Metaphors

I was going to post this on my Facebook, but then I realized that a lot of people are probably still sore about the debate I had yesterday. I.... ruffled a lot of feathers... SO I'll post my thought here instead, and welcome your opinions.

More and more, I feel like metaphor is a terrible way to support a position or make an argument. Why? Because a metaphor can be created to support pretty much anything. Hell, I could probably cook up a metaphor to support genocide if I wanted to! (controlled burning makes for a healthier woodland and regularly culling out-of-control animal populations is beneficial, SO the wholesale slaughter of certain humans can only help us, AMIRITE?)

It all started when my Mum regularly had Mormon missionaries over to give us religious instruction when I was in my teens (it may have been more about the fact that they always sent us cute young men, but that's another story, ha ha!). They used metaphor to "prove" that their way of doing things was correct (if I remember correctly, it was God being required to referee our lives like in a soccer game, so that rules would be followed). And being a good little skeptic, I wondered how that proved that their religion was correct.

With the current climate of social hypersensitivity, and being part of many many debates, I'm finding again that maybe metaphor is simply a tool to make a person's position sound more valid - whether or not it actually is.

Metaphor is great for poetry, or humour, or to establish a concept in education, or a great many other things...but to prove a point in an argument? I'm very skeptical.

AMIRITE?!!!

LOL- sign me up!


I've wondered the same thing lately- as an artist metaphor is super important, but as a business man, metaphors can't fill out my Quickbooks.. Bummer right?

#WalkingThatFineLineDaily

Just remembered another GREAT metaphor, because polygamy is super important, but only for the man:

"A girl must be like a blossom
With honey for just one man.
A man must be like honey bee
And gather all he can.
To fly from blossom to blossom
A honey bee must be free,
But blossom must not ever fly
From bee to bee to bee."

I find metaphor very helpful in an educational environment because it can help people relate the subject matter to something they are already familiar with, but it has no place in argument or debate. That is the realm of fact and logic. To rely on a metaphor to win an argument is to demonstrate that you have no better way to back up your premise.