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Joy in the Present
      

1987

Governance through Metaphor

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Paper submitted a workshop of the Project on Economic Aspects of Human Development (EAHD) of the Regional and Global Studies Division of the United Nations University ( Geneva, 25-27 June 1987). Appeared in excerpted form in The USACoR Newsletter, March 1988, pp 3-21

I Introduction

II Contemporary crisis of governance

III Metaphor as an unexplored resource

IV Governing metaphors and metaphors of governance

V Governance through metaphor

VI Envisioning governance in the future

VII References

Figures 1-8 (not included as of this posting).

Introduction

The experience of the past decades in designing and implementinginternational development-related strategies and governing the process through which they become possible is not especially encouraging. Major disaster has been averted but the early hopes are far from being fulfilled. The situation has become worse for many and the risks of major disaster have increased for everyone. Particularly tragic is the recognition that the international system of institutions is defective in its management of the development process, riddled with inefficiencies and lacking in credibility, especially in the eye of public opinion. This situation has just recently been officially documented for the first time for the United Nations system by Maurice Bertrand of the Joint Inspection Unit (1). It is within the constraints of this context that the economic aspects of human development need to be considered.

This paper follows earlier work on the challenges of collective comprehension of appropriateness and the special constraints it imposes on the design and implementation of any development initiative (2). The paper addressed the resulting challenges for "governance". This term has been resuscitated by John Fobes, former Deputy Director-General of UNESCO, in order to promote a reconceptualization of the commonly used terms "governing" and "government". In recent remarks to a Club of Rome conference he states:

    "The concept of governance emphasizes that order in society is created and maintained by a spectrum of institutions, only one of which is known as government. By examining that spectrum at all levels of society, we can obtain a broader sense of "governability" as it is exercised in policy-making, in providing services and the application of law. Order is certainly part of governance. But I believe that one should also consider governance, at least at the international level, as a global learning exercise. By so doing, politicians, practitioners, activists and academies may expand their thinking beyond the traditional concepts of government, of international organizations and of the exercise of sovereignty". (3)

Those remarks have contributed to the initiation of a multi-year project on the future of world governance, distinct from the many previous initiatives focusing on world government.

Of special value in Fobes' remarks in his creative response to the complexities of the situation. He recognizes that the processes of governance have become increasingly complex and are no longer strictly limited to governments. He points out that the fact that so many individuals and groups, whether NGO's or IGO's, at all levels, want to "get into the act" of learning, if not governing, is both hopeful and chaotic. It is for this reason that he points to the need to re-examine attitudes to different "learning modes". "Learning, and learning to "govern", or to participate in governance, on the part of citizens and their civic and special interest groups, have become part of the survival skills for nations and for humanity as a whole." (3)

The focus in this paper on the use of metaphor in governance is one response to the recognition articulated by Fobes that: "The stresses from social change that require a broader sense ofgovernance have called into play Ashby's "law of requisite variety" (which may be interpreted as stating that "the regulators or governors of a system must reflect the variety in that system in order to be of service to it.)."

The question explored here is that of the need to provide a sufficiently rich medium for the communication of complex insights in a world in which the possibilities of governance are constrained by the explanations and proposals that can be made meaningful to public opinion. The complexity of econometric and global models in their present form make it improbable that they can be of any significance to those who must justify their actions to public opinion.

II. Contemporary crisis of governance

Clusters of dilemmas

This section endeavours to order the principal factors contributing to the contemporary crisis of governance. Such factors may be clustered in different ways. The number of such clusters it is useful to select is partially determined by the following constraints, as explored in earlier papers (4):

  • too few clusters, and the set either omits significant factors or these are too implicit in the clusters actually selected, thus increasing their ambiguity and diminishing their operational relevance, however appropriate the simplicity may appear for communication and decision-making purposes;
  • too many clusters, and the number of explicit factors, especially for purposes of communication and learning, exceeds the limit on the processing power of the brain (namely seven plus minus one), without having to be re-clustered.

