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Defining Allegory
I had a conversation with somebody today who represents an organization that likes to say, “we’re not methods-based, we’re principles based.” I’m down with that distinction, but only as it applies to a very specific understanding of “principle”.
When people say, “it’s not all about the method” or “I don’t want it to be some kind of formula” they are speaking of the problem of holding form too closely. Form — especially divorced from function — becomes an inflexible prison incompatible with the evolutionary liberation demanded by our times and the complex diversity of our situations.
But often when we say, “principle” we are discarding method or formula only to adopt a category of methods or formulas called “principles”. For example: “we don’t stipulate a method of construction, but in we follow LEADS principles.” In reality, the principe is a category of methods of construction, so you’re still all about methods or forms, but you’ve convinced yourself you much more open and flexible than you really are.
True principles are abstractions. They are a meaning so well extracted from a form, it could be applied to nearly any context across all categories. Such abstract principles have a seed-like quality: evolutionary potential in any environment.
In my mind, the best vehicle for such principles is allegory. You can see why in a definition like this:
An allegory is a cohesive set of interconnected symbols, figures, and metaphors that can be abstracted from a basic level of plot so that every element is a stand in for political, religious, or other abstract ideas. — Sonali Thakkar “Narrative and Memory” 2013.
Abstraction on this level is akin to the revolution of Euclidean Geometry. Before Euclid, math was through of as based on concrete realities. Therefore, each form of math was limited by computation. But Euclid showed math was based on relationships that could be drawn out as abstractions and applied to all situations without any computation necessary.
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