How do you think?

Do you really make up your own mind?

Cognitive linguist George Lakoff’s book Don’t Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2004) became wildly popular during the rise of Trump, helping warring families bridge political gaps by teaching them how to reframe their thoughts and find common values. As international antisemitic speech exploded following the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on music festival attendees in Israel, Lakoff commented on Facebook,

All thought is carried out by neural circuitry—it does not float in air. Language neurally activates thought. Language can thus change brains, both for the better and the worse. Hate speech changes the brains of those hated for the worse. It creates toxic stress, fear and distrust—all physical, all in one’s neural circuitry active every day.

This internal harm can be even more severe than an attack with a fist. It imposes on the freedom to think and therefore to act free of fear, threats, and distrust.

It imposes on one’s ability to think and act like a fully free citizen for a long time.

Hate speech can also change the brains of those with mild prejudice, moving it towards hate and threatening action. When hate is physically in your brain, then you think hate and feel hate, you are moved to act to carry out what you physically, in your neural system, think and feel.

That is why hate speech in not “mere” speech.

Politics & Health

Since politics and health are so personal, taking stands has given rise to evangelism on both sides of debates. And the more heated the rhetoric, the more embedded and inflamed the beliefs become . . . and the more prone we are to adopt further zero-sum beliefs.

“Why do we get angry about what we believe?” asked Thomas Merton (No Man Is and Island). “Because we do not really believe it. Or else what we pretend to be defending as the ‘truth’ is really our own self-esteem.”

Although I’m vaccinated and boosted, living in New York City where the pandemic started with a killing field—a literal field hospital in Central Park and freezer trucks to store the overload of corpses—I’ve never told anybody else to get vaccinated, nor do I particularly want to get into a debate about why I did what I did or listen to lectures about how those who stand against vaccines are “people waking up.” I don’t think they’re smarter than I am or that I’m better than them. Yet relationships have ended because we disagree.

Nor do I want to debate, after the election is well over, my vote for Zohran Mamdani with Jews who are convinced I “betrayed the tribe” and am putting us all in peril. (See Two Jews Talk about Zohran Mamdani.)

How to Bridge the Gap

Sociologist and advertising expert Gerald Zaltman in his book Marketing Metaphoria explains that the human brain operates in metaphorical symbols that, after years of research, he and his team at Olson Zaltman Associates have called “Deep Metaphors.” Deep Metaphors are basic frames or orientations we have to the world around us. They are deep because they are largely unconscious and universal. They represent everything we think, hear, say, and do. And what we believe about these metaphors colors our every perception and opinion and how we detect and interpret differences. We cannot express ourselves without using deep metaphors.

In the preceding text I used the title “bridge the gap” to express an attempt to make peace—in families, between me and those I disagree with. This is a “Connection” Deep Metaphor. By saying it, I reinforce my belief that connection is still possible. If I say that the current disputes between disagreeing parties are “a marathon, not a sprint,” I’m using another Deep Metaphor: “Journey.” And it evokes my belief that we can get through this journey intact, having accomplished something difficult and important.

There are seven main and four subsidiary Deep Metaphors that Zaltman’s team has tested with humans all over the world and found them to be common to all of us. The more Deep Metaphors included in popular phrases, the more their impact. For instance, the phrase “People are waking up,” a mantra of anti-vaxers, is particularly potent because it evokes three of the main Deep Metaphors:

Transformation equates to change in state, status, substance, and circumstances. We are “laid low by a cold.” Or we’re “turning over a new leaf.”

Journey is the meeting of past, present, and future. Many people characterize life as a journey—big or brief. We use phrases like “It was a marathon” or “an uphill climb.”

Control refers to a sense of mastery, vulnerability, and well-being. We like to feel in control of our lives. When people “succumb to illness,” they may feel “powerless.” When we surrender control, we may say, “It’s out of my hands now.” Or we may feel “at the mercy of nature.”

You can see the complete list of the primary Deep Metaphors illustrated quickly in this video:

And you can read my in-depth article, including subsidiary Deep Metaphors, here: Deep Metaphors

Arguments that Stop Communication

Disagreements turn into a knee-jerk battle of right and wrong so easily when smart scriptwriters and marketers in advertising and in government PR departments use the internet and social media to express something using language that evokes Deep Metaphors that are already wired into us. As we repeat their catchy language, it creates viral beliefs that are every bit as contagious as COVID without us even realizing that the insidious language was written by somebody else.

Look how fast being against the war in Gaza turned to antisemitism—simply the oblivious posting of catchy memes like “Free Palestine” and “From the River to the Sea,” written by people who knew exactly what they were communicating, infusing masses of people with righteous superiority (“Control” Deep Metaphor) spread virally because it gave people such a boost and it didn’t matter to them that what they were communicating to Jews was, “Die. You have no right to a country.”

When non-Jews parrot language they don’t truly understand, when Jews blindly ignore war crimes because their need for safety (“Container” Deep Metaphor) overrides morality, we all become an unthinking herd directed by hate and fear.

When people on social media repost memes full of catchy sayings and extreme judgments, with no regard to their validity, meaning, or who composed them, again we are reinforcing, deepening, and escalating our belief in our irreconcilable differences.

When people with no science backgrounds listen to technical discussions they cannot possibly understand let alone fact-check and then evangelize conclusions, encouraging others who may live in precarious environments to forego protection or, conversely, when people who have never read the statistics on side effects blithely declare that everybody should get vaccinated and, if they don’t, they are evil, we are creating a zero-sum culture of good guys and bad, smart and stupid, asleep or awake.

When people imagine they can make a ton of money (“Resource” Deep Metaphor) even though they have no understanding of the mechanics of something like cryptocurrency—which is presented by scammers as a sure thing run by “people who know” (“Control” Deep Metaphor)—they invite their own financial demise. (See Everyone Is Lying to You for Money, streaming online Aug. 22-Sept. 6.)

And the only way to stop these patterns of thinking is to first, realize we are repeating scripts, and second, to choose other deep metaphorical ways of expressing ourselves—there is no way to avoid them as they are inherent in language.

What do we choose?

Conjuring the Deep Metaphor of “Balance,” I prefer to say that in the current tumult, we are finding a way to live and let live (literal as well as metaphorical meanings intended), therefore nurturing my belief that balance and peace are in fact a possible turn of these events. Perhaps a grand and true waking up will be when, like the phoenix rising out of this time of devastation and alienation, we can simply see one another as we are, without condemnation and aversion unconsciously programmed through other people’s scripts.

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Betsy Robinson is an editor, fiction writer, journalist, and playwright (also a former actor). She has written about books for Publishers Weekly, Lithub, Oh Reader, and many other publications. Her novels Cats on a Pole and The Spectators were published by Kano Press in 2024. She writes funny stories about flawed people and examines our herd culture. www.BetsyRobinson-writer.com.