{"id":7187,"date":"2009-03-26T05:09:00","date_gmt":"2009-03-26T12:28:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=7187"},"modified":"2009-03-26T05:09:00","modified_gmt":"2009-03-26T12:28:48","slug":"the-metaphors-we-use","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=7187","title":{"rendered":"The Metaphors we use"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have been trying not to use ‘mad’ as a metaphor in my writing, but some posts are harder than others. I found it really challenging to write a post about holocaust deniers<\/a> without saying “these people are batshit crazy”. There’s been some discussion<\/a> of this and Donaquixote articulated the reasons for avoiding madness as a metaphor very well:<\/p>\n

I also get the insane = disconnected from reality definition you were going with. But there\u2019s a huge difference between an illness that disconnects you from reality as a result of neurochemical processes and the condition of being willfully disconnected from reality because you don\u2019t want to have your opinions challenged. One is an illness, the other is a character flaw, and the two ought never be confused. The problem is a lot of our terminology quite purposefully does confuse the two.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Many of the derogatory metaphors that come most easily to us are about comparing something we don’t like with the powerless.<\/p>\n

Metaphoric language is powerful – even as cliched metaphoric language as ‘batshit crazy’. I don’t think we should give up metaphors, I think we should be creative, more precise and more true in the metaphors we do use.<\/p>\n

I thought a way of doing that would be to open a thread for discussion so people could post their metaphors, and other derogatory language, that don’t pathologise powerlessness.<\/p>\n

I’m not suggesting we start calling everyone we dislike a futures trader, but I think there are lots of smart articulate people who comment on blogs I write on. We can do better than the derogatory terms we do now.<\/p>\n

I’m posting this on Capitalism Bad; Tree Pretty<\/a>, Alas<\/a> and The Hand Mirror<\/a>, for maximum discussion.<\/p>\n

Please don’t post in this thread unless you’re actually interested in developing new metaphors. If you’re doubtful about the usefulness of new metaphors then go talk about that somewhere else.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have been trying not to use ‘mad’ as a metaphor in my writing, but some posts are harder than others. I found it really challenging to write a post about holocaust deniers without saying “these people are batshit crazy”. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[92],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-whatever"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7187\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}