In order therefore to maximize the number of explicit factors identified as contributing to the crisis of governance the following eight clusters have been isolated:

  • (a) Simplicity: Governance, to be feasible, requires that the number of factors or issues on which a mandate is sought, or for which policies must be developed, should be limited in number and defined simply enough to be meaningful. They should be interesting rather than boring. Failing this the preoccupations of governance lose their focus, and the governing body becomes vulnerable to loss of its mandate in favour of some other coalition whose focus is appropriately simple. Conventional strategies in response to this dilemma include:
    • only focusing on those issues which through their identification can conveniently come to be perceived as important as the result of a self-fulfilling process;
    • onlyfocusing on a few macro-issues which lend themselves to a multiplicity of simple descriptions, whilst failing to encompass their inherent complexity.
  • (b) Complexity: Governance, to be practical, must necessarily deal with the complexities and crises of the real world, whether or not they lend themselves to any meaningful ordering or pattern of mandates for specialized agencies. Failing this governance is overwhelmed by the many pressures of the moment and becomes vulnerable to loss of its mandate in favour of some other coalition that can deal with them. Conventional strategies in response to complexity and the associated information overload include:
    • elaboration of an array of administrative procedures, plus filtering and delaying mechanisms for every conceivable circumstance;
    • displacement of new issues and pressures by other issues and pressures for which procedural responses already exist.
  • (c) Requisite variety: Governance, in order to be able to exert some long-term degree of control over the dynamics of society, must itself be sufficiently varied in its policy-making capacity to respond to the variety of issues which may emerge. Failing this the governing body is caught off-balance by the dynamics of the society and is vulnerable to loss of its mandate in favour of some appropriately dynamic coalition. Conventional strategies in response to this challenge include:
    • emphasis on short-term issues and programmes to disguise any lack of ability to handle long-term trends;
    • emphasis on publicizing long-term projects, whilst disguising the degree to which they themselves will aggravate other problems for which no remedy has been envisaged.
  • (d) Operational relevance: Governance, in order to be credible to those mandating it, must be able to formulate its policies in a form which is readily implementable, especially in response to issues which call for immediate action. Failing this the governing body is perceived as irrelevant to the solution of pressing issues and is vulnerable to loss of its mandate in favour of some more practical coalition. Conventional strategies in response to this requirement include:
    • emphasis on short-term remedial programmes, irrespective of whether these effectively respond to the problem which evoked their creation; - focusing attention away from the more obvious solution onto the necessity for some alternative programme of effective remedial action (for which an appropriate mandate may not be obtainable).
  • (e) Complementarity: Governance, in order to attract support from a plurality of unrelated (or even mutually hostile) sectors, must be able to configure those sectors into a pattern such that they appear as complementary to one another. Failure of the governing body to establish such a context, or community of interest, leads to fragmentation and erosion of its support, rendering it vulnerable to any coalition of wider appeal. Conventionalstrategies in response to this requirement include:
    • promotion of superficial consensus in such a way as to disguise irreconcilable differences between sectors;
    • cultivation of distinct communications with each sector, concealing any contradictions between the undertakings made.
  • (f) Difference: Governance, in order to respond effectively to disagreement, critical opposition and alternative insights, must develop some means of dealing with incommensurable positions. Failure of the governing body to develop such skills makes any form of co-existence with its opponents unstable and renders it highly vulnerable to attack. Conventional strategies in response to such differences include:
    • disparagement, neutralization or suppression of any dissidence (possibly through judicious manipulation of information), implicitly denying any merit in such viewpoints;
    • efforts to persuade the dissident group to modify its position or to coopt its members.
  • (g) Containment: Governance, to be able to maintain its domain of influence, must reinforce a certain order within definable boundaries. Failure of the governing body to do so results in an open system vulnerable to the effects of uncontrollable variations in external influences. Conventional strategies in response to this requirement include:
    • strengthening of boundaries and gate-keeping functions, justified by the necessity of excluding "undesirable" influences;
    • limiting freedom of action in order to facilitate the maintenance of the favoured order.
  • (h) Empowerment: Governance, to be able to encourage the growth and development expected by those who mandate it, must be able to empower people and groups to undertake and sustain new initiatives of their own accord. Failure of the governing body to do so results in stagnation and disaffection rendering it vulnerable to replacement by a coalition encouraging such initiative. Conventional strategies in response to this requirement include:
    • mobilization of people and groups in support of some defined programme, irrespective of the initiatives they would otherwise choose to take;
    • manipulation, subversion or cooptation of initiatives if they achieve any degree of social significance.

