Meme #4 - Without Metaphor

In Entangled Life, Merlin Sheldrake suggests that a human-centric point of view can be unnecessarily limiting, because as he states: 

[S]peaking might not always require a mouth, hearing might now always require ears, and interpreting might not always require a nervous system. (p.42) 

This distinction is important because we tend to overlay human concepts onto the non-human world, which stops us from experiencing what it really is. Instead, it becomes what we want it to be. For instance, Sheldrake reminds us that the mycorrhizal network that distributes resources within a forest eco-system is neither capitalist or socialist, even though our minds may naturally turn to these human-centric metaphors to explain and find meaning to what’s happening below the surface. If we are of a capitalistic bent, we will see its attributes everywhere and if we lean more towards socialism, we will see that. But it’s neither. Our metaphors just distort the picture. 

Beyond the need to practice using a nonhuman-centric approach, Sheldrake goes further and proposes the desirability of sometimes operating without any metaphor. For instance, regarding the label, Wood Wide Web, he asks: 

Are we able to release ourselves from these metaphors, think outside the skull, and learn to talk about the wood wide web without leaning on one of our well-worn totems? Are we able to let shared mycorrhizal networks be questions, rather than answers known in advance? (p.174) 

Of course, we can’t always function without metaphor. We need symbolic figures of speech to organize a staggering amount of sensory input into manageable concepts. This is a good thing. Forbidding metaphor would make it impossible to navigate the world and shackle scientific (not to mention poetic) pursuits. Sheldrake cautions against dogmatism in this regard, even proposing that while it's a laudable goal to not anthropomorphize the non-human world, this might lead us to inadvertently, "pass over - or forget to notice” something of great importance. He relates that the biologist Robin Wall Kimmerer’s promotes a “grammar of animacy,” which allows us: 

[T]o talk about the life of other organisms without either reducing them to an “it” or borrowing concepts traditionally reserved for humans. By contrast, in English, writes Kimmerer, there is no way to recognize the “simple existence of another living being.” If you’re not a human subject, by default you’re an inanimate object: an “it” a “mere thing.” If you repurpose a human concept to help make sense of the life of a nonhuman organism, you’ve tumbled into the trap of anthropomorphism. Use “it,” and you’ve objectified the organism and fallen into a different kind of trap. (p.42) 

Simply, Wall Kimmerer suggests that we should treat all non-human organisms as subjects too, affording them dignity and respect without resorting to anthropomorphism to do it.

Sheldrake makes a related point. He writes that there is a time and place for all types of lenses, but since we overwhelmingly use a human-centric metaphor to explain what we experience, we lock ourselves inside its tight intellectual box, becoming blind to many other ways of understanding. This is no way to emulate the Way of Fungi. While Sheldrake correctly asserts that, “we have no way of knowing what it is like for a hypha to sense or interpret,” (p.44) it is clear that their lives are much more fluid than our own and unrestrained by the same linguistic restrictions we place upon ourselves. Therefore, for those of us who want to develop a more fungi-like lifestyle, it would be worthwhile to take his advice and practice functioning without metaphor when situations allow. Although, this leads to a quandary: How do we learn to break the habit of using metaphors without turning to another metaphor to resolve the problem? The answer, I believe, is to use an example instead. 

An example is just a breath away from a metaphor - but they’re not quite the same. A metaphor is symbolic: “The Wood Wide Web is a commodities trading floor.” Actually, it’s not but the metaphor helps explain the dynamics in a way that is familiar. An example, on the other hand is concrete: “How can we move away from a traditional, human perspective? By using, for example, a non-binary approach to decision-making because answers don’t always have to be all or nothing.” This is an activity to copy, not an idea to explore. We’re not going to break away from our traditional ways of thinking by being generally “like something else.” Instead, we need to find concrete examples to follow that will naturally lead to the desired result. A historic case study that demonstrates this dynamic is how the Buddha communicated his experience of spiritual awakening to his disciples.

There is no arguing that spiritual awakening is the central goal of Buddhist practice because it naturally leads to other desired results like acting compassionately toward all sentient beings. If we’ve had a spiritual awakening, we don’t need to try to be compassionate. We are compassionate as a result of the awakening. So, it may seem surprising that the Buddha never described his experience, but it was for one simple reason: he couldn’t. Spiritual awakening is not a hollow epiphany that comes and goes. Rather, it is a pure experience that resides beyond concepts and metaphors and pushes us into a completely foreign space. But he had to do something so his followers might experience it too. Therefore, he encouraged activities, called the Eightfold Path, that led naturally to the student’s awakening. This is a brilliant work-around we can emulate because we are in the same position. Trying to “think without metaphor” is fruitless because human cognition is, as a rule, abstract and symbolic. Therefore, like the student’s awakening, thinking without metaphor, or “outside the skull” as Sheldrake calls it, is something that needs to be a natural result of other activities rather than a goal to pursue. 

The twelve memes related to The Way of Fungi are just those activities. Among other things, this book is meant to be a map on how to arrive at an altered state of being. “Thinking without metaphor” is not a goal to pursue, but a type of awakening triggered by studying the Way of Fungi intensely and copying their activities. It is a state that arises without intention and allows us to join with the non-human world completely while in it - although, other types of thinking may occur at these moments too. For instance, we may focus on details in an environment, formulate connections to other systems, and even visualize the future but these thoughts will be uncontaminated by distortions created by the lenses of our standard, human-centric metaphors. We will be truly subsumed, and authentically a part of the world around us without any artificial distinctions between “I” and “it.” Reading and re-reading Merlin Sheldrake’s book, Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds and Shape Our Futures is a great starting point. Contemplating the activities inherent to a fungi lifestyle found in this series of essays - and emulating them - is another good step. Joining a local mycological club and foraging for mushrooms are fantastic activities to try. Committing to this approach may lead, sooner or later without even realizing it, to moments when we are thinking without metaphor - “outside the skull” - which can then feed a lifetime of heightened, authentic living.