power and limitation of a good metaphor, The

EDITORIAL NOTES

THERE IS POWER IN TURNING a well-honed phrase, or capturing an exquisite metaphor that can move others to thought and feeling, to awareness and sensitivity, to passion or outrage, to justice and social inclusion. But, can such writing or speech lead to change or growth or action? As with a phrase remembered from my youth that went something like, "Words are the only things that can give birth to their own mother," the prudent choice of words and phrasing can evoke in an attentive listener or reader the same sensitivity and keen insight that empowered the writer.

Our work and our writing are not dispassionate-- they are purposeful, responsible, and exacting. They have the capacity to bring to awareness an understanding of what has been cloaked in silence and to lend a voice to anonymity. In writing for a professional journal such as this we are asked, among other things, to bring to light facts, stories, knowledge, and theories to improve the life and lot of others. If our words and our understanding help the message to resonate in the minds of others, all the better.

Serendipitously, while beginning this editorial, I stumbled across notes from years ago on which I'd written a wry observation that included the lines, "Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die ..." These lines from Tennyson's The Charge of the Light Brigade still echo in my mind for their fateful and succinct commentary on the lot of the common soldier. Reading them, I was reminded that another war and another expression of one's function in the great machine of war produced a similar but more succinct observation, the metaphor cannon fodder. Intrigued again, I decided to briefly see the directions that this metaphor could take me.

To explore other expressions and permutations of the human dilemma captured by Alfred, Lord Tennyson and cannon fodder, I briefly searched my home library for poetry and fiction, followed by an Internet search. In fiction, for example, the fine writer Wendell Berry (1992, p. 91) echoed Tennyson with a novelist's voice:

The government was made up of people who thought about fighting, not of those who did it [emphasis added]. The men sitting behind the desks-they spent other men to buy ground, and then they ruined the ground they had and more men to get the ground beyond. If they were on the right side, they did it the same as them that were on the wrong side. They talk about victory as if they know all them dead boys was glad to die. The dead boys ain't never been asked how glad they was.

For Berry, expending soldiers' lives in war without their having any say in the merits of the struggle mirrors a more pervasive social strategy for gaining advantage in either conflict or competition. Elsewhere in his writings, Berry echoes the plight of soldiers when he describes the circumstances of people whose lives are expended by the impersonal workings of the "economy." One of the strengths of guiding metaphors is that, in Bateson's (1980, p. 8) words, that they serve to illuminate a "pattern that connects" a variety of seemingly different social phenomena. Berry likens the lot of farmers and other working people to the plight of soldiers-they're all expendable parts in the functioning of some larger economic machine. The Welsh poet R. S. Thomas (1999) provides yet another subtle and implicit metaphoric testimony to being poor cannon fodder-not in war, but for others' economic ambitions in his poem "Hireling."

Cars pass him by: he'll never own one.

Men won't believe in him for this.

Let them come into the hills

And meet him wandering a road,

Fenced with rain, as I have now:

The wind feathering his hair;

The sky's ruins, gutted with fire

Of the late sun, smoldering still.

Nothing is his, neither the land

Nor the land's flocks. Hired to live

On hills too lonely, sharing his hearth

With cats and hens, he has lost all

Property but the grey ice

Of a face splintered by life's stone.

R. S. Thomas, 1999

Thomas illuminates his subject's existential plight; the rigid and uncaring social contract at its root is understood but unstated. He feels the sad rhythm of stillborn possibilities and resurrects the spiritual dilemma of his subject's life in the reader's heart. Both Thomas and Berry display a keen sensitivity to the plight of people whose chief social and economic value often seems to be captured by their very expendability. The plight of their characters illumines that of all their ilk. As social workers and members of caring professions, we can add to our repertoire of ways of expressing our ideas and insights by exploring the ways that respected writers in other fields capture peoples' existential dilemmas and, via the music of words, make them resonate in the hearts of readers.

After finding these examples of cannon fodder on my library shelves, I turned to the Internet to find additional permutations of the term. Simply using those two words alone I got several thousand citations; the first several were strategies for playing an electronic game of the same name. The plight of the common soldier in the machine of war has devolved into, and been numbed into, a game to be played for enjoyment! However, adding the term "metaphor" to cannon fodder produced more pertinent information. The following are representative ways that the evocative metaphor has been employed. A middle school principal in Australia (Adams, 1997, p. 1) decried the business sector's influence on the growth and development of children observing that they are:

... making the child cannon-fodder for commerce, with psychologists and market researchers and creative directors and highly paid marketing men targeting them ruthlessly and relentlessly. No, we don't send kids up chimneys (as sweeps) or down mines any more. Now we send them into stores to buy, to consume, to coerce their parents. Their curiosity is turned to commercial advantage, their restlessness into profit ... this is molestation of an immense scale, corporate pedophilia, backed by a global culture of breathtaking crassness and banality. Let them [the children] explore and fantasize. Let them be children for a few, short years before they're turned into cannon-fodder for the Great God Economy that modern societies seek to serve ... by manipulating kids' desire to conform, companies create intolerable psychological and financial pressures. This, surely, is the most unacceptable face of capitalism. Right up there with the arms trade.

