“A current of water below the surface and moving in a different direction from any surface current.”
This was referenced as a metaphor for describing the effect of dominant ‘deep narratives’ on surface-level efforts to create different deep narratives.
The idea being: surface level efforts may be attempting to push things in a particular direction (e.g. change the media narrative), but if they aren’t aware of and seeking to mitigate/reorient the deeper ‘undertow’, then they will be held back.
There is hesitation from some about using this metaphor, as it might imply the current dominant narratives are ‘natural’ by using a natural metaphor to describe them.
However it might be suggested that there’s a tension between a deeper, ‘natural’ undertow that points towards interbeing etc., and that it is being blocked by the artificial, expensive, fraudulent dominant narratives.