Richard Parker

Metaphors We Live By is very interesting. It's a lovely mix of entertaining reminders of how we speak and function as well as an intellectual conversation about how important these metaphors are, because they shape the way we approach certain situations. The authors write, “Someone who is arguing with you can be viewed as giving you his time, a valuable commodity, in an effort at mutual understanding. But when we are preoccupied with the battle aspects, we often lose sight of the cooperative aspects” (10). This quote specifically talks to that point, that we often get emotional (or at least I do) about the most simple of our beliefs because we feel engaged in something larger than a discussion with another person, it literally is a battle that we undertaking and if we lose there will be consequences; loss of pride, etc.

One of the most interesting ideas to me from this section of the reading surrounded the idea of containers, heh. Some quotes: “The speaker puts ideas (objects) into words (containers) and sends them (along a conduit) to a hearer who takes the idea/objects out of the word/containers” (10), “Human purposes typically require us to impose artificial boundaries that make physical phenomena discrete just as we are: entities bounded by a surface” (25), and “Each of us is a container, with a bounding surface and an in-out orientation” (28). I like the idea of containers, in that we can think of the ideas that we learn and the books we read, the knowledge we gain, as an increase to our container (or memory palace, even). We consume ideas and they become a part of us, a part of our identity, so it makes sense that ideas and words (=culture and language) have the power to shape who we are.

I like this book because it sort of takes what we think we know about language and reverses it. We know that language is essential to culture, and the examples that the authors give allow us to actually see that in play, and also to see how language perpetuates different understandings of culture which are then used to fuel language, etc. The logic behind this book sort of seems similar to Foucault, in that he argues that ideas like power and sexuality are enforced and delineated by language; and that by continually talking about a certain idea it eventually becomes prominent and normalized. I know that I have definitely simplified all that but I'm not sure exactly where I am going with this.

On a personal note, this part of the book and the idea of containers definitely led me to ask myself the question of “What ideas or metaphors am I made up with?” And “What metaphors do I really live by?” I'm not sure if I can make sense of it, but I think it is similar to my question of “What makes a good myth?” and “Is the myth that I am writing a quality myth?” More to be thought about on that.

But I do appreciate the correlation between Pirsig and these authors, especially with the idea that “the problem was not one of extending or patching up some existing theory of meaning but of revising central assumptions in the Western philosophical tradition” (preface). There seems to be something “wrong” with our Western metaphors, or with our Western way of experiencing, as these authors repeatedly bring up.