Fourfold principle of uncertainty in governance

As argued elsewhere (5), especially in the light of epistemological problems in the social sciences which suggest that a generalized Heizenberg principle operates in the social sciences (6), the dilemmas of the previous section could well be summarized in a four-fold principle of uncertainty as follows:

  • A governing mode in which it is easy to say "no" overtly, makes it very difficult to say "yes" except covertly, whereas one in which it is easy to say "yes" overtly makes it very difficultto say "no" except covertly.
  • A governing mode which encourages overt declarations of consensus has great difficulty in accepting fundamental differences in practice except covertly, whereas one in which differences are realistically accepted has great difficulty in establishing consensus except covertly.
  • A governing mode of requisite variety for long-term continuity has great difficulty in elaborating appropriate short-term programmes except covertly, whereas one in which operationally relevant short-term programmes are easily elaborated has great difficulty in ensuring any policy of long-term significance except covertly.
  • A governing mode which can be made meaningful and inspiring has great difficulty in taking into account the full complexity of a practical situation except covertly, whereas one which takes into account that complexity in all its operational detail cannot be meaningful and inspiring except covertly.

Use of the terms "overt" and "covert" could be considered as unnecessarily value-loaded. Alternatives might be "formal" and "informal" or else "public" and "private".

The merit of using "covert" is that it emphasizes the potential for procedural abuse and manipulative processes in certain situations, namely insidious corruption. These points are perhaps well illustrated by the difference between the overt processes in international organizations and those occurring behind the scenes (and covered by security clauses in employment contacts).

Whilst there is much overt discussion of the efficiencies in the overt processes (as in the recent reviews of the United Nations and UNESCO), the dysfunctional features of the covert processes are only discussed in corridor gossip and newsworthy exposés. There has never been any overt study by an international body of corruption in governance at all levels, and especially of corruption in such international bodies. Yet "corruption" is frequently cited in informal reports as a cause of inefficiencies in the implementation of programmes.

This paper is not about corruption but about the inability to fully encompass conceptually the processes of governance in an adequate model or set of models. This results in grey areas in which dysfunctional processes proliferate, however carefully the overt processes are defined. These are the shadow side of governance. Any attempt to envisage new approaches to governance that neglects this dimension, or fails to come to terms with it, must necessarily fall victim to the ways in which it undermines effectiveness.

Tools of Governance

In the fluid situation indicated above, the process of governance is based on the use of a spectrum of tools. These may be usefully clustered for comparison in Figure 1 in terms of the dilemmas noted above.

From the table it is clear that no single tool permits a satisfactory response to all the dilemmas. Just as: "It is true that you may fool all the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all of the time; but you can't fool all of the people all the time" (Abraham Lincoln), so governance should not fool itself. Governance can rely on all those tools some of the time, on some of those tools all the time, but cannot rely on all of the tools all the time.

Each of the tools has strength and weaknesses which are highlighted differently by the different dilemmas. The fluidity of the situation brings out the point that whilst governance may rely on those tools, it cannot be wholly identified with them. The fundamental challenge of governance would appear to be in the art of when to rely on which combination of tools, and for how long.

Sustaining development: the epistemological challenge of governance

Sustainable development is usually conceived as a problem of instrumentality - namely deploying the available organizational and conceptual resources to achieve what seems appropriate. An earlier paper (2) argues that this approach fails completely to recognize the inherent difficulties in comprehending the instrumental design which is appropriate - and of communication that comprehension, with all its members through the processes of governance.

