There’s a book called Metaphors We Live By1 by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson that I recommend to anyone that asks for a good book to read. I buy extra copies and gift them to friends of mine. The premise is that metaphors are more than linguistic constructs we learn about in grade school – they are powerful tools that structure our everyday experience. This structure is not only reflected in our language, but also in our thoughts and actions.
The tricky part with the metaphors we live by is they tend to be subliminal. As soon as we start to acquire language as a child, we subconsciously download metaphors from our parents, friends, and culture. This download occurs through media and language: the songs we listen to, the books we read, the movies we watch, and the words we hear in the conversations around us. The choice of words reflect the underlying metaphor being used.
Here are some common metaphors from American culture and language that reflects them:
ARGUMENT IS WAR
I demolished his argument. His claims were indefensible. She shot down all of my arguments. I’ve never won an argument against him. His rebuttal was a great counterattack. I attacked his position. How to Win Every Argument.
POLITICS IS WAR
Barack Obama to campaign for Harris across battleground states next week. Who won the VP debate? Why Trump won — 9 takeaways from the 2024 election.
LOVE IS WAR
She left me defenseless. He has a high body count. Love is a battlefield. They had a bad fight last night. She killed his tendency to be vulnerable.
FOOD IS A REWARD
How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat? I’ve been good, so I’m going to treat myself, I deserve it. It’s been a long week, so I’m going to splurge on some chocolate. Finish your dinner then you can have dessert. Open Happiness.
Changing Metaphors
The most impactful takeaway I had from Metaphors We Live By is that we get to choose the metaphors that define our lives. This choice comes after we bring the metaphors that we are using into our conscious awareness. Then we can look at each one and ask the question, “is this the metaphor I really want to be framing my experience with, or is there one that resonates with me more?”. If we don’t like the answer, we are free to change it to anything we want. Changing our metaphors does more than change the words we speak; it fundamentally alters how we experience day-to-day life in our thoughts and behaviors.
After I read the book, I wrote down the metaphors that had been implicitly chosen for me by society in various parts of my life. At the time, I was searching for a new job and was getting ready to start interviewing. In the past, I had always been nervous during interviews, to the point were I had trouble clearly communicating my experience. Interviews terrified me. I began to wonder, “what might the metaphor be that was causing this fear?” This is what I came up with:
INTERVIEWS ARE A COMBATIVE DEFENSE OF SELF
This metaphor was framing my experience of interviews. Where did this come from? At least in my experience, it was common to receive questions like “are you getting nervous for your interview?”, or even simple words of encouragement like “good luck”. The underlying assumption was that an interview is something I should be nervous and fearful about, or one in which luck plays an outsized role in success.
If you think about the goal of an interview, though, it doesn’t make sense to frame it as something that requires combat or self defense. Both parties share a common goal: to figure out if there is a good fit for the role through the sharing of information. A better metaphor is:
INTERVIEWS ARE A COLLABORATIVE SHARING OF INFORMATION
When you look at an interview from this point view, it immediately changes how you perceive the actual event, as well as how you prepare for it. It wasn’t until I switched to this metaphor that I understood the importance of learning how to be a better interviewer, as well as the importance of thoroughly rehearsing my past experience ahead of time. The reason is that the new metaphor aligned my mindset and preparation with the actual purpose of the interview. With this new metaphor in hand, I managed to successfully get through not one, but six interviews and ended up getting an offer. What’s even more fascinating is that my physical stress response during the interviews was significantly reduced compared to prior ones.
There are a couple other metaphors that I have changed which have been especially impactful.
LOVE IS A WAR LOVE IS A COLLABORATIVE WORK OF ART
I have had a tendency to structure my relationships as something that I should win or defend myself for. This has manifested as me getting defensive when my partner shares a grievance with me, especially if their interpretation of what happened isn’t what I intended or matches with my version of reality. People have varying frames of reference (influenced, at least in part I imagine, by the metaphors they explicitly or implicitly are using), and so it is completely reasonable for someone to interpret an event in such a way that would make them upset, and simultaneously for me to feel that they may be overreacting because my intentions were pure. When you view your partner as an adversary on a battlefield, you dig in and try to prove to them how their version of reality is not valid. This tends to make them defensive, as it signals to them that their emotions are invalid. Now you’ve got a full blown “fight”.
However, if you view your relationship as a work of art, and your partner as a fellow artist on that work of art, the dynamic changes completely. True art is not something to be won. It exists outside the realm of competition. The best music contains tension, but it also resolves that tension with a series of notes that underscore the harmony inherent to the song. Of course relationships can develop tension as well. The goal is not to add more tension by trying to “win”, but to resolve it with the notes of listening and understanding. The goal is to keep the music playing. There is nuance here. I’m not saying it’s a good idea to just rollover for the sake of resolving tension. The best relationships have strong boundaries and healthy emotions expressed openly. But this expression is done not for victory, but for continuation of the relationship in the long term.
FOOD IS A REWARD FOOD IS INFORMATION
Have you ever wondered why the “Food and Drug Administration” separates “Food” and “Drug” as if they are two separate things? The distinction only exists in language. To our cells, they are the same thing: chemical information. Our cells don’t use language to distinguish things the same way that our minds do. When you pop a pill or eat a steak, our cells just see various chemicals swimming around. And critically, the chemical information isn’t just discarded. It is actively used to create outputs, whether that be to rebuild new cells, or to render various parts of our genome.
