Those Darn Cats and Dogs

Ask about the weather, and people will often say it’s raining cats and dogs. How silly. It can’t rain cats and dogs, but we know what people mean when they say it: the weather is horrendous. These kinds of metaphors create a paradox, a verbal tension found in expressions that are almost always untrue. Cats and dogs can’t fall from the sky, but the mental image or metaphorical meaning makes it clear that the weather is terrible. This apical meaning, or “cupola” as philosopher Paul Ricoeur called it, is like a domed window adorning the roof of language. No one needs a meteorologist to explain what raining cats and dogs means. Metaphors get under our skin by running right past the logical mind. (Hirshfield, 2012) They’re mostly harmless, but sometimes create discomfort and even stress. It’s a tension similar to that of an unsolved puzzle. If not constructively finished, it can get scattered in frustration. Or, in case of the windows on the house next door, shattered.

These mysteries often create anxiety and even panic. (Gorka, 2016) Because of this, the annoyance and vexation felt in nonsensical words, and phrases takes a human toll. Outside of comfort zones, people feel ill at ease when they don’t understand something. These kinds of impressions, or “interruptive misunderstandings,” are labeled either new or old, foreign, or known. Either way, the tension they create enters the mind as “truth in thought,” which finds resolution in new and different understandings; understandings found in multiple meanings between subject and predicate. But it’s not just a rhetorical problem. Also impacted are literal interpretations and metaphorical interpretations. And identity and difference. (Ricoeur, 1977)

Take, for example, the misunderstandings often found between men and women. Men are more project-oriented, as a general rule. They think linearly, as can women. But while men can write poetry, women often use metaphors and generalizations differently. (Gray, 1992) When wives and girlfriends tell their man he never listens, it’s not because he ignores her all the time. “Never” is often used metaphorically here, an expression reflecting a moment in time. It’s usually an immediate request, not a critique. She’s asking him to take the current situation more seriously. Unfortunately, men often misunderstand these kinds of metaphorical applications. They mistakenly take these expressions literally. (Gray, 1992)

Misunderstandings like these are everywhere. Such miscommunication is at the root of many problems, large and small. Take sensible gun control. How can the three words, “sensible gun control,” create so many problems? The interpretation and the difference of meaning the phrase has in a community. The very idea of sensible gun control creates fear in places where guns are a way of life. However, it makes perfect sense for those seeking gun control to help stop mass shootings: sanity for the sensible-gun-control crowd; loss of freedom for those in support of the Second Amendment. Sensible gun control. Simple, right?

A majority of US gun owners, 74 percent, say the right to own a firearm is essential to their freedom. And only 44 percent believe easy access to legally purchased firearms contributes to gun violence. On the other hand, the sensible-gun-control crowd, sixty-seven percent of them, understand the unfettered purchase of guns is a serious problem that leads to more violence. (McCarthy, 2017) When communities of people assign different meanings to words, phrases, and symbols, it’s called speculative thought by philosophers who study the language. It becomes a rhetorical problem, a thought process that “knows facts” beyond the realm of all possible experiences (Ricoeur, 1977): the metaphorical interpretations of others who have no standing in a community. It’s a “my-way-or-the-highway” approach, and it thrives in a sphere of meaning that’s detached from others and their world of experience.

Individuals and communities that refuse to consider another’s viewpoint, the fear of a murdering rampage, for example, are locked into their belief system. Even the need for easy access to protect family becomes lost in argument. When this happens, many turn to self-righteous proclamations: the others don’t have a valid point of view, period, they’re wrong, or they’re stupid. Speculative thought thrives in a world of miscommunication, and especially at the rhetorical level. It’s all about metaphors. (Ricoeur, 1977) We interpret reality according to our sphere of understanding in the world around us.

Another example comes from those darn cats and dogs. If someone views storms as bracing and fun, it stands to reason the person will want to be outside when it’s raining buckets. John Muir, for example, loved that kind of weather. At 29, he worked as a machinist, but when an awl pierced his right eye, Muir was unable to see anything. Terrified, he decided if he recovered his sight, he’d not return to work as a machinist, but rather, travel the world to see God’s creation. When his sight returned, that’s what he did. (Williams, 1988) When his beloved Yosemite experienced a strong earthquake in 1872, John Muir awoke and dashed outside, shouting: “A noble earthquake!” While others hid, he exulted in the fall of huge rocks from the high cliffs in a shower of friction-struck sparks, taking stands of trees with them. He even ran to the spot and began climbing the rocks before the rocks had fully settled into a new formation.

