A little while ago, I happened to stumble across a very interesting article by Robert Sapolsky (himself a very interesting and colorful character, with a very memorable beard...) in the New York Times called "This is your Brain on Metaphors." (Read it at: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/this-is-your-brain-on-metaphors/)

He has some very interesting things to say about the human brain and metaphors; the reason why metaphors are so powerful in human communication of whatever sort, is that our brains don't distinguish between sensory information and figurative or metaphorical information. That allows us to empathize with other people (because we can feel with them, actually experience what they do, though not as intensely) and it gives us a great deal of scope to explain, learn and understand, because we can learn about and understand one thing within the metaphor of something else; create models either physically or mentally.

Being a biologist, Sapolsky spends most of his time talking about the underlying biological systems. Which is interesting, I suggest you read his article, but being a writer geek myself, what really fascinates me is the narrative implications.

It reminded me of a passage from the Neil Gaiman book "Anansi Boys" I read a couple years ago. In this passage (which is fairly long, so I won't quote it directly, here), the trickster demi-god Anansi is explaining to a human woman how, a long time ago, Tiger told all of the world's stories, and being Tiger, they were all about hunting, killing and violence. But then Anansi tricked Tiger into giving him the power to tell the stories, and they became about out-thinking the other person, tricking and manipulating them to win things like a kiss from a beautiful woman, and life became much less violent and much more interesting.

The point that I'm getting to in a somewhat round-about fashion, is that the metaphors we use directly effect our narrative about ourselves and our world. Sapolsky talks about how seeing a resume on a physically heavier clipboard makes someone judge the person represented by that resume as more serious, or "weighty" (though it doesn't translate to obese people...kind of wierd, no?) . But I expect that Gaiman is right, that the effect of metaphors is even larger than the examples Sapolsky gives, that the larger metaphors of your life (eg Tiger as compared to Anansi) change how you percieve life, how you react to it, and then what sort of stories you tell.

Which might, I think, connect back to the values constellation I was talking about a couple weeks ago. Do the values you consider most important change what metaphors resonate with you, and have meaning? Hmm. I'll have to think more about this...