You have a pattern in your brain-meat, which you try to encode it into a linear series of words. Then someone else reads those words and tries to reconstruct the pattern in their brain-meat. But in this dance, how much of the work is being done by the words versus the lifetime of associations each person has built up around them?
In a simile/analogy, there needs to be a sādharaṇa-dharma, a shared property: the point is that there’s something in common [] while of course there is going to be a lot that is not []. In any given instance, this intended shared property may either be stated explicitly, in which case the simile is called “complete”, or left implicit, in which case it’s called “partial”. Both can be highly effective.
I think analogy is used in the OP in a somewhat in-between way. “Complete” only in an itself circumscribed way.
The idea of sitting down and finding the One Eternal Truth about anything is a fantasy. The universe has fractal levels of detail in every direction.
The post Observations about writing and commenting on the internet feels quite close in spirit to this post.
Some parts that highlight the similarity:
I think analogy is used in the OP in a somewhat in-between way. “Complete” only in an itself circumscribed way.