John, great thoughts! There is no doubt that our current system often dictates even our metaphors and descriptions. You articulated that really well. Also, thanks for the excerpt.

Thanks for the note Jenn. It’s true that sometime words can be clearer. I guess my point here is that metaphors allow us to think more creatively and broadly about a topic.

Please allow me to share something I read recently which might apply here, re Vaclav Haval. (via Mary Jo Leddy)

“Czech president Vaclav Havel and other dissidents began to ask, ‘How can we live the truth in a culture based on a fundamental lie, especially since the lie is in our heads? How can we begin to live into the truth? We desire so much more than just things. We want something to hope in, a reason to believe.

So in his country as in other iron-curtain countries, people began to set up what he called ‘parallel cultures.’ They had underground study groups. They studied Plato. They had drama. They had music groups. They wrote novels and poetry, and published them underground.

It was not a counterculture because, he said, it was impossible for us to live totally outside the system. You cannot live outside a culture. But you can create within it zones and spaces, where you can become who you really are. It is in such places that one can speak the truth, where one can gather with others who share that truth. This went on for years, not without difficulties, but for years. Over time, the truth became stronger and stronger, and at a certain point people began to walk in the streets and to say to the system, ‘We don’t believe you anymore.’ And the system fell. It fell, not because of the power of Western nuclear equipment, but because the people said within the system, ‘We don’t believe you anymore.’ It was a vision that had been nourished within those parallel cultures.”

- Excerpts from essay in Confident Witness – Changing World