Metaphors We Live By & Coronavirus

In a lockdown special, I look back at George Lakoff and Mark Johnson's Metaphors We Live By to see if it can offer any insights in a time of Coronavirus pandemic.

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[ThenNow]

Please go and rate and review the Then & Now Podcast, it will be a huge help!

[RobertMunro]

The best I've found is bushfire. You can extinguish it by starving it of fuel (people) but even a few hot embers are enough to restart the fire.

[chadmccarty]

I find it refreshing to see someone questioning the war metaphor surrounding the coronavirus, but what I see missed in this conversation is that this metaphor is also used in the medical profession, and in academic research in relation to the human body and specifically, the immune system and how we understand it. Our bodies are invaded by a virus. Our immune cells mount a defense. The language we use to understand how our bodies work is predicated on this metaphor, and that, in itself seems to be a limitation to our understanding of even what a virus is and does. When we first identify a virus as an enemy, and choose to "fight" it, to defend ourselves against it, what is missed? Viruses seem to be integral to the process of evolution on the planet (the human genome contains a large percentage of DNA of viral origin), so one thing we do when we approach a virus in this way is render evolution as an artifact, rather than a process. Viruses are ubiquitous, right now you as an individual have 10^10 trillion viruses in and on your body. They are part of our environment, and part of the process of life. That is not to downplay the tragic nature of the deaths attributed to this virus. But when you examine the sequence of events that lead to lockdowns of society, and the way the medical facilities have been overrun, not necessarily as a consequence of the virus itself, but more as a response to the panic incited by the media and government reactions, then a different angle and understanding might emerge.

[Amapuche]

I really enjoyed this content! It's nice to see the theories applied to something real and current

[marakonttila]

Hey, I really like this concept! I think this thing is kind of on all of our minds right now, so I think this is a good new opportunity to have a look at these thinkers. I find it interesting how we use viruses as metaphors for other things (for example some people might say humanity is a sort of "plague" on the environment) but when it comes to our current virus itself we rely on other terms 🤔 I just find it interesting how we often avoid the "straight on" approach in our speech. Good video as always, looking forward to the next ones!

[kiwi_physics]

Good metaphor being used in NZ is stay in your “bubble”. Your bubble being used to describe those you live with. We are told not to meet any other friends/family, or this will “pop our bubble”

[sebastiaankampers]

The use of the word " expert " might be most unnoticed use of metafor. An expert suggests that these people are experienced in something that has never happened but lays in the future.

[LitArtCulture]

Thanks for this wonderful video. I was actually talking to a friend about this book last week.

[lokiwun]

A challenge to be risen to. Getting my head down and getting on with it. 7 day a week open-ended Masters degree. Up to me. Addendum. this has really set me off. Pioneer spirit is another!

[adamisforgiants]

I think we are missing out on metaphors of disgust.


Tsunamis are beautiful and terrifying, not disgusting. It is a virus, and people who have it are a danger to others. We should be compelling people to feel disgusted by the idea of this disease. The tactic worked well against smoking and tobacco, we should do this with social distancing.

[MrSeba]

I think that Schopenhauer's Hedgehog Dillema illustrates the current situation in a good way. We have to stay close enough during the winter, however we cannot be too close to each other so that we don't hurt each other with our spikes. I'm not sure if this applies to the definition of a conceptual metaphor though.

[YuriRadavchuk]

I've been thinking about Lakoff just yesterday to recap some of his insights. And there you are. Does Google scan my mind?

[hesamkarbakhsh]

I liked the last piece you mentioned about the effect of metaphor on people's experience in everyday life

[thisaccountisdead]

Just for lockdown I went all out: -

I guess there is a difference between a metaphor and an analogy - apparently an analogy is an explicit comparison done for the purpose of drawing light to a comparison, whereas a metaphor is more implicit in it's use of comparison and is done for the purpose of showing something to be as something else.

A while a go I got into Douglas Hofstadter who used analogies rather than metaphors: for example the analogy of a 'snow shadow' where a dark patch is created underneath a tree after it has snowed - it is not actually a shadow, but serves as a good analogy for understanding the nature of light in that photons act in a similar way to snow flakes as both cannot pass through the tree and so beneath the tree is sheilded from both photons and snow flakes.