The following hidden assumptions were listed to illustrate this failure:

  • That the mode is inherently better in some absolute sense in that,
    • conversely, the old mode must necessarily be permanently abandoned as historically outmoded;
    • the defects in the new mode will not eventually prove to be as significant as those under the old mode.
  • That the new mode is equally appropriate to all societies and to all sub-cultures within those societies, especially if adapted to local contexts and requirements.
  • That, if it can be comprehended, represented and discussed within one frame of reference, the mode can nevertheless be of sufficient complexity to respond to the concerns perceived by constituencies preferring other frames of reference.
  • That an appropriate new mode can be readily articulated in its entirety, rather than necessarily provoking a set of partial comprehensions which people, of whatever level of competence, experience considerable difficulty in integrating/reconciling, even if they are motivated to do so.
  • That an appropriate mode can be readily implemented by a consistent pattern of actions, rather than requiring set of seemingly inconsistent and incompatible actions, each favoured or condemned by some different configuration of constituencies.
  • That the coherence and integrity of an appropriate modederives from a hierarchical relationship between its components, as opposed to other possibilities with characteristics such as:
    • configurations of incommensurable conceptual or organizational groupings in which the hierarchical dimension, if any, is secondary or implicit;
    • cyclic phases of emphasis over time;
    • alternation between seemingly opposed or contradictory policy modes.
  • That credible articulations of a seemingly attractive approach do not effectively obscure hard realities to which the advocating group may be insensitive (or anxious to avoid discussing in order to further some hidden agenda).
  • That any readily devised approach will not necessarily provoke counter-strategies or strategies which exploit the situation created by the implementation of the new approach, undermining it and eventually rendering it ineffective.
  • That, during the implementation of the appropriate new mode, it is possible for any given constituency to avoid being trapped into recognizing any necessary practical strategy in either a "positive" of a "negative" light, and consequently to be entrained to further or oppose that partial strategy, without consideration of whether such effort is excessive in the light of the contextual mode to which it contributes.
  • That the essence of being human, and of human development, involves processes free from ambiguity, paradox and counter-intuitive phases, permitting an appropriate new mode to be articulated in an manner free of such non-rational characteristics.

The remainder of that paper considered the probability that the appropriate global socio-economic mode of organization is necessarily more complex than can be recognized or comprehended within any particular frame of reference - whether conceptual or organizational. The question here is how to describe and handle this epistemological challenge for governance.

The question has been helpfully highlighted by the recent study prepared by Development Alternatives (New Delhi) on "A transcultural view of sustainable development; the landscape of design" as a contribution to the final deliberations of the World Commission on Environment and Development (7). The study outlines "transform grammar of design" based on a "phase space" model using a n-dimensional space to show the evolution of a system (where n is the number of degrees of freedom, or independent variables, needed to describe the system at the level of recursion or aggregation of the model under study). The work draws on recent theoretical advances, including those of Shannon (1962), Ashby (1956), Beer (1979), Prigogine (1985), Zadeh (1965) and de Laet (1985).

The study uses four dimensions to describe systems of interest: and can be partially represented in two dimensions (see Figure 2), in which the dimensions are variety (x-axis), productivity (y-axis), wealth (z-axis) and time. The four corners of the X-Yplane then correspond closely with four basic states of society:

  1. preservation: homeostasis - stabilizing, maintaining and protecting
  2. assessment: stasis - evaluating, appraising and monitoring
  3. administration: growing - ruling, governing and cultivating
  4. conservation: developing - adapting, innovating and anticipating

The interesting feature of the space so defined is that the trajectory of a social system can be plotted on it to yield valuable insights into its behaviour and potential. The space is characterized by gradients which represent various forces of nature and society. The study identifies 16 generic transforms acting upon any system and attracting it towards one of the four fundamental conditions.

The study points out that such transforms are like the topography of a landscape (changing as the resultant of successive action and feedback) which can direct and channel the movement of a river - hence the subtitle of that paper. Such an approach is in sympathy with the fruitful work by Waddington based on an "epigenetic landscape"(8), and developed by Erich Jantsch (9,10) with respect to policy related questions. The study does not attempt to relate these to the 16 "archetypal" morphologies identified by René Thom in examining related questions (11).

But whilst the Development Alternatives' study sharpens the focus, the result is a model. The authors themselves express reservations about the past uses of such models, although they are optimistic about their own. A step further can however be envisaged (and has been the subject of lengthy discussion with them prior to the preparation of this paper.)