In contrast to Tennyson and Berry, Adams focused more attention (and disgust) on those who make cannon fodder of innocents, children, to satisfy their own economic ambitions. His application of the metaphor to the creation of "young consumers" illuminates a phenomenon analogous to the expenditure of lives in battle.

The notion of cannon fodder took another turn when it entered the realm of science and publishing. Krige (1998, p. 1) used the term to describe books and their subject matter as he reviewed the works of those who transport the "language of mathematics and physics into psychology, philosophy, and the social sciences without having the best idea of what they are talking about." His application of the metaphor to books and the struggle over the use of scientific language stands in sharp contrast to Adams et al. Among the thousands of other citations were arguments on topics as diverse as the plight of athletes, persons involved in political struggles, genetic experimenting, the lives of entertainers, the misuse of African soldiers by the French in World War II, and the homeless. In the end, it was clear that what began as a poignant insight into the lot of common soldiers had blossomed and rippled into a metaphor that resonated in the hearts and minds of people concerned with how the lives of others are used.

If a metaphor of an unjust social contract raises something into consciousness, does it then follow that peoples' awareness will lead to action? David Gil (1998, p. 132) acknowledges the impediments to action but observes that, "In spite of the existential dilemmas, which cause people to hesitate to challenge the roots of injustice and oppression, many individuals and movements have struggled against them, ever since domination and exploitation have spread within and among human societies." And people, having learned to see such injustices "can no longer disregard [them] ... they are likely to feel compelled to challenge [the sources of oppression] unless they are ready to live a constant lie." In other words, a good line of poetry or a good metaphor or a good article may allow a reader to see what was unnoticed, but, having learned to see some need or injustice, we are faced with our own existential dilemma-the choice of acting on what we see, or trying to rationalize it away, or choosing to live a lie. The weakness of a good metaphor (aside from its overuse to the point that it desensitizes people), however, is that it does not necessarily impel action. Our responsibility is to be enlightened, to reason, to make moral decisions, to struggle with our courage, to judiciously act, and to persevere. Critical here is learning to see and write and speak with more than our dispassionate intellects and to use our "voices" so that they will resonate in, and deeply impress, the souls of others. Unlike Tennyson's soldiers, our fate and our responsibility is to reason why.

The articles in this edition of Families in Society are an interesting lot and each gives us a glimmer (or more) into situations that are, when examined, more complex or more pervasive than ordinary words can convey. Sophie Freud provides us with a thoughtful and reflective essay on her life and work and the changing nature of one's identity. She brings her humanity to bear when she suggests the need for mental health professionals to rethink and re-imagine the categories within which people are placed. Kathleen Reding and Marion Wijnberg propose a new model for better understanding and working with those suffering the effects of chronic stress. In their article they prompt the reader to reconsider old concepts and consider new findings. Michelle Barrett and Terry Wolfer's article also deals with the notion of anxiety and stress and discusses means of reducing anxiety through the structured use of writing exercises. The authors discuss the results of such efforts and their implications for practice. In an allied article, Kathryn Adams, Holly Matto, and Donna Harrington likewise address stress and trauma and the influence of human beliefs on the stress experienced. They too present and discuss the results of research they've conducted on the topic. Ron Lehr and Peter MacMillan's article provides a greater insight into the psychological and emotional effects of divorce on fathers and, in particular, noncustodial fathers. Their work opens a new window into the import of this common situation. Kathleen Sherrell, Kathleen Buckwalter, and Darby Morhardt's work helps the reader better grasp the complex family interactions and negotiations that occur when people in midlife face the dilemma of providing care for their elder family members. Stress is an undercurrent in this increasingly common situation in family life. Jaqueline Corcoran, Margaret Stephenson, Derrelynn Perryman, and Shannon Allen take the reader on another tangent-how police departments can and have used social workers when crisis intervention is needed. In their article, the authors discuss the perceptions of social workers and police and how those perceptions shape the use of services. In still another article looking at social work and law enforcement, Michael Borrero examines the relationships between some young people and police officers. Their perceptions of each another shape their interactions and the readers are provided entree into the thoughts and beliefs of those involved. James Williams, Robert Pierce, Nioka Young, and Richard Van Dorn share the findings of focus groups that explored the use of social and health care services by minorities who reside in high-crime areas. Discussed are the supports for service utilization as well as perceived barriers to their use. Finally, Angela Hattery's article gives the reader insights into how working parents arrange child care. She studied parents who work different shifts so that one parent is always involved in the lives of their children and discusses the benefits of such arrangements as well as the demands that this strategy places on relationships. As usual, there are underlying commonalities among this disparate group of articles and sufficient information to challenge us to rethink some of our assumptions and add to our knowledge.

References

Adams, P (1997). Capitalism versus kids. [On-line]. Available: http://www.primenet.coral-mazzare/misc/capitalism_v_kids. html; accessed May 10, 2001.

Bateson, G. (1980). Mind and nature. New York: Bantam.

Berry, W (1992). Making it home. In Fidelity: Five stories. New York: Pantheon Books.

Gil, D. (1998). Confronting injustice and oppression. New York: Columbia University Press.

Krige, J. (1998, December). Cannon-fodder for the science wars, Physics World, 49-50.

Thomas, R. S. (1999). Hireling. In Everyman's Poetry. London: J. M. Dent.

Copyright Families in Society Jul/Aug 2001
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