The book is the classic ‘Metaphors we live by’ by Lakoff & Johnson. The idea that our perceptions of the world are moulded by the metaphors we use. /2
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Metaphors-We-Live-George-Lakoff/dp/0226468011/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1586286721&sr=8-1
The problem with metaphorical frames is that non-standard medical situations like pandemic disease can unwisely be coerced into military metaphor, and end up mis-shaping our responses, feelings and expectations. /3
The second reflection is our national obsession with our own military narratives – Dunkirk, the Blitz - to frame a sense of collective resiliance. Yet perhaps a more suitable frame for what's unfolding now might end up being what followed the war - the age of austerity. /4
That period of extended privation in Britain was one in which, through reduced ambitions, we achieved so much national progress in the structures of our health, education and welfare. An extended privation isn’t violently romantic - it's mundane and humbling... /5
Yet this humility perhaps provides the seedbed for a better collective action. The possibility for consensus. The resetting of values. /6
If there was any past metaphorical landscape we could learn from in this present privation, I suspect it would be that dowdy, humble peace that birthed the NHS, rather than the crimson horror of the battlefield my father bled on. //
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