The sixth was very blind indeed, and it was some time before he could find the elephant at all. At last he seized the animal’s tail. “O foolish fellows!” he cried. “You surely have lost your senses. This elephant is not like a wall, or a spear, or a snake, or a tree; neither is he like a fan. But any man with a par-ti-cle of sense can see that he is exactly like a rope.”
Then the elephant moved on, and the six blind men sat by the roadside all day, and quarrelled about him. Each believed that he knew just how the animal looked; and each called the others hard names because they did not agree with him. People who have eyes sometimes act as foolishly. (James Baldwin)
None of the men were wrong, each are correct about their small part of the elephant …. But none of them have any idea what an elephant is…. And they never will unless they listen to each other and combine their experiences.
We like to think of the world as “an elephant” and we seek to experience and learn as much as we can about all the various places and perspectives.