The 19th century American poet, John Godfrey Saxe,
wrote a humorous and singularly insightful poem called The Blind Men and the Elephant.
In short, Saxe presents a comical parable of blind men, purportedly wise, trying to understand the
full nature of an elephant solely from a brief impression gained by encountering at random a single part of its anatomy.
Invariably, from the perspective of a sighted onlooker, their impressions are each well off the mark! But the humour of the
situation is simply a tool which Saxe skillfully employs to drive home a deeper, more salient point regarding human
nature. And the poem has resonated for so many over time due to the illuminating insight, which is just this. People will
leap to hasty judgments based on far too inadequate supporting evidence and reasoning, and worse yet, will nonetheless tenaciously
defend and cling to them in squabbles against the conflicting opinions of others. Such is the folly and hubris of human
nature! From the higher, sighted perspective afforded the reader, the real state of affairs regarding the nature of the
elephant is patently clear to an extent not available to the squabbling learned men who are a mere one sense shorter.
One can simply laugh at the comic antics presented in Saxe's poem and perhaps even deplore the behaviour of the wise
men in a smug fashion. But the poem also presents a further opportunity, which is to examine our own attitudes and
attachments to strongly held convictions and admit some kinship to the blindness of Saxe's wise men. For if they exemplify
wisdom, as the poem asserts, how much more likely are the less astute to be entrapped by such folly? Saxe does not offer
a way out of the dilemma. The reader is left to take away his own conclusions and perhaps formulate his own solution,
if any. The obvious solution, at least in the context of the parable, is to somehow bestow the missing sense, that is
sight, to the wise men so that they may behold the entire elephant. The hasty nature of their earlier judgments would be
instantly revealed to them and, perhaps, they would be humbled into revising their opinions and realising the foolishness
in the tenacity with which they held their earlier convictions.
But in the context of real life, where our blindness is metaphorical, what may count as a solution? How would we attain
the extra "sense" that would gain us the higher ground to recognise which of our convictions are ill formed due to
incomplete perception? In fact, what nature of extra sense would possibly grant us the necessary "sight" for this purpose?
On closer, more sober examination of the circumstances in the poem, more subtle answers present themselves that don't
require an outright extra sense. Had the blind sages continued their groping about the beast until they were satisfied
of a thorough investigation, instead of hastily forming an opinion at the first encounter, they would each
have come to very different conclusions than those that they had reached in the poem. No doubt they would have also
discovered among themselves that their various conclusions were much more alike in nature. On further consideration,
this approach is yet more profitable than the expedient of an extra, higher sense. For, had the sages been granted
sight, but merely glimpsed the elephant briefly, each only from a different haphazard angle, they would still have lapsed
into the same state of disagreement. The problem, it seems, is not simply their blindness but their narrowness of
perspective and haste, as well as their failure to heed the opinions of the others that should have alerted them that
other perspectives may need to be explored.
In the application to real life of this latter answer to the poem's dilemma, we need to acknowledge that there is
advantage in taking the time to seek broader, more balanced, more comprehensive vantage points from which to form our
convictions. Furthermore, the resulting convictions must be consistent with each other and the whole that they
constitute; the parts of the elephant must cohesively fit together and form no more and no less than one entire elephant.
Although this solution may appear self-evident, Saxe has shown us how easy it is to stray from this ideal, even for the
so-called wise. And just how is this to be put into actual practice? Enter the portal to gauge one attempt to explore
just that question ...
