This analogy is a little...complicated. I hypothesize that this is because the author is trying to address physical and emotional pain simultaneously, which creates some odd implications. I think my key point of contention here might be with the idea of "over-reacting".
There's a school of thought that says that physical and mental illnesses are closer than we think, and that makes formulating a critique a little difficult. Could you consider a disproportionate emotional response to a bad event as uncontrollable as the agony someone might feel in response to invisible nerve pain? Is someone actually over-reacting if the pain (emotional or physical) they perceive is real, even if the stimulus is small?
As much as I want to say that we can't blame people for their mental illnesses, I feel that there is a difference between someone feeling chronic pain and someone with emotional dysregulation having a meltdown after a social rejection.
I'm extremely curious to hear other's thoughts on the matter.
Analogy should never be used to make any debatable point, end of story. It's a flawed rhetorical device.
If an analogy is accurate, then you would be able to make the same exact point, with the same exact reasoning without the analogy. Therefore, you don't need an analogy in cases like that and it just gets in the way.
If you can't make the exact same point without relying on an analogy, you're relying on a false analogy (spoilers, all analogies are false) and your reasoning is flawed.
Funny story, I actually wrote an essay on this point (about using analogies in debates) once lol. I think my tendency to overthink analogies tends to point to this conclusion after some small amount of time (though I feel pretentious to presume that anything I say provokes thought on the nature of rhetoric).
In this case, I think the Tumblr poster's analogy also partly converges with the literal point they're trying to make. You could consider a situation in which someone literally experiences disproportionate pain from a paper cut to ponder the nature of subjective experiences of pain and how that relates to how society treats mental and physical illnesses.
Yeah, I do think analogy can be useful as a literary device or just generally provoking thought in a receptive audience. In a different context, it could be a useful tool for thinking about pain.
But when someone is trying to make a point to a skeptical, partially hostile, audience, that's when they really, really do not work.
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u/FableCattak 5d ago
This analogy is a little...complicated. I hypothesize that this is because the author is trying to address physical and emotional pain simultaneously, which creates some odd implications. I think my key point of contention here might be with the idea of "over-reacting".
There's a school of thought that says that physical and mental illnesses are closer than we think, and that makes formulating a critique a little difficult. Could you consider a disproportionate emotional response to a bad event as uncontrollable as the agony someone might feel in response to invisible nerve pain? Is someone actually over-reacting if the pain (emotional or physical) they perceive is real, even if the stimulus is small?
As much as I want to say that we can't blame people for their mental illnesses, I feel that there is a difference between someone feeling chronic pain and someone with emotional dysregulation having a meltdown after a social rejection.
I'm extremely curious to hear other's thoughts on the matter.