It is apparently necessary to "freeze" any such "epistemological landscape" into a well-defined model in order to navigate over the landscape. And within the short time scales (and electoral periods) characteristic of the majority of the problems of governance (and the budgetary periods of international organizations) such a landscape may legitimately be considered to be unchanging. Governance can then endeavour to move the social system over the landscape.

The epistemological problem lies in the fact that different constituencies are sensitive to different dimensions of the "n-dimensional phase space" out of which the model is extracted or abstracted. Consequently the epistemological landscape perceived by one group may be very different from that which is meaningful to another - such that each may be the basis for the strategies and programmes of a different intergovernmental agency. This has the further consequence between agencies of reinforcing incompatibilities, contradictions, competition for resources and even the undermining of one strategy by another - as has been noted on many occasions, and most recently by Maurice Bertrand (1). It is therefore less fruitful to focus initially on anyparticular way of viewing the n-dimensional phase space. Rather it would seem more appropriate to consider the epistemological challenge of how to open up any "window of comprehension" onto such complexity - and how to perceive the relationship between such windows, whether used simultaneously (by different groups) or consecutively.

Before taking the argument further it is necessary to avoid the trap of using the phase space notion itself as a fundamental window. It is a powerful tool but not necessarily convenient for all. "Complexity" has itself recently attracted attention in its own right (12). "Chaos" is now a key descriptor for some interesting breakthroughs in mathematics (13,14). Although it would be incompatible with the theme of this paper to favour any one such description, it is important to recognize the range of attempts to indicate the epistemological attributes at this level of abstraction.

It is somewhat ironic that the earlier Greek philosophers made use of the Greek term "hyle" (matter) and viewed such matter as fundamentally alive, either in itself or by its participation in the operation of a world soul or some similar principle. Characteristically they did not distinguish between kinds of matter, forces and qualities nor between physical and emotional qualities, making any such distinction with an important degree of ambiguity.

The contemporary epistemological challenge remains one of dealing with a form of "conceptual hyle" or "mindstuff" within which the variety of possible models and concepts is implicit and from which they may be explicated, as described by David Bohm (15). This is not to suggest that the "hyle" is purely conceptual. As contemporary studies of this intimate relationship between consciousness and fundamental understanding in physics are clarifying, there is a matter-consciousness continuum of perhaps greater significance than the space-time continuum. Relevant insights from Eastern philosophies are also increasingly (16,17) noted. The comprehension of features explicated from the "hyle" is as much constrained by the realities dear to materialists as it is by individual (or collective) ability to formulate appropriate models of requisite variety and to communicate them.

The challenge of governance is to enable society to navigate through the "hyle", avoiding catastrophic disasters in a manner such as to sustain a process of "development" over the long-term - whatever "development" is understood to mean in the short-term under different circumstances, within different cultures and at different stages of that process. But since governance is above all constrained by daily practicalities, there is a dramatic problem of ensuring some kind of meaningful epistemological bridge between the multi-dimensional fluidity or ambiguity of the "hyle" - with all the innovative potential that implies - and the concrete socio-political realities to which it must respond effectively or be called into question.

III. Metaphor as an unexplored resource

Metaphor: a keystone function?

Metaphor is a classic device through which a complex set of elements and relationships can be rendered comprehensible - when any attempt to explain them otherwise could easily be meaningless. It is the peculiar strength of metaphor that it can convey the essential without excessive oversimplification, preserving its complexity by perceiving it through a familiar pattern of equivalent complexity.

A metaphor according to Nelson Goodman, "typically involves a change not merely of range but also of realm. A label along with others constituting a schema is in effect detached from the home realm of that schema and applied for the sorting and organizing of an alien realm. Partly by thus carrying with it a reorientation of a whole network of labels does a metaphor give clues for its own development and elaboration... A whole set of alternative labels, a whole apparatus of organization takes over a new territory... and the organization they effect in the alien realm is guided by their habitual use in the home realm. A schema may be transported almost anywhere. The choice of territory for invasion is arbitrary; but the operation within that territory is almost never completely so... which elements in the chosen realm are warm, or are warmer than others, is then very largely determinate. Even where a schema is imposed upon a most unlikely and uncongenial realm, antecedent practice channels the application of the labels." (18, p.72-74)

In relation to governance it is useful to distinguish two basic functions of metaphor, as represented in Figure 3.

