Understanding a thing is to arrive at a metaphor for that thing by substituting something more familiar to us. And the feeling of familiarity is the feeling of understanding. - JULIAN JAYNES
I am still reading the book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, and the book continues to impress. One of the interesting ideas in the book is that consciousness involves finding and applying metaphors. If this is true, in order to “understand” life we need to have a metaphor for what we are doing here.
In a previous post I wrote that one of the defining features of the Millennial generation is that they grow up and realize that everything still doesn’t make sense. Another way to characterize this is that they don’t have a satisfying metaphor.
Mormon Metaphors
Many years ago I served an LDS mission to Latvia. During that time another missionary made a comment that I will always remember. He said “the mission is the last time in your life when you will know for sure that you are in the right place doing the right thing.”
One way to understand this statement is that the Mormon church has clear metaphors that apply for missionaries, but not for other periods in our lives.
So what are some of the metaphors the church has? Two that come immediately to mind are the warrior metaphor and the test metaphor.
The warrior metaphor is that members of the church are engaged in a fight against evil, that we have our marching orders and all we have to do is go forth and fight.
When serving a mission, the warrior metaphor is pretty apt. A missionary knows what they are supposed to be doing, and they just have to get up each day and march.
The test metaphor is based in the idea that this life is really just a phase where we are supposed to learn, grow in knowledge and faith, and then prepare for the “real” life which comes afterwards.
In a way the warrior metaphor and the test metaphor are polar opposites. In the warrior metaphor we have clear orders and all we have to do is carry them out. In the test metaphor, things aren’t supposed to be clear because we are just school children figuring things out.
In the warrior metaphor, the consequences of our actions are critical, because we are in a war and if we don’t fight evil can win (or win some battles that it otherwise wouldn’t). In the test metaphor, things don’t matter so much because it is only a test. We are supposed to make mistakes, but in the end we need to demonstrate that we have learned from them and that we are ready for bigger and better things (like building worlds with God in the next life).
Running Out of Metaphors
After coming home from my mission, I did have a sense that my metaphors had run out. I didn’t really have any marching orders, so the warrior metaphor didn’t quite fit. The test metaphor seemed more apt, because I was certainly making mistakes. But what exactly was I supposed to learning anyway?
At the end of the day, I just tried to do the next right thing. In the end, the lack of a satisfying metaphor was one of the things that ultimately led me to leave the church and try to find the truth on my own.
For years I was sort of lost. At times I kept asking myself whether there was any point to it all. The way I answered is the question is to remind myself that I wanted to keep breathing. I cared about finding a romantic partner, and then about finding a career, and then about my daughter. I cared about the things directly in front of me, and this was sufficient evidence that life was still worth living. But I felt lost.
A New Metaphor
I would characterize the last few years of my life as a mid-life crisis at first. I left a comfortable, high-paying job. I started a new business. And then I decided that I needed to have a philosophy, and I started searching. Pretty soon I found something that has become my metaphor: building my tribe.
The tribe metaphor strikes a balance between the certainty of the warrior metaphor and the aimlessness of the test metaphor. I don’t know how to build a tribe (i.e., its not like having marching orders), so I will make mistakes, but it is something I can learn and work toward (i.e., my actions are meaningful in themselves without looking past this life to the next).
The tribe metaphor was always there in front of my. The LDS church has always emphasized the importance of building an eternal family. I just didn’t see it or understand it as a thing I could be actively learning an building. Perhaps part of the reason is that the concept of “eternal” reminded me of the test metaphor. That is, that this life is a trial run, and the real important stuff happens later. Even though it focused on family, it felt distant and impersonal.
But tribe building is a metaphor for adults. There comes a time in our lives when it feels like we have to take responsibility and start building something. It’s not enough to march, and it’s not enough to experiment. We have responsibilities and burdens, and we want them to mean something. We have to make decisions, and we want need a compass to guide us.
So I would encourage you to ask yourself: what is your guiding metaphor? If you don’t have one, chances are there will be a void in your life. Like Jaynes, I think that metaphors are an essential aspect of consciousness. And if we don’t have a guiding metaphor for life itself, the whole enterprise can seem somehow pointless.
I have mentioned before that when I was young I was very skeptical when people would say that we need to “be a part of something bigger than ourselves.” Military leaders would often say this to justify encouraging us to sacrifice our individual ambitions to fit into the box they wanted us in.
But now I think the feeling is essential. And to properly feel like you are part of something bigger, you don’t just need a group. You need a metaphor. So what is your group, and what is your metaphor?
