WARNING: METAPHORS LURKING

I ended the last post on metaphors with the suggestion that we need to make them conscious. By becoming mindful of the metaphors that we’re using in our thinking and reasoning, we can then manage them and make sure that they are ecological for our system.

Until you develop a sensitivity to metaphors, you will tend to think of them only in terms of poetry, humor, a tool of persuasion, etc. The truth is that they are everywhere— they are all around you. There are several reasons for this. One is that all language, by its very nature, is metaphorical. That is, words stand for something other than themselves. As we use words to refer to people, objects, experiences, actions, ideas, etc., the words we use are not literal or real, they are metaphorical.

Then there is the fact that we inevitably use metaphors to learn. We do that so naturally, so quickly, and so unthinkingly that it almost seems obvious when we explain it. Whenever you encounter something new, something you have had no experience with, what do you do? You try to find something comparable that you can compare it to. Your brain is trying to work out, “What is it like?” And with that you are now thinking metaphorically. You are comparing what you already know are familiar with to something that you are not familiar with.

What are you most familiar with? Yourself and how you move about the world and how your body functions. This leads to the orientation metaphors that Mark Johnson and George Lakoff have highlighted in Metaphors We Live By. These metaphors are so integrated into everyday language that we hardly ever notice them. They arise due to the bodies we have. For example, because we stand up and look around, up and down are fundamental orientation metaphors. “Happy is up; depressed is down.” “Success is up; failure is down.” We are comparing the state of being happy to the concept of something going up.

As a metaphorian, there’s an art to flushing out unconscious metaphors. After many years of using sub-modalities, I did that with that domain of NLP. Actually several clues came together at the same time. Why are some so-called sub-modalities also meta-programs? Why do we use nominalizations and categories to describe sub-modalities if they are supposed to be the smallest elements? So I began questioning the terminology. Maybe we are been calling these cinematic features of our movies by the wrong name. Maybe they are not sub- at all. Maybe the metaphorical idea of them being smaller units is the problem. And that’s what Bob and I discovered. The lead to the book, Sub-Modalities Going Meta (2005).

I did the same thing with framing. As a metaphor, your frames are not your basement walls. They are the structural forms that form the building and that make up the roof. A frame

operates above and over, hence meta, to the content. And of course, that’s the domain of Meta- States.

Consider the metaphors in “success is up” and “success is more.” Using up and more metaphorically then leads us to assume that to be more successful, you need to build up more and more— whatever the “more” is. We need more money, more stuff, more cars, more influence, more brand names, etc. We don’t ask why. We don’t ask what are we going to do with all the stuff when we get it. We just want more. No wonder consumerism is such an intoxicating factor in most people’s lives. No wonder dissatisfaction is as prevalent in first-world countries and sometimes more so than in the countries that are striving at the survival level.

The metaphors we use are not innocent. They can be incredibly powerful and determining and, to a great extent. And why? Primarily because we are not even aware of them. So first, we need to make them conscious. Once you tune in to the metaphors all around you and begin to become mindful of them, then you are in a position of true choice. Then you can ask: Does this metaphor actually improve things? What are the entailments of this metaphor that may be bringing along with it things that do not serve my well-being?