I’m afraid these men would only slow me down,” says a cocksure Benedict Cumberbatch within the role of the godfather of computer science, Alan Turing. A 2014 biopic, The Imitation Game, portrays Turing as a lonely, world-changing genius who reluctantly takes on help from less intelligent colleagues who’d only threaten his efficiency and from whom he has to cover secrets that threaten his clearance, profession, and life. As it seems, he’ll need his friends’ help to maintain his job, and together, they crack the Nazis’ Enigma code and create the prototypical model for a pc, the Turing machine (that is history, not a spoiler!).
One of Turing’s many contributions to the event of computing intelligence was the Turing test—a technique designed to probe a machine’s ability to display intelligent behavior a human observer might confuse for human behavior. Needless to say, we’ve come a great distance in that department. In (successfully) designing computers to match and exceed many facets of our own cognitive faculties, we discover ourselves in a chaotic battlefield where grim doomsday jeremiads about AI and utopian techno-optimist manifestos vie for the soul of humankind.
Guiding these rapid-fire developments is a strong metaphor: the human mind as computer. And the more we use this metaphor, the more readily we come to consider it. And yet, as this mindset has infused itself into our collective unconscious, it’s been met with increasingly resistance.
Consider philosopher and cognitive scientist Tim van Gelder, creator of the 1995 essay “What Might Cognition Be, If Not Computation?” In it, he suggests that the Turing machine (a computational model) is less helpful for modeling human cognition than what he calls a “dynamical system.” Such a system is always adapting to an at all times changing environment, responding and adjusting in an automatic give-and-take relationship, whereas a Turing machine is geared only at solving a particular equation.
In other words, our brains are at all times growing and adapting to our world; they’re not machines programmed with a set algorithm for a particular end result.
Giving shape to the intangible
In her newest book, You Are a Tree: And Other Metaphors to Nourish Life, Thought, and Prayer, author Joy Marie Clarkson explores the metaphors we inhabit in our on a regular basis lives. In our rush to adopt and live into powerful metaphors, we are able to easily forget that metaphors are, by definition, incomplete approximations. As Clarkson explains in her introduction, “This is why French philosopher Paul Ricoeur proposes what is likely to be described as a tension theory of metaphor … between a literal and metaphorical interpretation. In noticing where the metaphor stops, we’re forced to pay closer attention to why the thing isn’t actually what we describe it to be.”
Clarkson exemplifies a recent generation of Substack writers and thinkers who’ve gained an audience by sharing thoughts as they go, mixing diary-esque observations with erudite notes related to research and writing projects. Reading her book feels more like catching up with an old friend over coffee than sitting on the feet of a distant, inaccessible sage.
While van Gelder and Clarkson find common ground of their resistance to the “human as computer” metaphor, the similarities stop there. Van Gelder writes in a dense, mathematical style (more power to you if that’s your thing), and still employs a machine-based metaphor to explain human thought. Clarkson, however, is a theology and literature scholar at King’s College London, and her words flow from a passion for poetry, literature, story, and the Bible, revealing a whimsically fun wit and an openness to on a regular basis wonder. She sticks to more agricultural and naturalistic metaphors, arguing that computers, “as a scientific metaphor for human flourishing,” are “incomplete and unforgiving.”
As her book title suggests, Clarkson believes you might be less like a pc (designed to work with perfect efficiency) and more like a tree in a forest. Trees, not unlike Turing along with his peers, need the sustaining roots of surrounding trees to assist them flourish amid seasons of poverty and lots alike.
You Are a Tree begins with a compelling reintroduction to the concept of metaphors, unpacking just how subtly they will shape us. Metaphors are greater than just one other poetic tool in a single’s flowery-language kit—they will generate cathartic aha moments of self-understanding by giving tangible form to intangible, inexpressible feelings or ideas.
Clarkson shares how, for many of her life, she has been compelled to maneuver from place to position, leaving her to feel like a potted plant whose roots can only go so deep. As she recalls, landing on that potted-plant metaphor “pained but additionally satisfied me.” metaphor is freeing, since it allows us “to discuss our experiences” and to “give these items shape in order that we are able to have a look at them, speak about them, show them to other people so that they may be witnessed, perhaps even understood.” Through metaphors, we are able to know and be known.
Poor metaphors, nevertheless, may be dangerous. Unhelpful comparisons are greater than just conceptually unclear—they will tempt us into ascribing misleading and even dehumanizing traits to ourselves and others. Clarkson points out how the humans-as-computers metaphor places the very best value on productivity, which may imply that less productive persons are broken or expired, and due to this fact more disposable. This metaphor says, If you may’t function as well, you might be less beneficial.
Metaphors should not neutral, then. Whether we decide them consciously or absorb them unconsciously, they’ve a subtle but powerful influence on our lives, and wrestling with them can play an important role in our individual journeys of spiritual formation.
After establishing the flawed nature of mechanistic metaphors for humanity, Clarkson reserves most of her chapters for unpacking a set of higher, richer metaphors (not to say metaphors inside metaphors). In a patient and pleasantly meandering fashion, she traces their appearances in Scripture, literature, and on a regular basis life. Clarkson further equips readers for reflection with examples and suggestions drawn from poems, paintings, movies, songs, and even architecture.
The wisdom of clichés
You Are a Tree is an illuminating guide to the metaphors we use for God and our own lives, and it can show you find out how to meditate on a metaphor and let its deeper meanings speak. One testament to Clarkson’s depth and insight comes from the indisputable fact that many metaphors she covers—“wisdom is light,” as an example, or “life is a journey”—explore phrases you’ve probably heard countless times before, to the purpose of sounding clichéd. What more could one add? Yet Clarkson consistently breathes recent life into language that may seem trite at first glance.
Because of the book’s meditative approach and sometimes winding path, some parts will likely prove more interesting than others, depending on how resonant particular metaphors are to particular readers. When specific sections aren’t resonating, the metaphors may begin to feel a bit monotonous, and the chapters’ flowing structure might begin to feel unfocused. This is one reason I’d recommend reading the book in shorter increments (one to 2 sittings per chapter) fairly than churning all through. For a comparatively short book, You Are a Tree covers a variety of ground, almost like a survey course for faculty undergraduates. It is filled with insight, though, and in case you concentrate (as she reminds us often), you need to come away with a wealth of profound and potentially paradigm-shifting insight.
In the ultimate chapter, Clarkson expounds on the “life is a journey” metaphor, admitting to the tricky balancing act she faces in even writing about such commonplace phrases. As she puts it, “I realize I’m dangerously near becoming a ridiculous inspirational plaque in a home-and-garden shop. Life is just not concerning the destination, however the journey,” after which she half-jokingly philosophizes, “But what’s life and what’s a journey?” In actually diving into these questions, Clarkson tears back the overfamiliarity veil that so often cloaks the best but deepest truths.
In reflecting on why life really is a journey, Clarkson brings up Augustine’s sense of restless longing, or, in her words, “what the German existentialists might call Unheimlichkeit, a radical homelessness,” an idea she expands on with references to Camus, Heidegger, James K. A. Smith, and The Lord of the Rings , amongst others. As a third-culture kid myself—someone with a sophisticated relationship to the concepts of home and belonging—this resonated immensely. It’s something I’ll explore lots more in my very own writing. And I’m confident there’ll be not less than one image or idea, and sure many more, that may similarly resonate with you.
Raed Gilliam is a author and filmmaker, and an associate producer for CT Media.
