There's a really amazing book by Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor (and a followup she wrote in the late 80s called "AIDs and its metaphors") which talks about this need to speak about disease as a conflict or fight, or as a foreign invasion or corruption. It's a fascinating book also because it compares the 20th century ways of talking (or not talking) about cancer with how tuberculosis was discussed in the 19th century and before, and both the differences and similarities, especially with regard to a different understanding of how disease operates.

People conceptualize their own illness in very different ways. An author I very much respect, Jenny Diski, died recently, and in her final series of essays about her life and her cancer (and impending death), she said at one point, “under no circumstances is anyone to say that I lost a battle with cancer, or that I bore it bravely. I am not fighting, losing, winning, or bearing.”

Except that cancer and infectious disease really are conflicts and invasions, no metaphors needed. At the cellular level you really do have cells killing cells based on recognition of whether they are not they are recognized as "self".

You are defending the metaphor by using metaphors based on the metaphor you are defending.

Recognizing self/other isn't a metaphor, cells really do that.

The other comment says this more briefly, but: it is true that the immune system draws this distinction. Every human cell with a nucleus presents a set of molecules on its surface, and immune system T cells use that to determine whether or not to trigger an immune response (where "immune response" means "kill the cell which presented an unacceptable set of molecules").

Autoimmune diseases occur when immune cells improperly categorize some "self" cells as "non-self" and trigger immune response on them.

Describing the behavior of immune cells as categorizing cells in 'self' and 'non-self' is itself an example of engaging in metaphor. It's an example of anthropomorphising the behavior of cells.

You can just as easily describe the behavior of immune cells as categorizing cells into 'healthy' and 'unhealthy' and killing the 'unhealthy' cells. Suddenly the disease is not about internal conflict, but about internal hygiene. And when the immune system kills 'foreign' cells, it's not because they are foreign, but because they are found to be 'unhealthy': deviating too much from what it considers 'healthy'.

This is a simpler explanation. Apply Occam's razor: the immune system does not care about whether something is 'foreign': that's a more complex, and more precise, judgement than is needed to determine whether something needs to be killed. The broader category of 'unhealthy', deviating from the template/norm, is sufficient and that is the only thing the immune system needs to determine.

Except that the immune system's idea of what set of molecules to accept and what set to kill is not based on a generalized idea of what a "healthy cell" looks like -- otherwise we wouldn't have such trouble matching people for organ transplants, since our immune systems would just accept any generically healthy organ.

Instead it's dependent on the (specific to the individual) set of genes controlling the major histocompatibility complex, and so is very much a "self" ("derived from my genes") versus "non-self" ("not derived from my genes") determination.

Yes, what is 'healthy' looks different for each individual. That doesn't mean that something is found to be 'healthy' because it is 'self'.

The immune systems primary function is housekeeping: killing cells that are still completely 'self', but are old, worn down or dysfunctional in some other way. Killing 'invaders' and cancers is minor in terms of the numbers of cells destroyed.

As your transplant example shows: something foreign can be found to be entirely 'healthy' by your immune system. So self vs. foreign is too narrow.

An immune system that only kills cells determined to be 'non-self' would be woefully insufficient. It needs to kill cells that have become unhealthy, for instance clogged up with misfolded protein, all the time, even when those cells are clearly still 'self'.

See also my comment to ubernostrum further downthread. There is no compelling reason to frame cancer or infectious disease as a conflict or invasion. Doing so is just as reasonable as framing housekeeping as a conflict with 'foreign dirt' or an invasion of 'the outside world into your house'.

Have you ever lived with someone with a mental illness? I definitely see the relationship with terrorism. Terrorism thrives on fear - "will they attack today?", "Will they use some horrible method of attack?", "Will I be able to handle it?", etc.

Living with someone with mental illness can strike fear into a person. "When I get home from work, will I get normal spouse, or lunatic spouse?", "Will I need to take my children away from this situation, or will we have a nice normal meal?", "Will I get fired for constantly having to leave work to deal with this shit, or will it calm down for long enough that I can accomplish some of my life goals?"

It can be very terrifying dealing with something like this, and frankly, I find the metaphor extremely apt. I understand your distaste of how the word is used in the media, but please understand that not all of us use these words lightly. These diseases really can be literally terrifying to the people around the disabled. It can literally feel like someone or something is torturing your loved ones when you see what happens to them.

Something that is terrifying is not the same as a terrorist.

A terrorist is someone who deliberately and consciously seeks to create fear and terror, usually for political ends.

