Parable : The elefant and the 6 Blind men.
Once upon a time, there were six blind men living in a small village in India.
One day their wise king came to visit the village on a big elephant. As the blind men did not know what an elephant was, the king allowed them to feel it.
Each of them approached to feel and touch the majestic animal.
The first approached the elephant and, leaning against its large and robust flank, he exclaimed, "An elephant is like a wall, lukewarm and a little rough."
The second felt a tusk and said, "Oh! I feel something round, smooth, long and pointed. There is no doubt: this extraordinary elephant does resemble a lance!"
The third man approached the elephant and got hold of the trunk, which swung back and forth. Then he exclaimed without hesitation, "I think the elephant is a kind of snake!"
The fourth blind man was already impatient and started to feel the elephant's knee and leg. "This animal definitely resembles a tree, I can feel its trunk!"
The fifth was tall and had felt the elephant's ear. He said, "Even to the blindest of the blind, this wondrous elephant resembles a fan!".
The sixth palpated the animal and when he felt the tail, he snatched it up as something old and familiar and exclaimed, "I feel that the elephant is something like a rope!"
The men began to discuss what an elephant was. Each of them insisted that he was right and that the others were wrong. After a while, the wise king interrupted the 6 blind men and told them.
"You are all right and yet wrong at the same time.
Each of you has felt a different part of the elephant and described its features perfectly thanks to your experiences. Thus, none of you is telling the untruth.
But you are still wrong, because due to your blindness and limited perspective of perception, each of you believes that you have felt the whole elephant instead of just one part of the whole.
Moral of the story.
We should take people who have different world views and different perspectives of perception seriously and listen to them attentively. For in this way we can come a little closer to the unbelievable, comprehensive truth.
But as long as we believe that our view is the only correct one and all others are wrong, we will continue to remain blind to the big picture.
