You know, it's like, metaphor?

I love metaphors. Mixed metaphors are even better. Recently my smaller half was describing a how difficult it was trying to get people in a group to comment on something. She said it was like pulling hen's teeth. I reckon this is a great phrase. Perfect for something that is not only very difficult, but also very rare.

Metaphors are also great learning tools. In a class recently the Learned Professor said that lymphocytes were the body's policemen. And earlier on we had something similar when we were told that macrophages were like Rambo, only more intelligent. Comments like these really help me remember things, presumably because they come with a whole set of pre-packaged associations that are useful. Well, sometimes they are useful, but sometimes they are misleading if you take them too literally.

Let's look at something I heard on the radio the other day: the unions are the heart of the Labor party. This tells us lots of information about the unions. For example, they are left of centre, they are extremely bloody to operate on, and they have nothing whatsoever to do with emotion at all. But I'm not sure this can be extended much further. (As it turns out, an extended metaphor is a conceit. Great word.) Who would the liver of the Labor party be? The brain is probably Kevin Rudd. Actually, the brain is probably Julia Gillard. Kevin Rudd would be the liver, since he is on the right and is a dense, impenetrable mass. And Bill Heffernan would be the colon of the Liberal Party, for obvious reasons.

Anyway, I'm wondering if it would be practical to try to learn new things without resorting to metaphor. I don't think I could, since it is such a well practised mental routine for me. Is it something I have learned to do because it's effective for me, or is metaphor in fact the basis for most of our learning? But this raises the question of how we start learning new things in the first place when we are kids. What does our first ever metaphor hang off? Maybe a child psychologist could tell me if children need to be a certain age before they can understand metaphor. Any child psychs out there care to comment?

So many questions, so few psychologists. Apart from the ones behind the counter in Hungry Jacks.