A disease can not be a terrorist because it is not conscious and has no political agenda (obviously).

That's mincing words. Being bipolar feels like an assault on my psyche that exists for no reason other than to make me miserable and to meticulously sabotage everything I do. I totally understand feeling like having a terrorist in your head, because it's a great way to describe how I feel sometimes.

In the title, the author is using a metaphor, which is a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable.

And the contention here is that it's inappropriate (unless you mean to suggest that diseases are sentient or otherwise capable of intention to foment terror) and overplayed, and it ultimately corrodes the meaning of and devalues the word.

Very much like living with someone who was bipolar.

I came to the comments hoping someone would address this. I'm American and totally agree. This word terrorist needs to just go away. Call them criminals. Call the networks "organized crime."

Look at the bombing in NYC recently. "we do not think this is terrorism" said our idiot mayor. It is terrorism if someone detonates a bomb in a street! Period. If you mean "we're waiting to see if he's part of a broader network of terrorists working together," then say that! Words are powerful and in America we are pretty bad about using them incorrectly (see: entrée as a main course!).

> This word terrorist needs to just go away. Call them criminals.

Terrorists are criminals whose main motivation is political. The main motivation of other criminals is not. One term is more specific, so they are not interchangeable, and the term terrorist carries useful information when used properly.

Of course, diseases are not politically motivated, so that analogy is not great.

So Henry Thoreau and Richard Nixon were terrorists?

I'd really prefer more specific (and disrespectful) terms like "violent troll". "Terrorist" helps feed the phenomenon it's naming.

I've often wondered what effect it would have if the media universally started referring to "suicide bombers" as "mentally imbalanced religious fanatics".

Like a world without lawyers, one shudders at the impossible dream.

http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/simpsons/images/9/9b/Bes...

Can you imagine?

Some suicide bombers are children, coerced or fooled into it. "Go stand there in the crowd. Your parents will be proud. If you dont, something very unfortunate might happen to your little sibling."

I agree with your general gist, but terrorism has an actual meaning - trying to push your political agenda through application of terror (it doesn't have to be murder per se)/

But yes, American political dialogue could do with more multi-polarity, and less us vs them dichotomy.

I looked up entrée, and the Wikipedia page says that the American usage of the word is actually older than the contemporary French meaning of a dish served before the main course.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entr%C3%A9e

How could that possibly make sense etymologically? (I'm genuinely curious). Given that "entrée" means "entrance"...

The contemporary American meaning (the main course) doesn't seem really older than the contemporary French meaning.

> The word entrée maintained this meaning of a substantial meat course served after the soup/fish and before the roast in Britain, France, and America until well after the first World War.

http://languageoffood.blogspot.ch/2009/08/entree.html

The problem with metaphors linking the human body with society is they are essentially fascist. The "parts" have no value and the "whole" is supremely important.

So it is incumbent on people who use these metaphors to remember that in society the "parts" (i.e. each individual) do have value. Otherwise it's too easy to turn things around and say, "Terrorists are like disease, we must kill them all; that fast-growing ethnic group is like cancer, we must cut it out."

I don't blame the author in this case as it's a very personal account, but readers should be sure to keep the distinction in mind.

The biggest difference between individuals and societies: our cells cannot propagate or survive on their own, whereas individuals can.

As an analogy for society, a colony of bacteria or fungi would serve better than the human body.

An individual completely separated from modern society would perform quite poorly.

Or somewhat more poetically: No man is an island.

A small group can splinter off and survive.

My arm cannot survive on its own

A small group of people is not going to survive at a modern, first-world, technological level of civilisation, providing itself with oil, coal, electricity, silicon chips, cotton, synthetics, pharmaceuticals, food, lumber, iron, steel, aluminium, glass, etc., etc.

It might manage to provide for itself at a ~1650 level of subsistence, in a favourable climate.

Modern civilisation is a team sport.

The point still stands -- your arm is not going to survive in any way shape or form, while small groups of people can and will, despite difficulties.

Humans have survived the collapse of their own societies before, but no cells survive the death of a body (HeLa cell line notwithstanding).

What group is it you're hiving off from society exactly?

Because in the same way that your arm is an integral subunit of a whole which makes no sense without that contextualising state, any organised subunit of modern society will stop functioning in its subunit sense.

An isolated business, or factory, or town, or neighbourhood, or even family, will no longer have its prior context.

You'll all but certainly see a massive amount of mortality.

Some very small sets of individuals might survive, but, again, within an entirely different context. And only in the right nourishing environment.

