*many readers at this point*: “Hey, Nat, why tf do you mix so many metaphors? Idk seems kinda sloppy.”

*me*: why do you like dry ass bougie English? Huh? Seriously though, I like metaphors – they’re part of the beauty of language and the beauty of life. Learn to enjoy things ffs. But besides not being satisfied living the mayo life there is also a functional reason: when you’re talking about something that people don’t usually talk about then it becomes really difficult to talk about directly without getting bogged down in jargon, or simply just making it so boring that anyone but the nerdiest nerds lose interest – and them probably too at some point. And metaphors are wicked useful, which I think can best be illuminated thusly (if you seriously thought I wasn’t gonna pull out a metaphor to explain my (perhaps overly enthusiastic) use of metaphors, then you’re just being silly at this point. Honestly the only deliberation is whether or not to mix them purely on principle or not. I don’t know, we’ll see.):

           Imagine each metaphor is a flashlight – like the one you likely carry in your pocket, i.e. not super powerful but good enough to light up what’s right in front of you. Now imagine the concepts/things/aspects-of-the-world/or whathaveyou are huge statues that we come across in the pitch dark. Each beam of light tells us something different about its size, shape, contours, texture, etc. No amount of flashlights are ever going to tell us what the statue looks like in the full light of the sun by the way. But that’s okay because when we combine different light sources (facts, data, theories, technologies, and yes even metaphors!, and all the other little things that make up “human knowledge”) we do get better and better pictures of what we’re trying to see.

There is such an exceedingly far distance between ignorance and “full understanding” (whatever the hell that would even look like; like nothing human that’s for sure) – and humanity is so much closer to complete ignorance than full understanding in literally every single aspect of the universe that any pretentions concerning our knowledge is laughable. Which is just intellectual humility btw – understanding the limits of our potential, both future and present. All this is just the backdrop against which everything else unfolds. But holy shit we have come a long way down many roads, even if the knowledge odometer has barely clicked over a couple few times. 

           Human beings, by nature, are masters of “good enough”. We were practically bio-engineered for it – or if we had been I doubt the basic design would be much different. We are “good enough” machines and what we are especially good at is learning from our good enoughs. Why they worked, why they weren’t better, etc. And then we make our next good enough just a bit better through trial and error. Then we use that next, better good enough as the next starting point. Wash, rinse, repeat. String enough chains of good enough together you can do some pretty freakin amazing shit, like putting a few humans on the moon or maybe someday making a lactose-free cheese that has the taste and texture of normal cheese (finger-cross emoji ad infinitum).

Human progress is never linear in any area whatsoever, ever; precisely because everything human beings have now (materially, socially, technologically, etc) is the result of some group of people saying “good enough” at some point. (In fact, it’s helpful to think of ideological differences as based on different definitions of “good enough” in some key areas – its certainly a good way to see what you actually believe and who your allies actually are at the very least.) There are rhythms to human progress, even if we don’t take into account all the dead ends, of which there are more than you could possibly imagine – which is the way it should be when you have a whole universe to explore without any maps that you haven’t made yourselves. Dead ends are not failures but are just part of the thing we’re doing (live laugh love -ing, obviously). Thinking of normal and expected processes as failures is such a weird mentality to me, honestly. Another part of our culture that I think is subtly but aggressively stupid af.

Anyway, metaphors. Metaphors are hand holds on the flow of the various rhythms of human understanding and they are usually good enough (hey, how bout that…) to talk about pretty much anything for the purposes of most discussions. In fact, I would be so bold to say that the ability to create, share, understand, and use metaphors is the single most important technology that humans have ever produced. (wow, so bold)