2006 post: metaphors of height and distance

It strikes me that (in terms of Lakoff's idea of cultural metaphors as being powerfully capable of swaying us) the common metaphor used within the West to indicate a gap in the conceptual notions of one person from another is that of Height-versus-lowliness. IN other words, one sees the person who does not appear to understand one's meanings as being relatively lowly in relation to one's conceptual heights. The office cubicle of an individual's A PRIORI assumptions thus develops into levels, until it becomes a skyscraper within the urban jungle. Others may be expected to make up the conceptual difference in understanding by climbng to one's "heights".

Perhaps the implicit as well as ubiquitous nature of this Western cultural metaphor is why many of those in the West, albeit often well training, can find it very hard indeed to even conceptualise any extreme differences pertaining to an Other. (They can kind of make a drastic and desperate leap of faith towards something -- producing a different failure to understand which Edward Said calls "Orientalism". 

But they cannot seem to grasp the possibility of difference via a genuine empirical openness to the other, who is different from themselves.) I think the reason is the hierarchical metaphor -- the metaphor of Height-versus-lowliness which psychologically inscribes the presupposition that there is only one way "up" in terms of social and self development. The West is in a dominant position of global power, so all of its members feel that they can only look down towards more rudimentary conceptualisations, more vulgar positions of self-development (in relation to other cultures) than those in the West have presently obtained.

Assumptions based upon such a metaphor of Height-versus-lowliness produce an emptiness of heart and spirit, when what is left, after all striving, is not the vast landscape of one's experiences, but rather the last rung of the ladder which one still remembers, before pushing one's way up to the next highest level.

I prefer the metaphor of distance-versus-proximity, which I think is more pervasive within African cultures in general. In terms of this alternative metaphor, "If you do not understand me, then it is perhaps caused by your distance from me, experientially or otherwise. Do you wish to make up this ground? If not, then there's no obligation for you to do so. I'm not promising you "higher knowledge" even if you can.  However, you can expect friendship."