Much as a few select cells from an arm might, if sufficiently general, continue to exist if put in an appropriate nutrient solution, protected from bacteria or other disease, and generally cared for.

I don't think you're conning on to the systems view of this concept, and the distinction between individual and society, or cell and organism.

I agree with everything you said, but I think you're completely missing my point.

> any organised subunit of modern society _will stop functioning in its subunit sense_.

Yes, there will be high mortality, but that former subunit can go on and recreate a new, different society. An arm will just die. A 90% mortality rate is completely different than 100% mortality.

My point is that the analogy between society and the body is very imperfect. The body is much more fascist, and the biggest reason is because of how reproduction works.

Evolution has spent over a billion years shaping multicellular, sexually reproducing organisms; sexual reproduction provides strong selective pressure to favor cells that contribute to the organism as a whole. By contrast, large-scale human society (larger than a tribe of ~100 people) has only existed for a few thousand years.

That's why we value individualism, liberty, and so forth -- it's literally against human nature for society to completely dictate to the individual, whereas it's natural and correct for a cell to sacrifice everything (e.g. apoptosis) for the body, because only by helping the body can the cell help propagate its own genes.

Just think about it for a second -- cells regularly check themselves for damage, and if they determine that they are too damaged, they immediately commit suicide. If they fail to commit suicide, the immune system kills them. Can you imagine mass, compulsory euthanasia for terminally ill people, but enforced by the police + military? Because that's one implication of the 'society == body' analogy.

If you want another example, ant and bee society show much more eusociality than human societies. Workers very readily sacrifice themselves to defend the colony/hive, whereas it takes a lot of training and effort to get humans to fight effectively. That makes sense, because eusocial insects are more closely related to one another than humans are to each other, and workers cannot reproduce while there's a queen. The mechanism of reproduction strongly influences the level of eusociality.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_eusociality

Fascism is also highly inefficient.

>>The problem with metaphors linking the human body with society is they are essentially fascist. The "parts" have no value and the "whole" is supremely important.

Yes, and also the problem with metaphors linking the human body with society is they are essentially communist also. In communism, the individual has no place if he/she is lesser equal and has almost all importance/power if he/she is more equal like politburo member or their crony.

No.

You are sadly witnessing one of the darkest consequences of 9/11.

It was such traumatic event for the entire society, due to its stark reminder that we weren't safe, and the modern world hadn't solved every problem, after decades of comfort.

There's a feedback cycle of increased fear, leading to unrealistic demands to fix it, leading to "solutions" that are immensely amplified by the media, and the politician's justifications of the solutions. That leads to increased fear...ad nauseum, to the point that you could credibly do a "Exisentially frightening" find and replace for every instance of "terrorism" and "Exisentially frightening (noun)" for terrorist. They're increasingly synonymous, and terrorist is the one losing definitive meaning.

I don't blame politics for this. We elect them by popular vote, and don't usually reward them for giving us a stern talking to, rather than addressing our exisential fears. But, they could have avoided the types of solutions they've trumpeted. Solutions that killed tens of thousands of Americans and foreigners, altered the way we live, and wasted trillions of dollars that should have been spent lifting ourselves up.

The terrorists won. They've done exactly what we know they wanted: create vast fear in the populace, and impose high economic costs, with relatively small acts committed by madmen.

Hopefully we start choosing more reasonable solutions, responsibly fund the ones we've found (the TSA caused multi-day delays in major cities this summer), and stop demanding the impossible from our politicians. Popular opinion about Middle East military action is tortured logic. You can't be mad about Iraq, Libya, and Syria. They express the full spectrum of action we can take — at least, as far as the general public perceives it. There's interesting distinctions, but few are well-informed enough to have that be informing their opinion.

I think it's less because of fear, and more because of hate and anger that drives people to act the way they do and the laws after 9/11. Yes, everyone claims the new laws are to "keep people safe", but they all seem to follow the same pattern of trying even harder to catch criminals, punish them more when we've caught them, and lower the standard of evidence necessary for conviction.

After all, most people in the USA don't live near high value targets, and I doubt most people are afraid of terrorism in their day to day lives (the occasional highly unusual occurrence being the exception).

This, "the terrorists won" meme is getting old, and I don't believe is true. If you read up on ISIS extremists, they believe their destiny is to take over the world, ex. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isi...

The truth is terrorist have engulfed themselves in anger and hate, and as the saying goes, hate breeds hate. That's what is happening to the USA. People are too embarrassed to admit it. After all, the modern enlightened individual has grown past hatred, right? They leave such petty emotions behind, don't they?

So, no one wins. Not the terrorists, nor the people... well besides a few power hungry elitists who should be lined up against a wall and shot (just kidding), but I think you see my point.

It's just a instinctual lizard brain response to a instinctual lizard brain action. And the more we deny we hate, the more it controls us.

Frankly, I'm too lazy to find a citation, but IIRC (99% sure) revelations from Al Qaeda documents have included that they knew exactly what they were doing, and the plan was to strike fear and cause economic costs – they viewed it as a response to ever-decreasing availability of funds and a recognition they didn't have the backing of enough civilians or soldiers to do something as ambitious as found a nation.

ISIS' founding logic was Al Qaeda failed, and surely that was because it wasn't ambitious enough, and not pure enough. The solution was to rebase on fundamentalism and use the remnants of the Iraqi army to create a safe space for a caliphate to rule.

Of course, I'm offering absolutely nothing to back my assertions here, so it's fair to ignore this. :)

> impose high economic costs

The West rolled back on Habeas Corpus and here we have you lamenting over economic costs.

So, who "won" again?

I was nervous writing that post, imagining someone would think of even more severe things we lost, that I surely couldn't remember everything while furiously tapping out a post, and they'd glibly refer to it as if I had forgotten the fall of Western civilization had occurred, while I only cared about money!

I told myself this was being far too fearful. Surely those reading would recognize that the absence of every other cost in the post: the lives of hundreds of thousands, mass surveillance, the Patriot act, etc, etc, etc, and recognize that I couldn't enumerate everything in a post that was already too long.

I worried more about narcissistic performance art, someone hopping in, vastly exaggerating with statements like habeas corpus was rolled back! and I had ignored it, and that seemed unlikely as well. Surely this was all manifestation of anxiety, anxiety I have to address.

Thank you for showing that fear wasn't unfounded.

> I was nervous writing that post

We're just exchanging ideas and viewpoints here. Nothing to be nervous about, specially since we're both posting with opaque handles.

> I couldn't enumerate everything in a post that was already too long.

Right. It's just a matter of priorities for a short short list.

> narcissistic performance art, someone hopping in, vastly exaggerating with statements like habeas corpus was rolled back!

I would have welcomed a reasoned response that did not consist in toto of imaginal matters and an apparent personal attack.

Here is another piece of "narcissistic performance art" for you: http://www.nyupress.org/webchapters/hafetz_911_toc.pdf

It's impossible to respond to your post with a response involving reason, you're not appealing to reason.

You made an unfounded assertion, with a scolding for not enumerating your unfounded assertion in my list of consequences of 9/11. This list is no list – it's literally two items that I had chosen specifically for that paragraph because A) they were important to my reasoning B) they were the two explicit goals of al Qaeda operations, decided upon as the best strategy after increasing scare resources limited potential scope of operations, and lack of appetite to become a religious nation-state.

When called on your unfounded assertion and scolding, you attempted to take a step back. You sarcastically mocked my defense, by conflating the time I took to write a long post, with me taking time to write a long list of absolutely every cost to humanity after 9/11. You claimed my response was really just imaginary concerns and a personal attack, complained I didn't engage your unfounded assertion, and posted two pages of the table of contents of an unidentified book.

I spent ~10 minutes trying to learn more about the author and his assertions, and couldn't find any information on Google that would remotely shed light on your unfounded assertion.

Even if I had, it doesn't change anything. The most charitable version of the only argument you've offered is I'm callous to care more about trillion of dollars in economics consequences that our fundamental rights as a society. That's not what happened. All that happened is I built the paragraph around mentioning al Qaeda's only two explicitly goals, and that they had accomplished them at level beyond their wildest imagination.

At the end, I'm thinking, this was utterly a waste of time for the both of us, except you've gotten to engage me two posts in a row now. That's usually the mark of a troll.

I'm OK with letting my responses to stand as they are with a note of objection to your extreme mischaracterization of content and your claims of knowing my 'intent'.

As a helpful final note, here is the NYU Press page with reviews of the cited book: http://nyupress.org/books/9780814737033/

> What makes the analogy to "terrorism" apt here?

Looking up one of the definitions of terrorism, I see "the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion".

This being the case, I think it's more or less appropriate here, since the article says, "I was getting accustomed to the two of us spending more time in reviewing our days. The subjects though were starting to fall predominantly in the category of fear and anxiety"

On the other hand, I suppose you could argue there is no coercion being involved. In any case, I don't think the title was meant to link this to anything political but rather just an actor causing fear.

I think her intent was simply to invoke empathy for what happened to her husband (to try to put us in his shoes). It wasn't meant as any kind of a broader social or political metaphor.

After reading the article I thought it was a great metaphor. Agreed that in the US too many things are "war on x" but I felt this was a good use of the word "terrorist".

I grew up in Germany during the Baader Meinhof days so to me terrorism has a specific, slightly different meaning to its use here in the US now but words have different meanings in different contexts.

Do you truly feel like Americans moreso than any other nationality choose words poorly, in your estimation? That seems like a fairly unsupportable hypothesis. One might say it's a poorly chosen place to point the finger.

I agree mostly, but I think not the usage of this analogy is the real problem in this specific case. I think the usage here is apt as a figure of speech. However, like you already pointed out, the usage of the word terrorist in general is inflationary and has a strong significance from its literal meaning. The notions compete with each other on this level and for some readers reading those words in this context appear to be like a cheap, sort of unfair stake in the battle(!) for attention.

Indeed, having seen the movie The War Within, I have to agree with you strongly.

The title does not resonate with the expectations to the content.

My Gods, please accept my condolences.

When your husband, Robin Williams passed away, I mourned for him. I was only someone who greatly appreciated his humor and drama. As a personal mourning for someone whom affected me as a viewer, I watched "What Dreams May come"....

It is one of his saddest and yet most beautiful movies. I live with, and am married to someone with Bipolar disease. I am grateful and happy she accepted me, yet I know she has it. It's OK, as I shall be aside her. But I know she has had similar beliefs and impulses. And please, do not believe I'm comparing us two; I am not.

I can guarantee one thing; He won't be forgotten. I know how much he affected my life, in the humor, and the great joy of his films and comedies. His comedy was infections, in the most joyous way possible! I nary could stop laughing on his 2011 comedy he gave that was recorded by HBO! We had to stop the recording for a half-hour for us(not we-us!) to catch our breath! And eventually, we continued the insanely-funny comedy!

He was such a wonderful and amazing reporter... And yet when he passed, I mourned. I have only mourned for very few.... and yet when I didn't think I would mourn for someone whom I only knew through their acting, I did.

We lost someone very special to all of us. Whether it was through their comedy, their hilarity, through their drama, or through their serious drama; he was special to so many of us.

I do hope you not only survive, but greatly thrive! One of the things you can do is be yourself ! Don't forget that! You can also continue his legacy; do what you're doing right now and continue bringing the thought and reminder of this disease. It's not common yet, and still needs further advocacy. You're in a perfect area to bring this area of genetic/prion disease to light.

And, please don't forget yourself! Yes, Master Robin Williams (yes, a master, in the arts of Comedy, Drama, and Acting)was a great person who brought his laughter and commedia to all, but don't forget yourself.. You succeed him. Do the best you can do, in his name. It may not be commedia. If may not be acting. But that's OK. Do what you do the best!

May the deities he and you believe in bless you.

If you don't empathize with the terror this disease caused her, and her metaphor to 9/11 and other terrorist attacks, there's nothing I or anyone else can say or explain that will make you understand.

"the sad Zeitgeist of our time notwithstanding"

This sounds like one of those sentences that sound deep but don't mean anything. Can you explain?

I didn't mean to be pompous. My native tongue is German and I didn't know a better word than Zeitgeist for what I wanted to say.

I feel that language in general is being used in a different way today than even just a few years ago. Admittedly, I don't have objective measures for this but I know I am not alone in this assessment. Even the Economist recently ran a feature about this lamentable phenomenon.

Thank you. I wasn't trying to be rude either and really appreciate the response!

Zeitgeist has the meaning not only of "the spirit of the times" (literal translation), but of the sense of a binding or constraining dominant ideals and beliefs of a time, which can be viewed as proscribing a cage within which a set of contemporaneously accessible ideas are constrained.

The idea was promoted by Albert Szent-Gyorgi in a 1970 book, The Crazy Ape.

There's a good overview of the concept in this VSauce2 video:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cgOFQcNZiFk&t=9m43s

I'm finding the top-level complaint registered, its note, and significance on this discussion overstated and distracting.

Despite the Zeitgeist [1] of naming things after war or terrorism [2] hopefully words still have meaning [3].

[1]: spirit of the times/current fashion/popular tendencies

[2]: which causes war/terrorism to lose meaning because it refers to everything

[3]: compare with [2]

"Even though it seems that words have diminished meaning in our modern society." Or something like that.