  • Initiatory function: the importance of metaphor in relationship to creativity, whether in the arts or the sciences, has been frequently noted. Through exploration of "lateralthinking", for example, this has been extended to management (20). In such cases metaphor is the vehicle of insight and provides the first ordering of a previously inchoate set of possibilities and constraints. It is thus a vital tool for concept design. Through a metaphor the earlier confusion is seen in a new way. Once this is possible, other tools may build on this foundation. In the case of governance, this may mean the formulation of a strategy, a slogan, a model, etc. Any such formulation may well make no reference to the triggering metaphor.
  • Communicative function: once a concept has been formulated, it usually has to be communicated to people and groups who are unfamiliar with the specialized jargon in which it is embodied - and quite possible completely disinclined to learn it. In such a situation, metaphor can be called upon to convey the essentials of the concept. In the case of governance, this may mean the presentation of a model or a strategy. Such presentation may, or may not, use the same metaphor as that through which such a strategy was conceived.

The use of metaphors for communicative purposes clearly has an important integrative function in relating the governors and the governed. But it is the initiatory function which is of prime importance to the internal processes of governance. In a sense metaphor here has a "keystone" function as the ordering pattern or matrix through which strategies, models and programmes take form. It provides the implicit bridge between the disparate tools of governance.

Governance, especially when faced with the complex challenge of sustaining development, makes use of metaphor (whether explicitly or implicitly) in ordering its priorities and strategies. It is such fundamental metaphors imposed upon the "hyle", which give form and stability to a "landscape" on which the hazards and opportunities of governance are mapped. A major attribute of governance is the skill required to traverse such a terrain, possibly whilst under attack from hostile or destabilizing forces. But of equal importance, especially in the long-term, is the ability to switch to a new metaphor through which the epistemological domain is ordered. For, given the inherent complexity of the "hyle", no one metaphor can adequately encompass the dimensions to which governance must respond.

To fulfil its function governance must be able to orient itself in terms of a succession of more appropriate "landscapes". It is possible for a single root metaphor to last the duration of a period of government (and electoral period) and engender a variety of needed strategies. But in a highly turbulent socio-political context, such a single metaphor is more then likely to prove inadequate. Governance then requires the skill to move between a set of metaphors each capable of rendering comprehensible certain sets of dimensions of the hyle. For this skill to become communicable it must itself be embodied in a metaphor.

Challenge for communication devices

There are many aids to communication, as identified in the Formsof Presentation sub-project of the UN University's project on Goals, Processes and Indicators of Development (22). Each form obviously has both strengths and weaknesses, depending on a number of factors but especially on the subtlety or complexity of what needs to be communicated and to whom. The question is whether it is possible to devise some means of by-passing the desperately slow learning cycle associated with research-education-policy formulation-implementation in a world in which the education gap is increasing rapidly.

If the current crisis is to be taken seriously, people need to acquire access to an appropriate response by some other means. The unfortunate characteristic of answer propagation in response to the global problematique, as currently practised with all the skills of media specialists, is that it is conceived in terms of mechanical metaphors such as "hitting" a "target" audience and achieving "impact". This is the approach used both by the public information programmes of the United Nations family of organizations and by grass-roots initiatives such as the recent Planetary Initiative for the World We Choose. This could be described as a "particle" approach acting to achieve the displacement of people from one mind-set to another. Arguments presented elsewhere (23) suggest the need for a complementary "wave" approach acting to achieve the entrainment of people in terms of their current mind-sets. Propagating an answer by resonance may prove to be a more appropriate mode in dealing with the "field" of world opinion. Particle propagation tends to be considerably slower than wave propagation, as well as being easily blocked or deflected.

