Living on a lifeboat.

Abstract

Susanne Langer (1942) has shown that it is probably impossible to approach an unsolved problem save through door of metaphor. Later, attempting to meet demands of rigor, we may achieve some success in cleansing theory of metaphor, though our success is limited if we are unable to avoid using common language, which is shot through and through with fossil metaphors. (I count no less than five in preceding two sentences.) Since metaphorical thinking is inescapable it is pointless merely to weep about our human limitations. We must learn to live with them, to understand them, and to control All of us, said George Eliot in Middlemarch, get our thoughts entangled in metaphors, and act fatally on strength of them. To avoid unconscious suicide we are well advised to pit one metaphor against another. From interplay of competitive metaphors, thoroughly developed, we may come closer to metaphor-free solutions to our problems. No generation has viewed problem of survival of human species as seriously as we have. Inevitably, we have entered this world of concern through door of metaphor. Environmentalists have emphasized image of earth as a spaceship-Spaceship Earth. Kenneth Boulding (1966) is principal architect of this metaphor. It is time, he says, that we replace wasteful cowboy economy of past with frugal economy required for continued survival in limited world we now see ours to be. The metaphor is notably useful in justifying pollution control measures. Unfortunately, image of a spaceship is also used to promote measures that are suicidal. One of these is a immigration policy, which is only a particular instance of a class of policies that are in error because they lead to tragedy of commons (Hardin 1968). These suicidal policies are attractive because they mesh with what we unthinkingly take to be ideals of the best people. What is missing in idealistic view is an insistence that rights and responsibilities must go together. The generous attitude of all too many people results in asserting inalienable rights while ignoring or denying matching responsibilities. For metaphor of a spaceship to be correct aggregate of people on board would have to be under unitary sovereign control (Ophuls 1974). A true ship always has a captain. It is conceivable that a ship could be run by a committee. But it could not possibly survive if its course were determined by bickering tribes that claimed rights without responsibilities. What about Spaceship Earth? It certainly has no captain, and no executive committee. The United Nations is a toothless tiger, because signatories of its charter wanted it that way. The spaceship metaphor is used only to justify spaceship demands on common resources without acknowledging corresponding spaceship responsibilities. An understandable fear of decisive action leads people to embrace incrementalism-moving toward reform by tiny stages. As we shall see, this strategy is counterproductive in area discussed here if it means accepting rights before responsibilities. Where human survival is at stake, acceptance of responsibilities is a precondition to acceptance of rights, if two cannot be introduced simultaneously.