Who's Running Your Life? Your life story in metaphors. If you were given a chance to choose your favorite life metaphor, what would it be? Do you agree with Forrest Gump's mother that life is "a box of chocolates" because "you never know what you're going to get"? Or do you prefer the phrase from the 1930's tune that "life is just a bowl of cherries"? Though simply stated, each conveys a very different view. A "box" implies mystery, as do the pieces of chocolate inside.
We don't know what is in a closed box, and we don't know what's in a covered chocolate. A "bowl" of cherries is completely in view, as is its contents. Now let's get more specific. For many centuries, the metaphor of life that probably popped into most people's mind was the one suggested by Shakespeare in his speech, the Seven Ages of Man: "all of life is a stage... " The idea that life is not just a box or bowl of chocolates or cherries, but perhaps a set of little plates is appealing. Still clinging to the butterfly image? The Dangerous Power of Metaphor. Standard Oil as octopus in an early 20th century cartoon Today I want to talk about metaphor and its use in political discourse. Metaphor, or more broadly figurative language, is at the core of what makes literature literature.
Figurative language packs a punch because it is doesn’t confine itself to the literal level. It connotes as well as denotes, as we lit critics used to say. Skillful politicians, both the principled and the unscrupulous, know how to use metaphor to their advantage. Let’s look at a not-so-nice image cluster. French social critic Roland Barthes calls such chains-of-association “mythologies” and notes that they are far more powerful than reason.
Statistically, myth is on the right. While I basically agree this is how myth-making works, I’m skeptical that it is limited to the right. In fact, I’m worried that we might start seeing the rise of left-wing tea partiers. So watch out for metaphors. The power of metaphor. Home > Psychology Articles > Hypnosis and hypnotherapy > The power of metaphor What is a metaphor? Generally speaking, it's a story or an idea that parallels another pattern or situation. So if I say, "This car is a dream to drive," I'm using a metaphor. The car isn’t a dream, of course, but everyone understands what I mean. We dream in metaphor and we all use metaphors when we communicate – even if we don’t know we are using them. In therapy, approaching a problem metaphorically is helpful on several levels.
Since we dream in metaphor, it can be said that metaphor is the ‘language of the unconscious’, and so all metaphor is hypnotic because it appeals to the unconscious mind. Now, if we really think about it, all language is metaphorical. But I want to look more specifically at the way we can use extended metaphor hypnotically, and the way we can construct metaphors by looking at the patterns of situations rather than just the specific details. But of course the lad did want a solution. Raf Stevens on Prezi. Zero. Do Not Despise Your Inner World: Advice on a Full Life from Philosopher Martha Nussbaum. Paradise Lost or Outgrown? Genesis 3, Original Blessing, and Original Responsibility. Theology in a 13.7 Billion-Year-Old Universe: Matthew Fox, Original Blessing, and Creation Spirituality. Ken Burns. Films - Future of StoryTelling.
About - Future of StoryTelling. The Future of StoryTelling summit (FoST) was founded on the belief that stories—in the broadest sense of the word—shape the meaning and momentum of everyday life. FoST brings together top executives, creative talent, and technologists with the vision and influence to change the way that stories will be told tomorrow and beyond.
As technologies continue to evolve, how will we create, share, and experience the most fundamental unit of human culture—the story? FoST is an invitation-only event designed to further our understanding of the art, science, and business of communication in the twenty-first century and beyond. The inaugural summit took place on October 5, 2012. Top thinkers and practitioners from diverse fields gathered to share ideas and experiences on everything from the new/old oral tradition to narrative in console games, from the biochemical impact of stories on the human brain to cutting-edge collaborative storytelling projects and many other hot topics. Why Storytelling Is The Ultimate Weapon. In business, storytelling is all the rage. Without a compelling story, we are told, our product, idea, or personal brand, is dead on arrival.
In his book, Tell to Win, Peter Guber joins writers like Annette Simmons and Stephen Denning in evangelizing for the power of story in human affairs generally, and business in particular. Guber argues that humans simply aren’t moved to action by “data dumps,” dense PowerPoint slides, or spreadsheets packed with figures. People are moved by emotion. The best way to emotionally connect other people to our agenda begins with “Once upon a time…” Plausible enough. I think it’s a real insight. Until recently we’ve only been able to speculate about story’s persuasive effects. What is going on here? And, in this, there is an important lesson about the molding power of story. This is exactly Guber’s point. Guber tells us that stories can also function as Trojan Horses.
Guber’s book is relentlessly optimistic about the power of story to persuade. A.S. Byatt on the Power of Fairy Tales. The Storytelling Animal: The Science of How We Came to Live and Breathe Stories. By Maria Popova Where a third of our entire life goes, or what professional wrestling has to do with War and Peace. “The universe is made of stories, not atoms,” poet Muriel Rukeyser memorably asserted, and Harvard sociobiologist E. O. Wilson recently pointed to the similarity between innovators in art and science, both of whom he called “dreamers and storytellers.” Stories aren’t merely essential to how we understand the world — they are how we understand the world.
We weave and seek stories everywhere, from data visualization to children’s illustration to cultural hegemony. In The Storytelling Animal, educator and science writer Jonathan Gottschall traces the roots, both evolutionary and sociocultural, of the transfixing grip storytelling has on our hearts and minds, individually and collectively. Gottschall articulates a familiar mesmerism: Human minds yield helplessly to the suction of story. Joining these favorite book trailers is a wonderful short black-and-white teaser animation:
The Story Of The Storytellers - Importance Of The Oral Tradition | From Jesus To Christ | FRONTLINE. Before the gospels were composed, Jesus' first followers sustained his memory by sharing stories of his life, death and teachings. L. Michael White: Professor of Classics and Director of the Religious Studies Program University of Texas at Austin It's rather clear from the way that the stories develop in the gospels that the Christians who are writing the gospels a generation after the death of Jesus are doing so from a stock of oral memory, that is, stories that had been passed down to probably by followers. But if we think about the death of Jesus and remember a group of people who would have still been attached to him and to his memory after his death, it must have been a rather stark and traumatic period of time.
Many of their initial hopes and expectations had been dashed. And yet there's that story of his resurrection of his coming back to life. Story telling was at the center of the beginnings of the Jesus movement. We have to remember that Jesus died around 30. Helmut Koester: Get Storied: Change Your Story. Change Your World.