The challenge is to make available something simple enough to be comprehensible and yet "seductive" enough to retain peoples involvement. On the other hand, if it is to be of any value at this time, it must also be sufficiently complex and coherent to encompass the complexity of a social reality in crisis, and yet empower people to act together to contain the crisis in such a way as to be transformed by the unique learning opportunity it constitutes. This is a tall order, far beyond the capability or ambition of conventional international programmes.

Under the circumstances it is appropriate to look at unconventional possibilities. One approach is through existing processes, penetrating all levels of society, which already hold most peoples attention, transform their awareness, and govern their actions. The challenge would then be whether it was possible to "code" onto these, as a kind of "carrier", a second level of meaning. The "double meaning" should then offer a totally new set of insights suggesting new patterns of action.

Some possibilities for this approach are: popular music and dance, spectator competitive sports, strip cartoons, rumour and scandal, humour, astrology and divination, myths and legends, fables and parables, sex, courtship and family life, nature and weather patterns. The merit of the last possibilities is that they effectively involve coding the world problematique back onto the world and onto human beings, which would seem to be a conceptually elegant response to the problem of self-reference (24,25) in a society if constantly shifting patterns of meaning.Whether we like it or not, as Hilary Lawson notes in reviewing the "post-modern predicament":

    "No assertion is simply an assertion, for it carries within it the unsaid awareness that it cannot be asserted. In this sense reflexivity is no longer a form of self-reference, a paradoxical puzzle, or a philosophical argument, but an inescapable movement which is still present in the movements of apparent stillness. It is as if (speaking metaphorically!), we are caught in the metaphors of language and there is no way to halt their shifting character." (26)

There is also merit in relating a conscious pattern of significance to a substrate by which people are usually governed unconsciously. In Jungian terms this is an appropriate and fruitful form of marriage between conscious and unconscious elements. Humanity's inability to relate creatively to aspects of these unconscious elements (eg the environment and the reproductive instinct) severely aggravates the problematique (eg environmental degradation and the population explosion.)

Metaphors as a short-cut

The approach advocated therefore involves exploration of the possibility of activating new metaphors which can enchant, empower, explain and orient approaches to the problematique through the user's own comprehension of each metaphor's significance, whether amongst the governors or the governed. Such a use of metaphor is only new in that metaphors have not been deliberately used in this way before, despite the fact that everyone has access to them. In Kenneth Boulding's words: "Our consciousness of the unity of the self in the middle of a vast complexity of images or material structures is at least a suitable metaphor for the unity of a group, organization, department, discipline, or science. If personification is only a metaphor, let us not despise metaphors - we might be one ourselves."(28, p.345) Or, as the poet John Keats puts it: "A man's life is a continual allegory - and very few eyes can see the mystery of his life - a life like the scriptures, figurative." The charm of it, as Bateson stated in concluding a conference on the effects of conscious purpose on human adaptation, is that: "We are our own metaphor." (29, p.304). Unfortunately we have over-identified with the metaphor and have been unable to see ourselves in perspective. The lack of such self-reflexiveness could well prove to be an important contributory factor to the current uncontrolled attitude to procreation which is at the root of many current problems.

Metaphors are much used in every culture by people of every kind as vital short cuts to the communication of nuance and complexity. There is a desperate need for any such short cuts at a time when new intellectual and other insights are virtually inaccessible to most people unfamiliar with the professional jargons in which they are formulated. Metaphors have the tremendous advantage of being grounded in what is familiar, often at a gut level. As such, not only do they facilitate rapid comprehension, but they often suggest new dimensions to what is being conveyed through them. These unforeseen dimensions can provide subtle poetic linkages between isolated mechanistic concepts, as well as totally new insights to be explored.

The natural environment, for example, gives perceptible, concrete, three-dimensional illustrations of the kinds of subtle distinctions which the mind is capable of making. Metaphors based upon any such phenomena therefore firm up intuitions of relationships between non-physical phenomena - rather than reducing them to simplistic, mechanistic forms (as tends, to happen when the natural environment is destroyed, impoverished or inaccessible). They thus offer insights into the management of differences. Metaphors have a unique ability to enchant people and capture their imagination - at a time when alienation andcynicism are the rule. This in fact is what has made them extremely suspect in the eyes of professional intellectuals. As with any tool, however, the issue is really one of learning when and how to use it, and to what purpose.