Viewing food as information instead of a reward completely changed how I relate to eating. Before, when food was a reward, I remember justifying a dessert to myself because of something that I had done or even just based on what day of the week it was. I did this with alcohol too, especially in college. I worked hard in college during the week, which meant the weekend was for getting slammed. Now, with food as information, my diet is aligned with the needs of my body instead of my emotions. I try to give my cells what they need, which is good information. Doing that consistently leads to more energy and feeling good, both in my body and my mind. It has also led to more flexibility in some ways. We’ve been conditioned to eat certain meals at certain times of day, but to our bodies it is all the same. Steak for breakfast? Absolutely. One closing thought on this: I’m not saying that eating isn’t associated with reward at all. Eating a good meal with friends and family is certainly rewarding and healthy. But in this case it is the social interaction that is the reward, not the food per se.
Why is changing metaphors so effective at changing behavior? I think it relates to a mental model called the map versus territory. Metaphors are “maps” of our experience that we use to simplify our navigation of the world. They project the high entropy of reality into a lower dimensional form that is easier for us to deal with. These projections are saved into our library of mental subroutines that are triggered by our subconscious when certain environmental patterns are detected. The thing about maps is that some are better than others. When we upgrade our maps to versions that are closer to reality, they allow us to be more effective in our navigation of the world.
If changing metaphors can be beneficial, how do you change them? The first step is to be aware of what your current metaphors are. This is easier said than done, because metaphors we live by are ingrained in us and reside underneath our conscious awareness. Try reading Metaphors We Live By. The book gives a lot of examples that may trigger ideas for your life. After you read it take some time to be introspective and list out the different aspects of your life. See if any of these are particularly stressful or fearful. Then ask “what might the metaphor be related to this aspect of my life that is causing me to feel this way?” Other things that have helped me are meditation and psychedelics. Both of these help bring the subconscious to the conscious, including metaphors. Once you are aware of your metaphors, all you have to do is decide if they actually resonate with you. If they don’t, change them.
Finite versus Infinite Games
I’ve noticed an underlying theme in the metaphors presented in Metaphors We Live By as well the more ill-fitting ones for my own life, including those I’ve changed as discussed above. Or rather than theme, perhaps a better characterization would be an über-metaphor; the root metaphor from which all the other metaphors descend from. The common thread is they involve winning something. They characterize the major aspects of life – school, work, relationships, money, etc – as arenas of play in which there can only be one winner.
This characterization of life as different forms of play is captured in another book called Finite and Infinite Games by James Carse that I highly recommend. The book defines two types of games: finite games and infinite games.
Finite games have strict rules and a fixed boundary of play. The goal of the game is to win. And for one player to win, the other players must lose. In this way, finite games are zero-sum. Finite games are also defined by roles. When we play a finite game, we assume a role that carries a title, which has some meaning within the context of the game itself, like “quarterback” or “senior vice president”. Titles are abstractions that indicate completed victories and therefore orient players towards the past. The orientation towards the past keeps finite play within the boundary of the game. In finite play, life is scarce; something to be won, possessed, and acquired.
The infinite game is different. It is chaotic and non-stationary, where the rules and players continuously change. There may be a boundary temporarily, but it is generally amorphous and dynamic through time. The goal is not to win, but to keep playing the game. The infinite game is positive-sum, where players’ contributions enable the game to continue, both for themselves and for others. The infinite player does not completely avoid finite games, but rather recognizes them as small pockets of play subsumed by the infinite game. Infinite players embrace the abstractness of finite games they willingly choose to compete in, and therefore take them up playfully, not seriously. Surprisingly, infinite players do not eschew the roles of finite games, but rather assume them with the full acknowledgement that they are yet another abstraction, completely separate from who they really are. Where the finite player is oriented towards the past and fully constrained by and within the rules of the game, the infinite player is oriented towards the future and therefore is free to play with the rules of the game. Because infinite players understand that there is a bigger game being played in which any particular finite game is but a small part. The infinite game admits ample degrees of freedom for manipulating existing rules or creating new rules entirely. In infinite play, life is abundant; something to be experienced and created.
LIFE IS A FINITE GAME LIFE IS AN INFINITE GAME
Love is a battlefield. Argument is war. Food is a reward. All of these metaphors descend from the root metaphor LIFE IS A FINITE GAME. When we view every aspect of our life as an opportunity to win or acquire something, we are playing the game of life as a finite player. Finite play orients our existence towards the acquisition of abstract titles, colors our relationships with adversarial undertones, and instills our mindset with a sense of scarcity.
On the other hand, if we choose to live by LIFE IS AN INFINITE GAME, we are choosing to approach life with a certain playfulness rather than seriousness. Choosing infinite play doesn’t mean we opt out of all finite games. It means the way we play them changes. Instead of conflating our true sense of self with the roles required for any particular game, we maintain separation between them and fully exercise our ability to assume and unassume our role within the finite games we play. This separation allows us to maintain perspective on what truly matters to us, which can only be determined outside the confines of bounded games and their attendant rules and titles.
Love is a collaborative work of art. Argument is dance. Food is information. All of these metaphors descend from LIFE IS AN INFINITE GAME. The goal is not to win, but to continue playing. Infinite play orients us towards future possibility rather than the past. It emphasizes healthy boundaries and cooperation and instills in us a sense of abundance.
Now that you know metaphors can be much more than a literary device, can you think of any that may need an update for your own life? Raising awareness of existing metaphors and proposing new ones has been great benefit to my own life. Perhaps it will benefit you too.
Thanks for reading,
Connor
- This isn’t a book review per se, but if it were, I would let you know that the book is more of a textbook than anything else, and is quite dry. But if you can treat it that way from the start and apply the ideas to your own life, it can potentially be a big benefit to your life. It was for me. ↩︎