Encyclopedia of World Problems

1. Imaginal deficiency

In the light of earlier arguments concerning the "switch metaphor", it is useful to explore further on the assumption that the inadequacies of existing strategies are partly due to poverty of the imagination -- namely to imaginal deficiency at the policy level. The question to be asked is whether there is some pattern to current thinking -- such as reliance on the switch metaphor -- which effectively limits the complexity of the policy options which tend to emerge, especially at the international level.

1. Availability of imagery as a policy constraint

Many studies contributing to policy proposals continue to be made totally independently of any consideration of the imagery through which they may ultimately need to be presented. Many disciplines have a strong bias against imagery of any kind as well as against any consideration of the process whereby insights are communicated.

1. Limitations of dualistic thinking

Much has been said in recent years about the inappropriateness of conventional western mind-sets in responding to the complexities of the environment. Particular criticism has focused on "dualistic" and "linear" thinking. "Holistic" approaches are advocated as more desirable alternatives, but unfortunately without any insights into the practicalities of their implementation. Metaphor may be helpful in this respect.

2. Implicit "switch"' metaphor

1. Context

If a more appropriate mode of socio-economic organization is advocated, the question is how it is to be comprehended in relation to those that preceded it. Acting on the belief in continual linear forward progress, its advocates may hope that it will completely replace preceding modes, since their functions are supposedly more satisfactorily performed by the new mode. Advocates of other modes, relegated to the status of historical curiosities, will not of course see things in that light. In which case the new mode must enter into competition and struggle with the older modes.

The appropriate global socio-economic mode of organization must necessarily be more complex than is accepted within any particular frame of reference. It is therefore more than probable that it cannot be fully comprehended within any single frame of reference.

1. Limitations of axiomatically defined systems

1. Policy fashions

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 (Anthony Judge, Comprehension of Appropriateness, 1986) argues that this approach fails completely to recognize the inherent difficulties in comprehending the instrumental design which is appropriate - and of communicating that comprehension, with all its nuances through the processes of governance.

1. Scope of governance

1. Construction of metaphor

It is strange that of the 4193 items recorded in the post-1970 bibliography of metaphor (J P van Noppen, 1985), only one is concerned with the construction of metaphors - and that only secondarily. The bibliography has a special "Index of tenors, vehicles, and semantic fields" which indicates 500 items covering all the substrates reviewed by studies of metaphor. They include everything from automobile through birth, building, dance, oven, spaceship, theatre to zoological.