Drop the Belt!

After a long, theoretical post (whew!), how about a more practical discussion of how metaphor does, or does not, work. Let's look at metaphor in the fields of economics and physics, both appearing in articles in the New York Times online.

The first metaphor is from Paul Krugman, a Nobel-prize-winning economist, who also understands to a great degree the importance of language, even in the hard sciences and social sciences. In a post on his Times blog, “The Conscience of a Liberal,” Krugman objects to the “belt” metaphor used by so many professional and amateur economists and politicians:

“When a family tightens its belt it doesn't put itself [its members] out of a job. When the government tightens its belt in a depressed economy, it puts lots of people out of jobs. . . . So lose the belt; it's a really bad metaphor.”¹

In a later opinion piece for the Times, Krugman expands on why this “belt” metaphor is “really bad.” He reports on conversations he had with British government officials, beginning with their metaphor of the “belt”:

“They began with a bad metaphor and ended with the revelation of ulterior motives. . . . A family that has run up too much debt . . . must tighten its belt. . . . [but] an economy is not like an indebted family. Our debt is mostly money we owe to each other. . . . our income mostly comes from selling things to each other. Your spending is my income, and my spending is your income. . . . when you push 'austerians' on the badness of their metaphor, they almost always retreat to assertions along the lines of: 'But it's essential that we shrink the size of the state.'”

Krugman then notes that “the austerity drive” in Britain and the United States is “about using deficit panic as an excuse to dismantle social programs,” that the “calls for austerity” show a “fundamental insincerity,” and that “the drive for austerity was about using the crisis, not solving it.”²

I simply must extend Krugman's analogy to say that once the belt is lost (once it's seen the metaphor does not really work) and presumably the pants drop, what we see is the emperor without any clothes. Bad metaphors are inherently dishonest, because people use metaphors to convey an idea to others in simple everyday terms. Most of us do not comprehend much about economic principles or what has been happening to the economy over the past few years, but we all understand how a belt works. Politicians rely on such simple images to convince regular people that their way of thinking of problems is a good and accurate way; and many people are quite happy to be lulled into the belief that fixing the economy is as simple as tightening a belt. But Krugman uncovers how a simple but inaccurate metaphor can be used to fool people and advance an agenda that they might not otherwise approve of.

Let's look even closer at the metaphor than Krugman does. To be exact, the belt tightening doesn't happen before taking austerity measures—the dieter can tighten his belt only after some time on a restricted diet has passed. (Technically, groups like families don't even wear belts; the belt is a concrete image that represents a more abstract concept, the family budget.) Depending on the health of the individual (family, society), a period of austerity can be either beneficial (many of us need to lose weight) or detrimental (not having enough to eat or a roof to sleep under or adequate health care can lead to illness and death). Conservative politicians, of course, believe that the federal budget is flabby, flabby, flabby—and that much of it should be excised (radical lipo-suction?). The flabbiness the conservatives complain of are the benefit programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, what used to be called food stamps, etc. If the conservatives succeed in eliminating or radically cutting down the benefit programs, affluent people (well-nourished people) will be fine, but the already deprived (starving) will fall into a state of greater desperation. We will have the equivalent of a family that starves some of its members in order to keep other members fat and sassy.

That's why “tightening the belt” is a dishonest metaphor. We let metaphors like this pass all the time, not questioning how relevant or appropriate they are. We hear many, many metaphors a day—especially from politicians; how can we keep track of them all? How can we think in any depth of them all? Well, I think we have to overcome our natural laziness and try to assess the accuracy of metaphors whenever possible; we have to keep our language honest. Otherwise, we have no hope of keeping our politics (or even our social interactions) anywhere near honest.

The second metaphor is from physicist Victor F. Weisskopf, by way of NY Times science writer Lawrence M. Krauss, in an article on the significance of the recent apparent finding of the Higgs boson:

“The physicist Victor F. Weisskopf . . . once described large particle accelerators as the gothic cathedrals of our time. Like those beautiful remnants of antiquity, accelerators require the cutting edge of technology, they take decades or more to build, and they require the concerted efforts of thousands of craftsmen and women. . . . cathedrals and colliders are both works of incomparable grandeur that celebrate the beauty of being alive.”³

So, the particle accelerator is the modern equivalent of the Gothic cathedral—that's the metaphor, though this time it seems that we have a comparison of two concrete things, rather than a concrete thing and an abstract idea (like a belt and a budget). This is not quite true, though.

I'd first like to point out some only partially disguised prejudice for science over religion. Yes, many of the Gothic cathedrals were built hundreds of years ago, but cathedrals are still being built, even in the Gothic manner. Apparently the nickname of the Episcopal cathedral in New York City (St. John the Divine) is “St. John the Unfinished” (Wikipedia). So, while particle accelerators may indeed be very modern, cathedrals—even Gothic cathedrals—are not just “beautiful remnants of antiquity.” They have relevance for many people still these days, certainly more than particle accelerators do.

Have you ever seen a particle accelerator? That would be pretty hard to do, as the Large Hadron Collider (where the Higgs boson was apparently discovered) is about seventeen miles around and is buried several hundred feet in the ground. While a person could approach a cathedral from a distance or walk around it and get a sense of its overall structure, then wander around inside its interior, no one could see the Large Hadron Collider as a whole, much less wander around inside of it, though I'm sure many people have worked on and in many of its parts. So, on the basis of accessibility to everyday experience, a collider in not exactly a rose, or a cathedral. In that sense, the collider is the abstract idea being partly explained through its comparison to the concrete image of the cathedral.

TheAtlantic.com is presently showing on its site a rather awesome picture of a small part of the Large Hadron Collider: http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2012/07/the-fantastic-machine-that-found-the-higgs-boson/100333/ . The photo shows a tube with what looks like a copper rim. Inside the rim are many wires woven together, mostly orange, brown, and green. Outside the rim, the orange wires and a much smaller percentage of the green wires are basically flowing away from the rim, creating an appearance of the rays of the sun. Really, it looks to me, for all the world, like a technological version of a child's drawing of the sun. I do see some beauty in it, but it also gives me a very uncomfortable feeling. I can't help but think of Phaethon and Icarus.

Yes, I can conceive of a cathedral as helping me to “celebrate the beauty of being alive.” I've never been to St. John the Divine, but I do hope to get there someday; I'm not religious, but I do respond to beauty, harmony, hope. And in this time of growing abstractions, I do appreciate any abstract idea (like beauty) being presented in concrete form, in media that I can interact with via my senses. That's when I know I'm really alive, because my brain and my body are working together, in harmony.

1Paul Krugman, “Losing the Belt,” New York Times online, 12 March 2012.

2Paul Krugman, “The Austerity Agenda,” New York Times online, 31 May 2012.

3Lawrence M. Krauss, “A Blip that Speaks of Our Place in the Universe,” New York Times online, 9 July 2012.