that Sa’di uses in telling this story are fascinating. Before you read it, you need to know that Hormuz was the son of King Nushirvan, whose name is synonymous with what it means to be a wise and just ruler. Hormuz, on the other hand, was cruel and tyrannical. Here is the story:

When he was asked what crime his father’s viziers had committed, Hormuz replied, “None. I put these men in jail because they feared my power without respecting it. I knew that to protect themselves from the capriciousness they saw in me and the harm they thought might come to them because of it, they might try to kill me. So I had no choice. I took the advice of the sages, who said:

The power to wipe out a hundred men
should not replace your fear of one who fears you.
Watch when a cat is fighting for its life;
it plucks the tiger’s eyes out with its claws.
To stop the stone the shepherd might throw down
to crush its head, the viper strikes, and lives.

Hormuz is unapologetic in his explanation, but you have to wonder just how aware he is of how much his metaphors reveal about him. Look closely at the metaphor in those last two lines. By having the king compare himself to a viper, while at the same time comparing his father’s viziers to a shepherd, Sa’di uses Hormuz’ self-justification to reveal not just the fear and weakness at the heart of any tyrannical rule, but also something about the nature of power itself. The shepherd’s authority to kill the viper comes from his role as protector of the flock, though he can choose not to use that power if he doesn’t have to. (Hence, “the stone the shepherd might throw down.”) The viper, on the other hand–and I am following here the logic of the metaphor, not commenting on the behavior of actual snakes–because of the poison that defines it and the threat it poses to those around it, cannot afford to wait for the shepherd to make that choice. It must assume that the shepherd has assumed that it will attack and so it has no alternative but to defend itself accordingly.

The viper’s power, in other words, is defined by its fear of the world, its sense that the world is arrayed against it, while the shepherd’s power is defined by the choice that is available to him. Not that the fact of this choice will make the shepherd a good and wise ruler by definition; but it does seem to me that awareness of the choice is a prerequisite for a wise and benevolent rule.

The cool thing about a metaphor is that no single reading will ever capture its entire meaning, and so I know the reading I have presented here is a partial one at best. I’d love to hear what you think.

Cross-posted.

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18 Responses to The Viper Strikes, and Lives

  1. 1
    Q. Pheevr says:

    Huh. I thought Hormuz was comparing the viziers to the viper. His point is that they are dangerous because they fear him, and he gives two examples of animals that, though not necessarily inherently formidable, become dangerous when they are in fear for their lives: the cat and the viper. I think he sees himself in the more kingly roles of the tiger and the shepherd.

    ETA: Of course, the thing about pre-emptive strikes is that it gets very hard to know who is the shepherd and who is the viper. The shepherd drops a stone on the snake because he knows that the snake will bite him because it’s afraid that he will drop a rock on it because it might bite him because he might crush it with a stone…. (Good thing this is all ancient Persian history, and not at all like anything going on in the Middle East today, eh?)

  2. Q. Pheevr:

    (Good thing this is all ancient Persian history, and not at all like anything going on in the Middle East today, eh?)

    Ha! I didn’t choose this bit of Golestan because of what’s going on now in Gaza and elsewhere, but that was all very much on my mind when I wrote the post.

    Your reading of the metaphor also has merit and, now that I think of it, is probably more in keeping with the image Hormuz would have had of himself. I like my reading more, I guess, because I like the subversiveness of it, and I like to think of Sa’di being subversive and ironic in his treatment of someone like Hormuz who is known for having been a despot.

  3. 3
    Nancy Lebovitz says:

    Politics is an extension of war by other means. Arguments are soldiers. Once you know which side you’re on, you must support all arguments of that side, and attack all arguments that appear to favor the enemy side; otherwise it’s like stabbing your soldiers in the back—providing aid and comfort to the enemy. People who would be level-headed about evenhandedly weighing all sides of an issue in their professional life as scientists, can suddenly turn into slogan-chanting zombies when there’s a Blue or Green position on an issue.

    Eliezer Yudkowski (There’s since been discussion of how “politics is the mindkiller” has played out, and to what extent that’s a useful idea.)

  4. 4
    Jeremy Perron says:

    Thomas Jefferson to James Madison,

    “Pick up your pen and tear them to pieces.”

  5. 5
    Jeremy Redlien says:

    I’m not sure that college students use of drugs and alcohol at weekend bashes quite compares to the use of drugs and alcohol in religious ceremonies, the latter I am sure is far more moderated. Also, I’m not sure I agree with the significance of violent metaphores in argumentation. And why is it that it is automatically assumed that a violent metaphore is a war metaphor? I ask this as a student working towards a criminology degree, whose capstone included analysis of how far people are willing to go to avoid talking about violence as something that occurs within families and social groups. The point being, why are the mataphores from the first list war mataphores by virtue of being violent? Couldn’t they just be violent descriptores that could apply to any violent situation where one party is trying to defeat the other? Ie a street brawl between two friends or something?

