From Metaphor to Megaphor

We still refer to the return of daylight as sunrise, although we know the Earth rotates our star into our hemisphere of the firmament, which is not a vault at all. However, the niceties of the differences remain less relevant to our lives and so we persist in using old metaphors in casual expression. Dead metaphors also inhabit our common words. "Examine" is now distinctly ocular, although it comes from the word to weigh, as on a set of scales. The origins cease to resonate with most of us, so we employ the words only in their current meaning, forgetting their ancestry. Examination involves eyes, probably even when scales were involved.

For most of us in most situations, we gain and lose little by knowing and not knowing the differences. These ignorances are such small barnacles on the hulls of our vessels, and who notices the drag? Are we that far off with our estimates of getting from here to there in our own ideas, if we ignore the changes and forget the origins of words, the ancestry of our paradigms? Does it pay to pay such close attention? Perhaps not with certain words. Probably not in many social settings. What motive sends us to that place with those people? What is our intention here?

On the other hand, there are larger paradigms still in our minds, based on those older understandings. Notions of race, for instance, still get bandied about and still play an active role in our social lives. Laws are based on a defunct set of assumptions about racial groups. Personal judgments and important decisions derive from prejudices or from reacting to prejudices. It is the method and the process, not the answer, yes or no, which are the problem.

We are all biologically of the same species. Despite this knowledge, we associate differences of social behavior and aculturation with physical characteristics of ethnicity, as if there were a basis for linking them to the superficial physical differences, or that those physical differences conjoin with behaviors more prevalent in one group or another. The words "ethnicity" and "culture" have taken the place of race-based mythologies, but remain relatively unchanged in how they work within us.

Behaviors come from socialization, from relationships in the family first, and then from in our first community, our neighborhood, school, and town. However, the term "culture" serves as a catch-all for the source of these characteristics. That is an error; the differences are not cultural, deriving from institutions and intergenerational elements, such as religion, customs, educational and political systems. The differences are primarily social, in that they are not taught directly in schools but are learned from behaving like the others around us. It is inaccurate to say that talking loudly and using wild hand gesticulations in casual conversation is cultural. It is not part of a religion or the result of a school. Members of the group learn it from other members of the group as they learn the basics of language. This is socialization, not aculturation.

The basic verbal error is further compounded by a tendency to connect social habits with ethnicity and from there to connect further these things with value judgments, based on our own discomfort or comfort, usually from our own personal problems -- not cultural at all but psychological.

When we ask apparently innocent, curious questions, we reveal a great deal more about the thought processes and assumptive models we use to understand each other and the world. Often we ask after meeting someone, "What's your background?" or "What ethnicity are you?" or "Where does that name come from?"All of those questions, and similar questions directed toward an immediate identification based on what is essentially racial classification, evince a method of interpreting the world based on assumptions about different "cultures" and ethnicity. This method is fundamentally the same as older racist models. Whether the answers are responded to positively or negatively, the underlying process of thought is the problem. It is inaccurate, parochial, and idiotic.

The problem is simply this: The idea that knowing where someone comes from, what nominal ethnic group, will provide better insight than merely observing their immediate behavior is based on prejudices associated with groups in our minds. It can be positive or negative. The process is the problem, and the question indicates that is what is going on. If we ask, it is because we are thinking like that and not necessarily focusing on what a person chooses to say on his or her own. It is our direct interest which exposes our simplistic association of significance with ethnicity. We think it somehow has meaning and a bearing on our relations with this person to categorize him or her based on nationality, tribe, religion. We interpret those classifications outside of what is in front of us, as if the nominal fact were more important than how the person behaves.

Generally, a keen observer will know essentially where someone comes from without asking. With a name, if you know it's origin, fine. But all that is less important than what happens right then. There is no cognitively relevant information from knowing a person's "background" initially, except to pigeon-hole him or her, using experiences and associations with no connection to that newly met person. The innocent questions do not suggest this is what is going on. They affirm that this is the way we are processing information, whether we like it or not, whether we know it or not.

It is the process which is the problem. We show the way we "think" by the questions we ask, and by the way we figure things out. This particular way of asking questions reveals only the limitations of our minds; for the answers can only be interpreted in association with our own experiences, our knowledge and beliefs about different groups. It has no connection with the person in front of us, but is purely our own. Whether we end up loving the person or avoiding him or her, if the process was based on this method, we have failed to use our minds, a habit with implications for all our behaviors, all our decisions.