Action Figure Daniel

Author: Daniel

  • Slow Degradation in a Metaphorical Fire

    Analogies are powerful tools. We use them a lot, really we do. We use them anytime we are trying to describe a complex topic when all other metaphors fail. Analogies are in fact a form of metaphor that we use to describe something in parallel to something else. When we use a metaphor we use other items to describe the subject at hand; with an analogy we compare the subject at hand to another topic and thus infer using “if, then” statements how one works based on the other.

    Analogies simply enough; you pick a complex topic, say ‘life’, then you pick a less complex thing to compare it to, ‘skydiving’: life is like skydiving. This statement is of course true, to a point. When you go skydiving you instructions from an expert while you’re on the ground, then you load up in a plane, take off and jump. When you jump you get to prove how well you listened to the instructions. Once you’ve landed safely a little car comes and picks you up and takes you back to base. You get a little piece of paper congratulating you on a successful dive (and if you paid enough money you get pictures and a video too). Now you are a skydiving expert. So it is in life that you start out for about 18 years getting instructions from an ‘expert, before you load up into a plane called “school”, take off and then jump into your own life. When you jump you get to prove how well you listened to the instructions. Once you’ve landed safely you get in your little car and drive back to your home. You get a little piece of paper saying “you’re married” (and if you paid enough money you get pictures and a video too). Now you are an expert on life and can raise a family.

    Only it’s not really like that at all. Life isn’t so clearly divided into instruction and action. While skydiving even once gives you some experience, having been a child does little to teach effective parenting skills. Particularly considering how little of our earliest years we remember. Skydiving allows for little feedback in new experiences: that is you can’t keep making small tweaks the entire dive. On the other hand, life allows, and in many ways demands, that you make constant modifications in order to land safely.

    The metaphor works on the beginning levels – when talking about the stages of skydiving compared to the stage of life – but breaks down as it gets more analogous – when we continue the metaphor into having been a child allows one to be a good parent.

    Degradation should be expected as the analogy gets deeper. If there was something that was a perfect analogy of something else you would find that they are in fact the same thing, at least morally and philosophically. They have to be.

    But the point of an analogy is to help others understand something by relating it to something they already know or can at least imagine. In the skydiving example, most people can at least picture described process of preparing and jumping in a way they might not be able to imagine preparing and jumping into life. This parallelism is what makes analogies so rich and important in our daily communications: they are designed to expand understanding in a new field.

    It is important when participating in metaphors and analogies, or expanding our knowledge in any other way, to be able to separate the tools of expansion, that is the metaphor and the analogy, from the actual expansion itself: a deeper understanding of preparing for, and jumping into, life. Coupled with this ability to separate is the ability to identify when a given metaphor has grown into an analogy through complexity and later what the analogy has outgrown our knowledge, breaking down and falling apart, and thus is no longer able to sustain our newly gained understanding. This process is similar to the expansion of truth, rather our perception of truth, through time as we grow our understanding and expand our knowledge.

    As metaphors and analogies break down it may be necessary to develop a new analogy, but caution should be exercised before doing so. Remembering that the entire purpose of the metaphor or analogy was to help us understand something we couldn’t otherwise grasp we should ask: “has understanding expanded enough to allow us to learn the actual thing instead of something that is like the thing?” We should always strive to get along without any metaphor or analogy as they can hinder a more real understanding. Plus, not using the crutch of an analogy removes the problem of degradation altogether.

  • The Drive Home

    The lush green hills unroll before you with the low fog dancing around the hill tops and the occasional beam of golden light streaming through to caress the dew covered grass, bidding it good morning before whisking the dew away in little wafts of steam.

    Ah, this is life, this is home. Even if a morning like this comes but once a year; this single vista makes all the other moments worthwhile. To hear the birds frolic; to smell the moist air; to feel the gentle morning breeze; to taste the fragrant outdoors; to watch over my little world. This is what life is all about.

