metaphor

By : Ralf Sibande with Steve & Eugenie Banhegyi

Note: this article is written using the perspective of Zulu leadership and knowledge systems.

The western business leadership education model provides comprehensive and detailed information in myriad specialist fields but fails to emphasise a holistic and integrative approach to human development in the context of working life. This lack of a holistic approach causes a problematic discontinuity between the experience of home/community life and the world of work where the all-important ‘soft skills’ of interpersonal behaviour are rarely reflected upon.

Postmodernism is a term used by philosophers, social scientists, art and social critics to refer to aspects of contemporary art, culture, economics and social conditions that are the result of the unique features of late 20th and early 21st century life. These features include phenomena such as globalisation, consumerism, branding, the fragmentation of authority, and the knowledge economy. An important characteristic of postmodernism is that we now have myriad different symbols and metaphors through which we can view the world – these include politics, religion, consumerism, science, art etc... Anything that cannot be physically sensed, such as social justice or one's concept of God, must be referred to by metaphor and symbol. The result is that meaningful communication about issues such as families, politics, sexuality, crime & violence without the use of shared metaphors and symbols is impossible. Some common metaphors in use today include:

• Religion and God

Virology has provided our culture with many useful insights and the term 'viral' and the viral metaphor spring up in the form of computer viruses, viral marketing, memetics and memeplexes. Human beings are by nature metaphorical beings and understand complex concepts through metaphor and analogy. In other words, we understand something in terms of something else.

However, trying to understand a virus in terms of a virus throws the thinker into ever more greatly convoluted loops of logic. To think about HIV, what we need is a good metaphor for HIV - what is it 'like'? What organisms or systems do we know of that do the things HIV does? Could the emergent properties of billions of human beings transacting with each other be doing to our planet what HIV does to our bodies?

A particle physicist who knows about Brownian Motion (the random movement of particles in a solution) provides useful know-how and input into solving problems of traffic traffic control or the management of disease transmission. Anthroplogists used to studying pre-industrial cultures can provide insights into how social and community systems could be better designed. Film producers and directors have a wealth of experience in project management that has proven to be useful in helping design approaches to service delivery for government.

The word ukhamba is a Zulu word for a huge clay pot. It is commonly used by all African cultures. In Zulu ukhamba consists of two words: ukukhama (which means to squeeze out or compress out as in milking a cow) + bamba (to hold in place so as to receive that which is squeezed out). This meaning clearly explains the metaphor of thinking hard (ukukhama) and receiving the treasures of thinking into human memory (ukubamba). Therefore ukhamba is a container, a reservoir, and a protector of that which is valuable and good for physical and spiritual nourishment. It is a central piece in the rite of social fellowship. The rite itself is treated with respect and studied deference.

Without an operating system, computer hardware is inanimate and about as capable as a brick. In the early days, the operating system was considered to be an integral part of the computer until a brilliant move by Bill Gates when the hardware was separated from the operating system with MS.DOS Version 1.0. From this point, the operating system became glamorous, glitzy and branded as a consumer product - and had to be paid for separately to the hardware.

I use 3 operating systems - MS.Windows XPPro , Ubuntu 9,04 (Jaunty Jackalope) and Windows Mobile 6.0 on my HTC palmtop. I first started using Linux about 4 years ago. Up 'till then I used Microsoft exclusively apart from my experiences with some of the more exotic operating systems of the early 1980s which included the Commodore PET (with 16Kb RAM!), the Sinclair ZX-81, an o/s for designing integrated circuits called Gaelic and even an O/S called Gerbil.