  6. 6
    Franz says:

    my students are surprised not just at how violent the list is, but at the way these expressions portray getting drunk or high as violence one does to oneself–a way of structuring what it means to alter one’s consciousness that is very different from cultures that use such substances in religious or other spiritual rituals.

    These structurings have real effects. We’d have a much more healthy relationship with alcohol if, rather than the western concept that it’s a form of damage to oneself, we approached it using the native american view on mind altering substances.

  7. 7
    Hugh says:

    “imagine a culture where argument is viewed as a dance, the participants are seen as performers, and the goal is to perform in a balanced and aesthetically pleasing way.”

    Sounds awful. When I encounter, for example, a homophobe espousing homophobic views, my main goal is not to do something aesthetically pleasing to a third party, it’s to reduce (if only by a small amount) the amount of homophobia in the world by making him reconsider his views.

  8. 8
    Jeremy Redlien says:

    “imagine a culture where argument is viewed as a dance, the participants are seen as performers, and the goal is to perform in a balanced and aesthetically pleasing way.”

    Sounds awful. When I encounter, for example, a homophobe espousing homophobic views, my main goal is not to do something aesthetically pleasing to a third party, it’s to reduce (if only by a small amount) the amount of homophobia in the world by making him reconsider his views.

    This was my thought exactly, whenever you have something that can be thought of a competition or as an event that can be won, you’re going to see similarly “violent” language. If you engage in a dance compition, the language is going to be “violent” (“I’ll wipe the floor with your ass”). As a counter example, when I was involved in SUNY Oneonta’s Undergrad. Philosophy Conference, we had people presenting papers on numerous controversial topics, but the language about what the goals of the conference used language like we were there to educate, ask questions, discuss, etc.

    The point being, the goal matters more than the activity. If you’re holding a debate about a public policy, then the violent rhetoric will go up, as it’s a situation where a clear winner and loser will observe. (People change there views to one side or the other, public policies get passed or stall in committee, politicians get elected or not). Hold a debate in an academic forum, where “winning and losing” matter less, then the violent rhetoric will go down. Hold a dance to entertain, then there won’t be much violent rhetoric. Hold a dance competition, then violent rhetoric will be present.

    -Jeremy

  9. 9
    nobody.really says:

    Jeremy Redlien has a point.

    I’ve heard it said, I forget by whom, that humans evolved to argue not as a means to get to the truth, but to pursue dominance in a social group. Thus various logical fallacies (e.g., ad hominem attacks) appear in culture after culture: they are useful strategies for winning an argument, even if they are useless for exploring an issue.

    In contrast, Jon Stewart famously went on Crossfire – a “debate” show named for metaphorical military conduct – to talk about how this metaphor of debate-as-combat has reduced public discourse to performance art: it’s akin to comparing athletes and professional wrestlers. And it debases democracy.

  10. Jeremy Redlien:

    I am not sure what you’re arguing against. When you wrote this, you in fact demonstrated precisely what Lakoff and Johnson are talking about:

    This was my thought exactly, whenever you have something that can be thought of a competition or as an event that can be won, you’re going to see similarly “violent” language.

    It is, in our culture, the act of naming something a competition, “an event that can be won,” that shapes our understanding of it as something with real or metaphorically violent underpinnings. In other words, we understand the event through the metaphor(s) we create when naming it. That argumentation is “violent” in this way may be a universal, I don’t know, but, if it is, that would tell us something very interesting about human nature, I think. And that is the point: The idea that we use metaphors to construct our understanding and experience of reality tells us something about who we are. Pick a progressive social movement or its critique and what you will find, essentially, is an argument over which metaphors we ought to use to understand the social reality in which we live.

    Does that argument descend into shallow propaganda, performance art (a al Jon Stewart as quoted above by nobody.really), outright lies and other debased forms of discourse? Of course. That doesn’t mean we are not talking about the metaphors we use to understand ourselves.

    ETA: I just realized I did not address your question—why are the violent metaphors I listed necessarily war metaphors—directly. Certainly they are pretty extreme metaphors of conflict, of which war is perhaps the most extreme expression. Some arguments even get to the point where one person will say to the other something like, “You want a war? You got one!” So I’m not sure why you would distinguish between war and lower levels of conflict as a difference in kind rather than of degree—which is what it sounded in your comment like you were doing. (If I have misread you, I apologize.)

  11. 11
    Jeremy Redlien says:

    Richard,

    Here’s the thing, in any given society, there is going to be a point when decisions affecting the group have to be made. And a decision requires options, and ultimately this means people are going to debate or discuss those options, right?

    That means that one group is going to have a decision made in it’s favor, and another group is going to have a decision made in agains it. An election comes and one politician wins and another loses. Legislation passes that one side favors and another side is against. And so on and so forth.

