Feb 2001
Bert Speelpenning
There is this fable from India about an elephant being approached by a group of blind men, which John Godfrey Saxe turned into a poem in the 19th Century. One blind man grabs the leg, and claims that the elephant is clearly a tree; another grabs the trunk and claims the elephant is clearly a snake. Each knows a different elephant and gets attached to his own interpretation as being the right one. But of course, we know the elephant is bigger than any of their interpretations, bigger even than all their interpretations put together. The poem ends with an admonition not to disagree on something you haven't even seen!
But we need not turn back from quarrels - we can go forward. Imagine being truly interested in the nature of elephant, and working with a team of blind explorers. In this setting, differing interpretations are to be celebrated, not squashed - in fact, agreement would be a clear sign the explorers are huddled too closely together on one corner of the elephant. Given enough blind men, elephant exploration would soon yield up secret after secret, and new agreement could be forged in the community of blind men as to what an elephant is.
Rather than the suppression of disagreement, what humanity needs is a much bigger elephant, an elephant not merely unknown but unknowable, an ineffable elephant. Ineffable elephant will keep us exploring forever, the exploration sending us further and wider, forging larger and larger community as we go.