Ideas are cutting instruments

As of yesterday, I was all set up for a softball blog about working from home—actually, the languid joys of working from bed. I had a picture of my cat sleeping on a legal pad as if he had fallen asleep while taking meeting minutes to illustrate the bliss of bed-based remote work. I’d even written a New Yorker-esque caption for it: “And yet, Carlos fails to understand why the boss thinks he should spend more time in the office.” LOLOLOL.

And then I read something. I hate when I read stuff.

I’d been thinking about a program I’d offered earlier this year called Embody Your Year and was wondering if “embody” was really the right word for what I was trying to deliver. My program was about creating metaphors in your life that make the aspirations and goals you set for yourself feel real.

For example, I want more freedom in my life so I am working with the physical sensation of walking and the feeling of it in my body—the personal power of walking away, the controllable effort of going wherever my feet can carry me, and the sense of weight and presence pounding the pavement brings to my year.

It turns out that embody is exactly the right word, but I am approaching the idea of embodiment from the wrong direction.

Somehow, in my early morning doom-scrolling, I stumbled upon an article published in Scientific American in 2011 about embodied cognition—the philosophy that, according to UC Berkley professor George Lakoff, how we think is influenced—perhaps determined—by our physical experiences in the world. Lakoff discovered that “we think metaphorically” which is contrary to the prevalent theory of disembodied language as a “series of meaningless symbols” championed by Noam Chomsky (who my grad school classmates and I prank called in the middle of the night and made his wife angry, but that is another story).

Colorless green ideas don’t sleep furiously because, well, I called and woke them up. And because ideas need the body to be awake and to rest—the idea that language is “separate from the body” is incorrect. Colorless green ideas sleep furiously does not compute because the brain is not trying to compute it; the brain is trying to experience it.

Lakoff points out, “metaphors are more than mere language and literary devices, they are conceptual in nature and represented physically in the brain.” In other words, words take form through our bodies and are expressed as metaphors in our minds.

This is why we say things like, “It’s over my head” when we don’t understand something. Because we feel these experiences happen beyond the space we can see or they are too big for us to “get our heads around.” Happiness is up because it makes us feel light, floaty. We walk on air. But we consider sadness as down, heavy, dumped, and deflated, because that his how it resides in our bodies.

Lakoff and a fellow faculty member called Mark Johnson wrote a book: “Metaphors We Live By” which I bought a number of years ago and did not read because, in looking through it, I did not think it was what I thought it was going to be. The content was over my head—the metaphor expresses the reality that I could not see it for what it was, so I decided I could not understand it and shelved it.

No ideas but in things. (William Carlos Williams)

I am not sure I understand their book now (I just started reading it) but I do understand metaphors. Which brings me back to the idea of ideas. According to “Metaphors We Live By” the metaphor through which we understand ideas is “a cutting instrument.”

That’s an incisive idea. That cuts right to the heart of the matter. That was a cutting remark. He’s sharp. He has a razor wit. He has a keen mind. She cut his argument to ribbons. (Lakoff 48)

And the experience of ideas as sharp and separating is real in our bodies otherwise we would describe ideas with other language. A dull idea is not cutting therefore, it is not much of an idea, is it?

Our metaphorical thoughts about ideas are not always painful—they can be money (my 2 cents worth), food (half-baked ideas), and people (brainchild). Ideas can be experienced as plants, products, commodities, resources, fashion,

and light: A brilliant thought though slightly opaque. Do you see what I am saying?

No? Perhaps not. I too am still in the dark, but an idea is dawning.