[MD] What is an analogy?

[ARLO J BENSINGER JR]

[SA]
Analogies can be locked in the zoo, but can't live in a zoo or else they die and
crumble into insanity and irrational efforts.

[Arlo]
A good metaphor. :-)

[SA]
Analogies, like a tree, can be scientifically discovered, painted, and
poetically written, but analogies shake off any hardening or literalization.

[Arlo]
Yes, this happens through a process I have heard called "cultural renewal". Each
generation, at eac historical moment, must create/interpret analogies/metaphors
appropriate to that "age". While good metaphors can transcend years, none is
permanent.

[SA]
Isn't this the excellence, spirit, value, freedom, and quality of any static
quality?  Harden any analogy and the value of any particular 'thing' loses
'something' about itself and 'something' of 'what something is' is left out. 

[Arlo]
Using a paraphrase of Hofstadter, the more you try to make a system "complete",
the less and less it contains; the more spills out. The more we define
"Quality", the less of it we really hold. Vague, loose, definitions that can
move us towards pragmatic ends are likely unavoidable, unless you join a
Buddhist monastery. As Samuel Beckett said, "Every word is like an unnecessary
stain on silence and nothingness". ... On the other hand, he _said_ it. (I got
that from Art Spiegelman's Maus).

[SA]
Hardening, put in a zoo, lifelessness, lose of spirit, sterilization, zombies,
lose of value (or feeling of value) and inanimate objects, etc... all analogies
of literalization.  Has not poetry and painting, any art, been described as the
very breath of life.

[Arlo]
How true. But just like you can't breathe the same breath over and over (too
much CO2), new breaths must continual be reached for. 

[SA]
Who's Wittgenstein?

[Arlo]
An Austrian philosopher. Of two minds (early and late) on language.

[SA]
Now-a-days, much is supposed to be divided and separated away from each other...
SOM... divide and conquer.

[Arlo]
"Once in a while one gives a quick glance and then looks away expressionlessly,
as if minding his own business, as if embarrassed that we might have noticed he
was looking at us. I see it now because we’ve been away from it for a long
time. The driving is different too. The cars seem to be moving at a steady
maximum speed for in-town driving, as though they want to get somewhere, as
though what’s here right now is just something to get through. The drivers
seem to be thinking about where they want to be rather than where they are.

I know what it is! We’ve arrived at the West Coast! We’re all strangers
again! Folks, I just forgot the biggest gumption trap of all. The funeral
procession! The one everybody’s in, this hyped-up, fuck-you, supermodern, ego
style of life that thinks it owns this country. We’ve been out of it for so
long I’d forgotten all about it." (Pirsig, ZMM)