Comprehension of problems and their possible solutions, for example, may lie in understanding how their metaphorical equivalents may be interrelated. Lakoff and Johnson cite the example of a foreign student of theirs who, on encountering the expression "solution of your problems", assumed that this was a well-recognized chemical metaphor. Through it he had immediately obtained an understanding of the set of problems as being made up of some dissolved into a solution whilst others had been precipitated out (perhaps later to be redissolved again). In this light problems never completely disappear, some are perceptible, whereas others have been temporarily "solved". Any attempt to solve some problems may quite probably precipitate out others. As Lakoff and Johnson say: "To live by the chemical metaphor...rather than direct your energies towards solving your problems once and for all, you would direct your energies toward finding out what catalysts will dissolve your most pressing ones for the longest time without precipitating out worse ones."(30,p. 143-144).

Resurgence of metaphor

Since the early 1970s there has been a progressive increase in the study of metaphor, accompanied by a number of breakthroughs in understanding about the function of metaphor. A bibliography of post-1970 publications on metaphor records 4193 items (19).

It is interesting that this rise in interest should occur in the same period as the widespread recognition of information overload and fragmentation of the body of knowledge. The historian Frances Yates in her study of the art of memory (31), points out that modern intellectual endeavour has inherited from scolasticism its devotion to the rational and the abstract as the true pursuit of rational beings and "banned metaphor and poetry as belonging to the lower imaginative level" (31,77). She states: "To move, to excite the imagination and the emotions with metaphorical seems a suggestion utterly contrary to the scholastic puritanism..." (31, p. 77).

Since the current crisis of governance involves both the dimensions of comprehending complexity and of motivating people, it is intriguing that Yates should demonstrate the key role of metaphor in the neglected art of enhancing memory skills. Yates asks whether it would not be easier to remember a multitude of actual facts (propria) rather than use metaphors (metaphorical) as a means of ordering them. She salutes Albertus Magnus (across) the ages for his concern: (1) "that images are an aid to memory; (2) that many propria can be remembered through a few images; (3) that, although the propria give more exact information about the thing itself, yet the metaphorical move the soul more and therefore better help the memory" (31, p.77).

In these terms the challenge to memory is the underlying problem posed by complexity and for governance. More complex processes call for a longer collective attention span. "Something has been left out all along the line and it is memory" (31, p.89). The need for memory aids may indeed be a major factor in the rise in interest in metaphor.

It is now recognized that metaphors permeate use of both everyday language and the jargons of many disciplines including physics (32,33). As George Lakoff and Mark Johnson note: "Metaphor is for most people a device of the poetic imagination and the rhetorical flourish - a matter of extraordinary rather than ordinary language...most people think they can get along perfectly well without metaphor. We have found, on the contrary, that 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." (30, p.3)

Lakoff and Johnson demonstrate this with many examples which are confirmed in Roger Jones study of Physics as Metaphor (33). The authors conclude that "If we are right in suggesting that our conceptual system is largely metaphorical, then the way we think, what we experience, and what we do every day is very much a matter of metaphor." (30, p.3) They started their work from a concern that the understanding of meaning as explored by Western philosophy and linguistics had very little to do with what people found meaningful in their lives and quickly discovered that the assumptions of those disciplines precluded them from even raising the kinds of issue they wished to address. "The problem was not one of extending or patching up some existing theory of meaning but of revising central assumptions in the Western philosophical tradition. In particular, this meant rejecting the possibility of any objective or absolute truth... It also meant supplying an alternative account in which human experience and understanding, rather than objective truth, played the central role." (30, p.x)

The authors show how metaphor reveals the limitations of objectivism, namely the assumption that the world is made of distinct objects with inherent properties and fixed relations between them. In a subsequent paper Lakoff takes the investigation a step further with an extensive exploration of classical assumptions about categories and cognitive models. He concludes: "Changing our ideas about categories will require changing our ideas about rational thought, the nature of the mind and its r