This article aims to provide better metaphors for thinking and speaking about culture, identity and values. In terms of human behaviour, the words culture, identity and values are viewed as useful reifications which have allowed us to discuss human action in terms of nouns. However, the terms have been used over many years in various theoretical settings, in a great variety of metaphorical ways. As the process of human choice of action is investigated from fresh directions, including that of neurological studies, human behaviour may be profitably discussed in terms of process as well as content, and fresh metaphors are needed. A neurological mechanism has been proposed which permits us to classify, recognise and remember perceptions, and to label some with an emotional binary marker indicating good and bad, which promotes or inhibits neural activities and equips us to learn ways of acting appropriately in relation to the environment and situation. The content of this evaluated record of experiences is acquired through social learning, of which formal education is a communally agreed part. The question of why the underlying mechanism is not perceptible to us in our own lives and represented in discourse is considered. Suggestions are offered for the improvement of intercultural education using these understandings.