Metaphors We Die By: How Patterns Of Communication Can Become Deadly
Previously, I, along with many of my fellow collegues, attended the Carey Lecture, “Metaphors We Die By: How Patterns of Communication Can Become Deadly” presented by John Lyne. I found a few of the points to be very interesting but I also found myself at times confused or lost. I believe this to be, in part, from the way in which John Lyne spoke. It’s not that he did not express the ideas well but rather that his nervousness was extremely present. Despite having a manuscript during the speech, along with the support of many collegues, he was still very nervous and that transcended onto the delivery of his speech. Aside from that, I found the speech to not be as strong compared to others that I have heard in terms of its structure. While the content presented was
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One of the metaphors discussed was the metaphor of the brain. This refers to how when people talk about the brain, they refer to it like a computer. I found it humorous when Lyne said how if the brain could respond it would be rather insulted by such a statement; the first thing you do with a computer is hook it up to the internet. The way I came to understand this is that a computer needs the Internet to be able to access information and that information is provided by and influenced by many people. Our brains on the other hand, don’t need “connection” to access information. The strength of the brain can be seen in our ability to recall memories along with other information. It is not only our memories that are contained within our brain, but it the learned information that we have collected over the years and learned to cultivate to get the most out of it. By simply calling the brain a computer (or a machine) is to degrade it as something that can be artificially made and belong to anyone. This is why using such a metaphor is so damaging, because of the way if causes us to think about our body and
One of the metaphors discussed was the metaphor of the brain. This refers to how when people talk about the brain, they refer to it like a computer. I found it humorous when Lyne said how if the brain could respond it would be rather insulted by such a statement; the first thing you do with a computer is hook it up to the internet. The way I came to understand this is that a computer needs the Internet to be able to access information and that information is provided by and influenced by many people. Our brains on the other hand, don’t need “connection” to access information. The strength of the brain can be seen in our ability to recall memories along with other information. It is not only our memories that are contained within our brain, but it the learned information that we have collected over the years and learned to cultivate to get the most out of it. By simply calling the brain a computer (or a machine) is to degrade it as something that can be artificially made and belong to anyone. This is why using such a metaphor is so damaging, because of the way if causes us to think about our body and