I can’t digest these ideas ...

Last week when reading McCloud's essay, I saw that he made a clear connection with how selfish human beings can be. When I first came across this statement, I thought to myself, “But why would anyone think that humans are selfish, based on the simple fact that we see ourselves in nearly everything?” 

I guess that’s me being naive. He accused the human race of being selfish due to the fact that we can’t help but personalized imageries, just to make things more meaningful and personal. He uses cartoons as an example of how we quickly make a connection with cartoon images. We give these characters life by exploring the words surrounding them, we place emotions based off of the words, and quickly relate to them because we see ourselves. Fusing ourselves with lifeless objects.

I can see now why McCould would think such a thing. This week’s focus in “Metaphors We Live By,” by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, was of course Metaphors. Their explanation is that metaphors are much more than just a poetic device, metaphors are essential and pervasive in our everyday language, communication, thoughts, and actions (Lakoff and Johnson). 

But the connection that I saw in this passage, was the very same “human selfishness” McCould spoke on about images, the only difference is, we are now using just words, no imageries. Metaphors, are important devices of mind, it allows us to use what we know about our physical and social experience to provide understanding of countless other subjects. Again an example of us “human selfish beings” seeing ourselves in something just to make it more relatable. Metaphors structure our most basic understandings of our experience, hence why George and Lakoff concluded that they are "metaphors we live by", they shape our perceptions and actions without our ever noticing them. It interesting to think that we only notice metaphors when someone decides to pour their heart out into a descriptive poem, yet we literally use metaphorical statements every day without noticing it. 

For example, ideas becoming food “… I can’t digest your ideas when you say them that quickly.” Or life becoming a container, “There’s no room for you in my life.” When exactly did metaphors become useful?

Another question is why do we feel the need to always reconstruct and make things more relatable? Without the use of metaphors would we be able to express ourselves the same? Is it even needed?


Works Cited
McCloud, Scott. “The Vocabulary of Comics.” In Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. New York: Harper Collins, 1994. 24-45

Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. Excerpts from Metaphors We Live By (1980). The Literary Link. Janice E. Patten. 2010. San Jose State University. Web. http://theliterarylink.com/metaphors.html