We think about the mind
With our minds.
It’s very meta.
Our metaphors of the mind
Morph across time.
Is the mind a container?
An aviary?
A garden?
A clockwork?
A machine?
We think metaphorically
Because that is what minds do.
Perhaps the best metaphor
Is Mind as metaphor generator.
Yet any single metaphor conceals
At least as much as it reveals.
Today we seem to reduce the mind
To a computer:
A fancier container,
But still
A container.
Instead of filling it we download
Things onto it.
We reduce learning to
Transferring data onto the hard drive of the mind.
Education = Data Transfer.
But it is a mistake to
To mistakenly identify
The human mind with any machine.
The human mind grew out of nature
And natural metaphors have more to teach us
Than machine metaphors.
The human mind is more like a garden
Than an assembly line,
More like a river,
Than an internal combustion engine
More like a tree
Than a catapult,
More like an aviary
Than a drone,
More like a spider web,
Than a hard drive.
A hard drive can only receive data
And store it.
But the human mind
Can perceive
And feel
And respond
And view from different angles
And analyze through many lenses
and imagined points of view
And grow curious
And long
And inquire
And investigate
And imitate
And transform
And connect
And invent
And imagine
And create.
All that and more.
But we treat it like a bucket,
Pouring things in so we can measure what comes out.
Even the word is more than one thing.
And yet we wonder why
These minds we measure,
Don’t want to mind us,
Yet they do mind.