Years ago when I was frequently on book tours, I’d come home tired and people would say, “Your batteries must be low.” I usually answered, trying not to sound too smart-alecky, “I don’t have batteries. Look.” I’d lift my shirt in the back. I didn’t like the electrical metaphor for how I felt. “Actually, I’m tired from meeting so many interesting people,” I’d say.Now the metaphors have changed, but they’re still often mechanical and I still disavow them. “You must be wired to be a writer,” people say. “No, I have no wires,” I respond. “But I do love to write.”I don’t take care of my body because it’s such a wonderful machine. The universe doesn’t work like clockwork, and my family is not a social unit.The trouble with our contemporary metaphors is that we talk about ourselves as though we were machines or objects. Our metaphors betray the extent to which our very idea of ourselves has been affected by the influence of modern science, technology, and psychology.This trend toward talking about ourselves as machines is not recent. The French physician and philosopher La Mettrie wrote books with titles like …