'Snow Flakes' on the otherhand is used as both a positive and a negative metaphor for describing a person - either in a positive way to draw attention to how each individual person is different like all snow flakes are different, or in a negative way to say that someone is either physically, emotional or mentally as fragile as a snow flake and incapable of engaging in t h e d i s c o u r s e . 'Positive' and 'negative' themselves being problematic when used by someone like Jordan Peterson for example - does he just mean 'negative' as being just 'internal' using technical language of psychology or does he mean 'negative' as in morally bad? Often it is difficult to tell.

A disturbing use of language around the pandemic I've noticed is that 'The Cure Is Worse Than The Disease' - regarding, perhaps disingenuously, the balance between suffering/lives lost not putting in measures to protect people from the virus vs suffering/lives lost due to the negative effect of implementing measures to protect people from the virus. To me this has a political intention behind it.

I had already looked at economics in terms of network theory - it seemed to me that even before this crisis that the more separated we were ('degrees of separation') then the greater concentration of wealth there would be amongst the elites: a formula 1 = 1/x + 1/y shows this I guess, where 'x' would be 'degrees of separation' (for example '6 degrees of separation', a function of the number of people in society and the amount of in-person contacts each person has on average) and 'y' would be something known in economics as the 'pareto index' (for example a pareto index of 1.161 would mean 80% of the wealth gets concentrated in the hands of 20% of the population).

It seemed to me that social isolation/distancing was only going to increase the degrees of separation is society - as long as everyone is isolated and yet still attached in a relationship to those in power in society, it seemed to me that this could in effect increase the concentration of wealth in the hands of fewer people. Maybe saving corporations while many rapidly find unemployment bares this out? Alternatives could be a wealth tax? - as they can't spend their money on nice restuarants at the moment. Or the more drastic measure of bisbanding economic relations with the elites during this crisis by reducing the economy down to lots of small communities providing for each other and looking after the vulnerable - but I suspect this option is not permissible.

Speaking of waves though. The relationship above relates to a 'pareto curve', which is a steap curve. Alternativey their is a 'bell curve' which is more shallow. These have economic significance in terms of wealth equality. And now it seems also in terms of virus spread also - 'flattening the curve'.

In the relationship above, 1 = 1/x + 1/y, you may notice a problem if one value equals 1 or less than one - it would mean either you get infinities or a value switches from positive to negative. The physicist Paul Dirac encountered this very problem regarding the absorbtion and emission of photons (yay - full circle in this comment... assuming you even got this far :P). To which he created the 'dirac delta function', where instead of infinities we have a 'step function' or a 'step change' that always equals one. He also produced a 4-dimensional wave function (4 x 4 matrix) - for example applicable to the 'double slit experiment'...

Maybe life is going through something of a 'step change' at the moment - and it'll be harder to deal with than the instantaneous task of exchanging housing contracts during a house move?

I'm done.

[oliwilliamson]

Really great video! I like this new format.

[melissalutherpendragon]

It's barely a metaphor, but describing it as a zombie apocalypse works. As individuals we can't fight off the zombie hordes, but we can avoid getting infected and weather the storm safely.

[decoyps]

Is there such thing as a perfect metaphor? While some are more apt or useful than others, surely all metaphors will be ‘missing’ something by its very nature, comparing things that are similar but different.

[DairangerSentai]

I was about to forgo reading this book after the first chapter because of how abstract the study of metaphor is. I just asked myself "what real world applications does this have with the real world?" And when I found this video you completely encouraged me to continue reading. Thank you.

I'd love to read more of that study @11:58 btw.

[sebastiaankampers]

I dont think politics want to use metaphors suggesting that they arent in control of the siuation. Some middleway could be something like " we are getting bombarded by the enemy and everyone has to stay in their foxholes, but we are cutting the enemy's supply lines to their amunition. "

[patrickstasny]

Hi man, thank you very much for your content. I found this last video specially interesting! By the way-- did you study at goldsmiths?