The Whole Elephant
February 16, 2016
You probably know the story of the blind people and the elephant. A king gets his men to gather up the blind people in the city and then says, “Okay, show them an elephant.” So some of the blind people touch the elephant’s legs. Some touch his trunk. Some touch his tusks. Some touch his body. Some touch his tail. And depending on what they touched, they come to a conclusion about what an elephant is like. Some say the elephant’s like a post. Or the elephant’s like a granary, like a winnowing basket, like the pole of a plow. My favorite comparison comes from the ones who touch the tail and say, “The elephant is like a broom.” And then the blind people start fighting one another over whose image of the elephant is right, saying, “It’s like this. It’s not like that.” The creepy part of the story, of course, is that the king did this for his entertainment and he’s gratified by the sight of the blind people fighting.