    Now, how are going to reframe a decision making process in which there are no winners and losers? I want legislation passed that protects LGBTQ people from discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. A debate is held in various forums (media, legislative meetings) and so on. The legislation passes or it doesn’t. One side wins the other side loses.

    As Hugh puts it, these discussions about the legislation are not being done in order to do something pleasing for a third party, they are there to pass the legislation or prevent it from being passed. The legislation passes, the LGBTQ community wins. The legislation doesn’t pass and the homphobes, transphobes, and queerphobes win.

    If I understand what you’re argueing correctly, then this debate about the legislation, which had a specific goal (pass or prevent the passing of legislation) can be reframed without refering to winners or losers.

    My point is, how can the debate here be reframed so that there are no winners and losers. I don’t see how I can think of the debate here as not having a winner and loser. The legislation passes, I win in the sense that I should now have an easier time finding a job (or at least can expect some level of legal protections in finding and retaining one). Ditto other LGBTQ people. The legislation passes, then other LGBTQ people and myself lose.

    People hold a dance compitition, one person or team wins, and gets lots of money, the other people/teams do not.

    Now consider holding a debate in an academic forum at a conference where no legislation is being debated. As I pointed out before, in my experience, such an event will not be discussed in “violent” terms. This is equivalent to holding a dance where your trying to do something aesthetically pleasing for a third party, and certainly any really good presentation can be aesthetically pleasing.

    The point is, how can you change the goals, such that all debates do not have clear winners and losers? How can societies decision making processes be redone, so that there are no losers? Is it not inevitable that people will disagree to such a point, where winning and losing are the only option?

  12. Jeremy R.:

    If I understand what you’re argueing correctly, then this debate about the legislation, which had a specific goal (pass or prevent the passing of legislation) can be reframed without refering to winners or losers.

    Well, no. Or at least not exactly. In a culture where argument is understood to be a kind of dance, where the result is supposed to be aesthetically pleasing to all, argument might very well not be the way the people of that culture make legislative decisions, or decide questions of right and wrong.

    I am not suggesting there is anything inherently wrong with the metaphors we use to understand and experience conflict—though one could argue, a la John Stewart, that there is something wrong with the way those metaphors are deployed. I am merely pointing out that the metaphors we use have a powerful hold over our imagination.

  13. 13
    brian says:

    I think your point about violent metaphors may be the best argument for teaching Esperanto and making everyone STOP learning Klingon.

  14. 14
    Jeremy Redlien says:

    Richard,

    How are you going to make lesiglative decisions without having a discussion first? And how is that discussion, not going to take some form of a debate? And how is that debate going to look anything like a dance whose purpose is to be aesthetically pleasing to anyone?

    Do you really want to live in a society that makes decisions without holding a discussion about the option first? Or debating them? Or allowing dissenting voices to be heard?

    How can you hold a legislative debate and hope for the same outcome you would have in a performance art piece? I don’t want politicians to entertain me, I want them to make the best decisions based on available evidence. Sometimes those decisions are not going to leave everyone happy.

    You keep claiming that arguments can be framed in non-violent ways, no disagreement here, my point is, how can they be reframed in all situations, even those where the outcomes of debates/arguments are going to have clear winners and losers?

    Are you saying that if legislation passes that expands civil rights, that those who supported the passage of that legislation and will benefit from it, that they cannot frame that victory in terms like “By remaining on target, we were able to overcome our enemies weaknesses, and defeat their hatred. Hopefully we can continue to demolish whatever resistance they come up with, as they will inevitably try to prevent this legislative victory from being implemented.”

    Is that language really so violent, that it will cause the end of democracy as we know it?
    -Jeremy

  15. Jeremy,

    I don’t understand why you think I am arguing that we ought to change the way we think about argument. I was merely trying to describe it.

  16. 16
    Jeremy Redlien says:

    Hmmm… looking back at the post, I see you don’t make the point yourself but you do quote Lakoffe and Johnson as saying “imagine a world where we view argument as we would a dance” and then they add to the confusion by ending that quote by saying that the activity would no longer be argueing anyways.

    So they want us to reinvision argueing as we would a dance, but this new activity wouldn’t really be debating anyways, so… what’s the point?

    In any case, it seemed like you were advocating for this whole “envision argueing as a dance” thing because of that quote.

  17. But Jeremy, they are not suggesting we should start seeing argument that way; the point of that example is to show, through contrast, just how deeply embedded in us our metaphorical understanding of the world is. The fact that you find it so difficult to imagine a culture where argument is a dance, as do I, proves their point.

  18. 18
    Harlequin says:

    There was an interesting Sociological Images post recently about the impact of metaphor on people’s perceptions, such as being able to better identify fishy smells after being made suspicious. Perhaps related to what you’re saying here.

    (It does have a common problem of misleading chart ranges though.)