Lies and thought: Part II of Embassytown, by China Mieville

 I'd like to do one more post on Embassytown.  As seems to be the case with Mieville, I cannot fit in everything I'd like to say with one post.  Point being, this is a really good book, and you should read it.

I will not rehash everything from Part I, but the central plot is about a planet with a strange "sentient" race (and here, I use scare-quotes)-- the Ariekei.  They use a language-- Language-- which is so intertwined with their own thoughts that they cannot conceive of lying.  They cannot lie because when they speak, they are directly intoning their thoughts.  Language is spoken using two mouths to create contrasting tones, so in order for us to speak it (computer simulations don't work, blah blah, theory of mind), clones have to be bred and trained.  Then, the country that runs the Embassy on their planet sends a new kind of Ambassador.  "An Ambassador" is usually a pair of clones, but this time, they send EzRa-- Ez and Ra, who aren't clones.  That creates a subtle dissonance in their intonation of Language, which gets the Ariekei who hear it high.  They turn into junkies, and everything goes very, very badly.

A breakaway group of Ariekei even decide that it is better to chop off their auditory sense-organs to get clean, problem being that thought and Language are the same for them, so... yeah.

In the background, from an earlier subplot, some of the Ariekei were trying to learn how to lie, which seems ominous, but turns out to be Mieville's solution to the language-drug problem.  The Ariekei are very constrained in their thinking and communication.  Their language constrains their thoughts, because they are the reductio ad absurdum of the debunked cognitive-linguistic Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.  Earlier in the novel, they go through silly exercises, frequently staging what look like one-act plays with humans to create similes.  That way, they can say, this is like __.  Your POV character was asked to stage and become a simile, when she was a child.

The creation of a simile allows the Ariekei to express an idea, which allows them to think an idea.  Remember, they are constructed around Sapir-Whorf, in which language constrains thought.

A simile is not a lie.

Technically, a metaphor is.  When you move from simile to metaphor, you move from some fuzzy, debatable thing, to a lie.  And yet, that lie can express an idea which is true.

Therein lies the true genius of this novel.  Mieville sets up the ominous tone, the threat of introducing lies to the Ariekei, as something to scare you.  And yet, once unpacked, you come to understand what Mieville means by "a lie."  There are many kinds of lies.  There are the lies of frauds, con artists, charlatans and the like.  There are little, white lies that we use as social lubricant.

And then there are the lies we use to tell the truth, as Mieville says.  The metaphor.  I am cautious about metaphors, in many ways.  My first book-- Hiring & Firing Public Officials: Rethinking the Purpose of Elections-- was all about the dangers of analogies.  There is a common analogy within Political Science, and the commentariat about elections in a democracy.  An election is like a market.  Simile.  Candidates and parties are like firms, competing for votes as firms compete for consumers.  Similes.

Therefore, we need competitive elections.

If you accept the analogy-- the simile-- this follows.

The problem is that it is bullshit.  An election has precisely fuck-all to do with a market.  An election is a way to hire or fire a public official.  That is not a metaphor.  It is the literal function of an election.  Analyzed that way, a competitive election is fucking stupid.  You would never flip a coin to decide whether or not to fire an employee.

Be careful with these things.

Yet all mathematical models are analogies.  Similes.  Metaphors, if we speak of them thusly.  And we tell the truth with them.  We tell the truth with literature.  The advancement of the Ariekei comes from learning to lie.  Not in the way of Donald Trump, but in the way of William Shakespeare or Isaac Newton.

Without the ability to do so, a Sapir-Whorf species is tightly constrained.  Can it even be said to be sentient?

Of course, the Ariekei did not consider humans sentient, as humans could not speak Language (save for Ambassadors).

Sapir-Whorf asks you to conceive of thought without language.

Instead, try to conceive of meaningful thought without metaphor, understanding that metaphor is a lie.

Making the leap from simile to metaphor is what allows the Ariekei to free themselves.  Not just in their thinking, but from the bounds that allowed the dissonance of off-kilter Language to work on their brains like a disabling drug.

Or as John Waters says, "if you go home with somebody and they don't have books, don't fuck 'em."

Jonas Hellborg, Shawn Lane & Jeff Sipe, Temporal Analogues of Paradise.  The full album.  It is actually just two long "movements."