Metaphors We Kill By

Core idea

People kill and die over cartoons, flags, songs, and articles of clothing. Sapolsky's explanation is that symbolic and metaphorical thinking evolved so recently that the brain never grew dedicated circuitry for it. Instead, evolution improvised — it co-opted ancient regions built for concrete jobs and handed them metaphorical work.

Sapolsky's argument: Our top-of-the-line brains cannot quite keep things straight and remember that metaphors are not literal — and that confusion has enormous consequences for our best and worst behaviors.

So the anterior cingulate, built to register physical pain, also fires for social rejection; the insula, built to expel rancid food, also fires at moral violations. The metaphor of "feeling sick" at an atrocity is not just a figure of speech to those neurons.

Why it matters

This neural reuse is the propagandist's most powerful tool. If you want a population to feel that an Other barely counts as human, there is one reliable route — engage the insula, the seat of visceral disgust. Call the Tutsi "cockroaches" long enough and ordinary Hutu farmers pick up machetes. The same confusion that makes us vulnerable to hate, though, can be turned toward peace: respecting an enemy's sacred symbols is, biologically, recognizing their humanity.

Key takeaways

Mental model

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Practical application

Audit the metaphors around you

Watch for rhetoric that frames a group as insects, vermin, disease, or filth — language engineered to trip the insula. Recognizing the technique is the first defense against it.

Use symbolic concessions deliberately

Conflicts anchored in sacred values do not yield to material bargaining alone. An apology, an honored anthem, a leader speaking the other side's language — gestures of "no apparent material benefit" — can do what reparations and border lines cannot.

Example

Two teams have merged after a hostile acquisition, and the absorbed group still calls the acquirers "the suits" — shorthand that quietly strips them of individuality. A skilled leader does not lecture about respect; she stages a symbolic concession. The merged unit keeps the old team's product name and celebrates its founding date. The gesture costs nothing material, but it signals recognition of an identity, and the "suits" framing loses its grip. It is the same mechanism that let a shared anthem help knit a new South Africa together.

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