[Neurons] 2021 Neurons #20 METAPHORICAL THINKING

[Michael Hall]

From: L. Michael Hall

2021 Neurons #20

April 26, 2021

How Metaphors are Meta-States #3

 

 

METAPHORICAL THINKING

 

You think metaphorically.  You may or may not realize it, but you do.
Actually you do much more metaphorical thinking than you do literal
thinking.  In fact, it is amazing how little literal thinking plays in our
lives.  What explains all of the metaphorical thinking that we do? Learning.

 

We mostly use metaphors for the purpose of learning and understanding.  So
when you do experience and/or understand one thing, it is tempting to think
of other things in terms of something else that you understand.  In
understanding anything, we always begin by asking, "What is X?"  The next
most frequent question is, "What is X like?"

 

When I originally studied resilience, the word itself gave me a metaphor
which I used to explain it.  The word literally refers to "return to its
original form."  When you have a set-back, then resilience is "bouncing
back" (returning) from that set-back or knock down.  The image that comes to
mind is that of a person falling or down on the ground and then bouncing
back as a ball might bounce back.

 

More recently I put together the book on resilience and I used another
metaphor in the title, Resilience: Being the Phoenix.  I used a picture of
the ancient Egyptian bird, the Phoenix rising from the flames of a fire.
What is resilience?  It is a rising up again even from the destructive
nature of fire, up from the ashes to live and thrive again.

 

What is it like? enables us to use things that we know to more fully
understand something we do not know.  Or perhaps we know it, but a new
metaphor helps us to understand it in a new way.  In this, the more
metaphors that we have for something, the more perspectives we can bring to
a subject and with multiple perspectives- more wisdom.

 

The challenge, however, is that no metaphor is perfect.  No metaphor can
completely give us an exhaustive understanding of a subject.  In fact, every
metaphor is far from perfect.  Actually, with every metaphor there are all
sorts of limitations- places where the metaphor breaks down and where the
subject is not like the metaphor.  What's also fascinating about this is
that we humans seem so quickly to forget this, yet when we do, we begin to
engage in fallacious thinking that deceives us.

 

That's especially true with any metaphor that has been used for a long time.
The longer it has been used, the more often we refer to it, and ironically,
the more it relates in multiple ways to the subject, the more we forget that
it is a metaphor.  We begin to think it is literal and actual.  This happens
regularly with models.  Whether they are models of physics, psychology,
human nature, social organizations, etc., familiarity and over-use can
deceive us.  We then forget, it is just a way of talking and thinking about
things, it is not real.

 

A metaphor in physics that was popular in the twentieth century was that
atoms and electrons and other sub-atomic particles are like a miniature
solar system.  The nucleus is like the sun and the electrons are like
planets that circle it.  Today we know that that metaphorical picture is not
accurate at all.  In psychology, John Lock introduced the metaphor of a
child being born as a blank slate.  Today the cognitive sciences and
neuroscience has led us to recognize the falsehood of that image.

 

When we ask, "What is it like?" the best answer will always be, "In some
ways it is like A and in some ways it is like B, and yet neither of these
comparisons are complete."

NLP is like a computer program, with our linguistics we program our
neurology.

Learning NLP is like learning how to drive your own bus; it's like stepping
up into the driver's seat and taking control.

NLP is like finding the ingredients of the recipe for the subjective
experience that you want to have.  Now you're the chef and the world is your
smorgasbord. 

 

You think metaphorically to a great extent because that's how thinking and
learning works.  What you already know cannot but help influence what you
are seeking to understand.  Yet because this comparison process can and does
occur unconsciously, you and I are both in danger of letting false
comparisons in our reasoning apart from our awareness.  That's when it can
become dangerous to your well-being.  So one the skills with metaphors, in
being a metaphorian, is making them conscious.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D., Executive Director 

Neuro-Semantics 

P.O. Box 8

Clifton, CO. 81520 USA                             

               1 970-523-7877 

 

Books can be purchased at www.neurosemantics.com 

Other PDF books can be purchased at "The Shop" on www.neurosemantics.com

131688 NeuroSemantics ThinkingMetaphoricalyCover FRONT

 

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