[Neurons] 2021 Neurons #17 THE ART OF META-STATING METAPHORS

Mon Apr 19 00:18:53 EDT 2021

From: L. Michael Hall               

2021 Neurons #17

April 19, 2021

How Metaphors are Meta-States #2

THE ART OF META-STATING

METAPHORS

When you engage in the meta-stating process (bringing one state and applying
it to another) one of the results that often occurs is the creation of
metaphors.  It actually works both ways.  Whenever you create and/or use a
metaphor, you are meta-stating and this unconscious process is true whether
you realize it or not.

"Reading this article is like going on a journey.  By the time you finish
you will have seen and heard- visited- places in your mind and you could
very well have experienced an exciting adventure."

The metaphor above is "Reading is a journey."  But, of course, it is not
literal.  While reading this article, you do not literally go on a journey.
You actually stay seated (if you are sitting) and you hardly took a journey
anywhere.  So to understand the words, you have to shift to metaphorical
thinking and realize that I'm speaking about going on a journey in your
mind.  As I created that metaphor, I made it explicit and obvious.  With the
words, "it is like..." I was all but shouting, "Metaphor!  Metaphor!  Here
is a metaphor!"

Of course, those words are two more metaphors.  Formatting the idea that
some words are "shouting" metaphorically pictures the words in that sentence
as a person.  Words don't shout; people shout.  The words "it is like" is
like a person shouting.  Then there is "a metaphor is coming."  Well,
metaphors do not travel, go places, come to persons.  People and animals do
those kinds of things.  Yet on a metaphorical journey in the mind, a
metaphor, like a person, could approach you.

In all of this, I am asking you, inviting you, to engage in a different kind
of thinking.  I'm suggesting that you think of reading this article using
the lens of a journey and thinking of the word, "like" as a person shouting.
I'm meta-stating.  I'm taking something empirical, see-hear-feel, something
concrete like "a journey" or a "person shouting" and applying them to
reading.  In this, I have held the primary experience constant and have
invited you to a meta-level.  Bring what you know about a journey or a
person shouting to reading or to the word "like."

Now as you meta-state when you detect, understand, use, or create a
metaphor, there is an incredible richness in the process.  When you put X
over Y, you set an X-frame and within that frame there are lots of things
implied.  What's implied, but not stated when I put journey over reading?
Well, let's see, what's involved in a journey?  

Starting one place, moving along a pathway, getting to another place.
Journey implies change, development, there may be blockages, interferences,
problems, dealing with these things, overcoming them, finding resources,
solving problems, etc.

>From the field of Metaphor, these are entailments.  Metaphors entail much
more than they say.  Entailments come along with the metaphor as
implications and to pick up on them, to understand them, you engage in
inferential thinking.  You infer what is implied in the metaphor.  This
makes a lot of what comes along with a metaphor covert and implicit.  Lakoff
and Johnson describe this as the inferential structure which is inherent in
a metaphor (Metaphors We Live By, 1980; Philosophy in the Flesh 1999).

So, when you use a metaphor, think about a metaphor, you are meta-stating
numerous covert implications.  This explains why the frame structure of a
meta-state like the ever-ready rabbit, keeps on giving.  It has entailments,
some of which are extremely useful, some not so much, and some very harmful.

Further, when you think or speak metaphorically, your self-reflexive
consciousness is activated.  About the first subject- the target of the
metaphor, you are entertaining other ideas- hopefully ideas that will help
you understand the first idea or at least to understand it in a new way.
"What is reading an article like?  That question invites you to use your
self-reflexivity.

"It is like rubbing a magic lamp and wondering what will appear."

"It is like fishing in a deep pond and hope to catch something for dinner."

These metaphors (magic lamp/ fishing) imply certain emotional states-
curiosity, hope, wonder, etc.  They will do you good unlike the following
ones which will induce some unuseful states (drudgery, work, boredom).

"It's like being back in school with a monotone teacher."

"It's like trudging through deep mud."

Accordingly, metaphors can be a blessing to your life or a curse, they can
heal or harm.  Most of the time we are unconscious of the metaphors that are
all around us.  It is when you become aware that you then have choice.  Now
you can ask, "What emotional state is implied by the metaphor of a journey
for you?"  When you know that, you will know what meta-state the metaphor is
eliciting in you.  

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Executive Director, Neuro-Semantics

P.O. Box 8

Clifton CO. 81520 USA

www.neurosemantics.com  

Check out The Shop -- www.neurosemantics.com/shop/  

To subscribe or unsubscribe to Neurons, send request to meta at acsol.net 

Making smart decisions is not easy--- many, many cognitive biases work
against us and it is far too easy to default to pseudo-decisions: emotions,
gut feelings, intuitions, circumstances, others.  

Executive Decisions (2021) offers a way to decide intelligently and wisely.

130969 Neuro Semantics Executive Decisions Book Cover

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