  • The End of Justice

    The time has come for Justice to be decommissioned. After nearly two years of faithful service, he has been reclaimed by his maker. Okay, not really, but I liked the dramatic flair. The Owner’s laptop is dying and he wants a laptop like Justice and I have been wanting a smaller laptop and so we are trading. To accomplish this I will be shortly wiping Justice and ‘reeducating’ in the work ways so that all he knows is the drone stuff and he will become “LT05”. Sigh, it is sad that even now I am writing his last post ever. We’ve had a fun and good run together but we both knew it wouldn’t last forever.

  • Introspection on Trees, Life and Time


    Life moves and courses through the veins of time: ebbing and flowing to fill its needs and breathe energy into its purpose. It is with this life that our journey turns into the vast and unending arc of our story. Each thread, each vein runs along so small and fragile, gradually meeting another vein and then another until a vast network of time is wrapped in the grasps of life. These networks, each a story arc of their own, are connected to others which are in turn connected to yet others, creating a massively complex array of stories, of life, of experience. No one vein could stand on its own and yet the whole would not exist if any single strand were removed. Each is vital, each is essential for the purpose and function of this vast ensemble to be accomplished.

    The one is the whole; the whole is the one.

    The veins flow from the tiniest startings until they gather with more veins. Structures of veins combine: twisting their way into broad, lush palettes. Leaf after leaf connects to twig and twigs to branches and branches to trunks. All at once, with introspection, the grand beauty of the marvelous tree of life is unfurled before you. This is your tree, your story, your time. The marvel of it was too hard to see before when you were experiencing the tiny vein in the leaf, on the twig, connected to the branch, emerging from the trunk, growing out of the ground. But now, through the lens wisdom, you can see it. A tear trickles down your face and falls to the ground. A tribute, a memory, a monument to all the pain, agony, sin, suffering and sorrow you couldn’t understand before now.

    The tree is time; time is the tree.

    Why couldn’t you see before now? When life and time were the hardest, could you not have taken a step back to see and comprehend what it was all for? The answer is simple, though not easy. All the events of your life and time have combined together to grow this single masterpiece with all of its beautiful intricacies and glorious textures. Even if you had the lens you have now, it would have done you no good. The tree you see standing before you is the final product: you had to come to a conclusion to see it. Any look before would have revealed a struggling sapling yearning to be much more but unable to break the canopy overhead, to cut through the thick roots below, suffering from the same demons you suffered from. Because the sapling was you.

    A moment in time; forever in eternity.

    A snapshot taken at your weakest moment, your greatest struggle, would be a pathetic reflection of your great journey. Your grandeur is not in the tears you shed in sorrow, nor in the scars that tell of your pain, or the sapped bark covering your broken limbs. Your grandeur, your supernal wonder is that you made it. After all those cold bitter nights, fierce storms and long dry summers, you made it. You finally breached the canopy and entrenched your roots to stand firmly yesterday, today and forever. This is who you are, this is who you were and this is who you will be: strong, unfailing, immortal. All of this is from life moving and coursing through the veins of time, ebbing and flowing to fill its needs and breathing energy into what would become the great and masterful you.

  • It is strange when…

    It is strange when tiny little dogs chase you down. It is strange and funny for two reasons. First, they can barely open their mouths wide enough to get a decent bite, much less have strength to do much damage. Yes, it can hurt, but not as much as a flesh eating dragon. Second, every time they get close to you, as in five feet, they retreat because they are scared.

    It is strange when you see a horse that is completely fascinated by a muskrat on the other side of the fence. The muskrat is sitting scared to death wondering why the horse hasn’t eaten him yet, only to later realize that horses don’t eat muskrats and that the horse can’t jump the fence.

    It is strange when someone gives you a valuable piece of information that should progress the relationship to a deeper level. When you give back a comparable piece of information they are confused. What you thought that they thought was valuable, wasn’t. What you thought was valuable and gave to them, they didn’t think was valuable.