Later, in a strong windstorm, he even climbed a tall Douglas spruce to feel the full force of the wind as a tree would. (Williams, 1988) For Muir, if it were raining cats and dogs, he’d probably want to be outside in the rain. And that’s the problem with metaphors. Words, phrases, and even actions have added value. When someone from a different community sees an adult playing in the rain, what would they think? Understanding another’s viewpoint can be difficult. Figuring other people out and how they communicate is called deconstruction by philosophers. Understanding gun-control, for example, means digging below the surface meaning of “sensible gun control.” Even the phrase, “it’s raining cats and dogs” benefits from a critical analysis that emphasizes the internal workings of language. Deconstruction, an approach to understanding the relationship between text and meaning, and even behavior and meaning, fosters understanding. (Novitz, 1985)

At its core, deconstruction is about empathy: the ability to read, listen and learn from others. The difference between understanding versus judging is a problem of language (Ricoeur, 1977). When an idea lacks a sign in a community, its leaders go searching. It’s impossible to copyright metaphors, but the unspoken importance found in the signs and symbols of a community becomes personal when agreed upon by the group. The symbolic meanings of words and phrases, symbols and logos, become sealed in a community’s ownership, even if the same sign means something different somewhere else. “It’s ours, not yours!” the rallying cry goes. That other house’s “dome” is stupid, wrong, and criminal. Sensible people avoid storms. And only rednecks believe reasonable gun control is horrible. Understanding how others see the world helps.

When I was little, bullies next door destroyed our snowman. It wasn’t a very fancy snowman, but it was ours. But when they walked from across the alley and knocked our snowman down, they were playing football. That’s how they thought. Our two backyards, connected by a lane, became a gridiron. They trashed their opponent and walked back to their yard to build a snowman with a football cradled in its muscular, snowy arm. From that point on, whenever someone mentioned the game, it reminded me of the creeps who crushed our snowman. It was only after I asked a new friend, one of the brothers, why he’d done it, did I learn it was not about malice and hate, but a rivalry.

Ricoeur called this a “catachresis,” the use of a word, phrase, or symbol that is “not correct.” It’s a situation where the sign, a constructive, competitive game, for example, has a meaning changed by someone else. These “semantic impertinences,” just like mine, and the ones often found between men and women who can’t communicate, takes effort to overcome. When I finally learned what happened and why the neighbor had become a good friend. I enjoyed watching football and even played the game. It was all about rivalries, winning, and losing, and we won our fair share of many football games.

For those puzzled by people like Muir, or, who struggle when they hear gun owners talk about their rights, it takes hard work and effort to deconstruct all the nuances that others easily accept. I don’t remember precisely when I realize there was more to football than angry idiots, but asking questions and talking about it sure helped.

Some philosophers and theologians, who advocate for transcendence, believe tension is healthy, (Winquist, 1995) even essential. (Ricoeur, 1977) One has gone so far as to say even the grandest system rests on delineated incursions of the “other,” a hungry child wailing, a volcano erupting, the rise of a demagogue to power, an act of human compassion, or the blooming of a flower, is not a problem. While no limiting other can “perspectivize” the whole of Being, it can lead the mind, shaken from its customary attachments to a field of otherness exceeding itself in quality and power. Otherness is a many splendored, if splintered, thing. (Hart, 1985)

In the past, common beliefs brought people and communities together, especially in the shared idealism of America’s future. But today, only a few vital threads still bind citizens from New York with citizens from Georgia: symbols like the American flag, institutions like the American military and, yes, water cooler conversations over sports, movies, music, and television. (Shapiro, 2019) Speculative thought, the differences assigned to cultural signposts, has created a new tribalism. Communities that once shared cultural space, or beliefs in fundamental ideas embedded in the Constitution in America, including a shared willingness to leave one another alone have disappeared. (Shapiro, 2019) Is disharmony the new price for things and “other people,” not as the result of some illusion, but as the result of a violent act which is perception itself? (Merleau-Ponty, 2002)

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, arguably, one of the postmodern world’s most influential philosophers, coined the idea that the gift of perceptual reality was a violent act. (Merleau-Ponty, 2002) Just another many splendored, if splintered, thing. But other people, places, and things are not violent acts, not if we work at making sense of it all. It’s a fallacy to believe another’s ideas are less important because they live in a different community. Everyone has their own little dome of understanding. The neighbors had their gridiron, Muir had God’s creation, and Merleau-Ponty had the human body, the primary site of knowledge.

Some philosophers have argued that modernity and postmodernity have deigned life’s foundational approach (God) a privileged authority. Even foundational answers have been called into question. But its been unable to deny the privilege of queries or the formulation of questions as long as people are restless with a knowledge that disappoints. (Winquist, 1995) When someone is standing in the rain, there may be a good reason. They have a different take on life, is all, and one that is worth knowing about. At least when it stops raining, anyway. Or, when the guns are safely taken care of…. Listening for, and trying to understand those pesky metaphors can only help in the quest.