Steve Yegge's Marshmallow Maze Spell, (10 June 2007):
"Have you ever noticed that all our folklore about wolves has certain themes and patterns to it? I've never met a wolf, but I give them fair credit for being wily creatures. I'm a big man, not one to fear a big dog's bite, but I would give a wolf a wide berth, because they're reputed to be so crafty. And crafty, friends, I am not. A craftsman, yes, but I realize now that I am more sheep than wolf.[…skip 2 paragraphs…]
"What's far less obvious is that the idea applies outside flocks and governments, with the same consequences. If you set up any organization of saintly do-gooders, with no politics anywhere in sight, then the presence of a single master politician can go unrecognized for long enough for every single sheep to be eaten and replaced with a wolf. At some point the shepherd looks down and perceives that he now has a flock of wolves, and he wonders how it happened. But a shepherd rarely witnesses the process while it's in motion, because the wolves are so sneaky. [bold emphasis added]
Much of the whole story reminds Briar Pig so much of an earlier work experience that he's tempted to imagine the story is about himself. But the timing is almost impossible. The first public link to a briarpig page appeared no more than a day before Steve Yegge's story. To find both inspiration and time to write in one day appears very unlikely. So a more likely explanation seems coincidence in wolf metaphors.
Incidentally, Steve is a heck of a lot better writer than me, and I hesitate to put myself in his class by presuming he'd bother to write about me. It's just… resemblance to some parts of an earlier project experience are uncanny.
George Fyler Townsend's (1887) translation of Aesop's The Ass and the Wolf (cf aesopfables):
An Ass feeding in a meadow saw a Wolf approaching to seize him, and immediately pretended to be lame. The Wolf, coming up, inquired the cause of his lameness. The Ass replied that passing through a hedge he had trod with his foot upon a sharp thorn. He requested that the Wolf pull it out, lest when he ate him it should injure his throat. The Wolf consented and lifted up the foot, and was giving his whole mind to the discovery of the thorn, when the Ass, with his heels, kicked his teeth into his mouth and galloped away. The Wolf, being thus fearfully mauled, said, "I am rightly served, for why did I attempt the art of healing, when my father only taught me the trade of a butcher?" [bold emphasis added]
While Briar Pig might be an ass at times, he doesn't hope to kick in the wolf's teeth quite so easily as this, much as he'd like. But he does hope to use a thorn in the handling of wolves.
Joost G. Kircz's (March 1998) Changing Presentations! Changing Science?:
Every scientific theory is a model, a metaphor, for reality. Among philosophers of science the role of model, analog and metaphor is considered an important tool for communicating and understanding (the advancement of) human knowledge (for an overview of this discussion see lea74). Mary Hesse (hes65) especially started a more formal approach of the interaction view of the metaphor. In using metaphors, the ideas and implications from a primary system are transferred to a secondary one, therewith illuminating different aspects and suppressing others. In the interaction view both systems are influenced by the use of the metaphor and both reference systems assimilate in a certain sense. In the standard example of the sentence 'man is a wolf', men are seen to be more like wolves after the wolf metaphor is used, and wolves seem to be more human. (hes65, p.252). [bold emphasis added]
The effect of metaphor in filtering perception will be discussed elsewhere on this site, perhaps soon. One general theme will be effects of meta programming on the human mind, creating both insights and blindness.
wolves « Þ
