Categories: Education & Reference

Understanding reality: the case of an elephant

Hello Everyone!

“The fool looks at only 1 side of the reality while the wise looks at all 100 sides.”

Chanakya

The last post was about the proof that we are blind people. Yes, we are blind because while converting objective truth to a customized subjective one, we often tend to distort the reality. It might prove beneficial at the surface but in the micro level, it is a fatal practice.

6 blind men once happened to meet an elephant. They decided to touch it. “It must be a pipe.” Said one touching elephant’s trunk. The other said – “It must be sword” on touching the tusks. Another touched the ear and made an assumption that elephant is tray. Fourth one touched back and concluded elephant to be a soft wall. Fifth one touched at elephant’s feet and commented – “It is a pillar”. Touching the tail, the sixth one equated elephant with a rope.

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OK – they were blind. They never knew who exactly an elephant is but we cannot blame them. We know that they cannot see. But, who cares what an elephant is: what we know is that the blind people killed each other.

This is the difference between subjective and objective reality. Objective reality is the elephant that is very vast and huge. The subjective reality is only an aspect of that reality. We fight over those aspects just like blind people fought over aspects of the elephant.

The reality is basically all encompassing and we are blind so we use our prejudice to test this reality. