We are being overtaken by events. Media communicability has become increasingly important to the life of political initiatives. It is therefore useful to note the developing role of metaphor in articulating or opposing social transformation. Such imagery, of which there are many examples, easily undermines the best of initiatives. It would seem that the struggle has shifted from the world of ideas to the world of images.
Commentators everywhere remark on the sterility of proposals in the eyes of voters.
There is a bankruptcy of imagination. The menu looks good. It has many succulent words that trigger the imagination and whet the appetite. And yet much effort continues to go into the design of the menu. Although the United Nations has an image problem, the question is rather how it understands its role in articulating the images that give coherence, credibility and life to the many structural proposals which we are so expert in producing.