"As an example of this "pattern-system" that may lie beneath our conscious awareness, consider the way that we "assume" a definition (or paradigm) of the planet we live on. We need not remind ourselves, if we are members of what Whorf calls the "SAE" (Standard Average European) group, that the Earth is an inanimate form of dumb matter; it is simply there, requiring no second thought on our part as we step onto its "surface." We are made aware of the Earth's "animate" character only when something unusual occurs, as in, for example, an earthquake. We are accustomed to assuming that we are walking and living on the surface of a ball that is more or less smooth. Consider, however, another paradigm: What if we view "the Earth" not as a ball in "empty space," but like the inside of a raw egg? The Earth is the yolk, swimming in the egg white-which we know commonly as the "atmosphere," but usually disregard as part of the Earth. In this portrayal, or “paradigm,” we do not so much walk on the surface of the Earth as swim in a narrow area surrounding the skin of "the yolk." The Earth, in this sense, is not a simple hard surface that we need not take into consideration when we plan our actions. The Earth becomes a more fragile "thing." Its permeability is exposed, its "surface" becomes less sure. In this scenario, we are like the creatures that dwell on the ocean floor; perhaps a fish in water is as "unaware" of the water as we are of the atmosphere that sustains us. We become aware of the equivalent of the Earth's "albumen" only when its consistency changes, in a wind storm, for example, or when the air is excessively polluted. The idea of being in something (the Earth as the inside of an egg) would result in a very different set of "forms and categories" underlying our languages than if we saw ourselves as existing on the surface of "a ball in empty space." The egg analogy would not be so unfamiliar to many of the indigenous peoples of the American Southwest, who envision the female Earth as surrounded by a male fertilizing "sky." The reality of the Sky-Father and Earth-Mother in an unavoidable and eternal embrace would then "make sense" to those who presently see the analogies as mere figments of the imaginations."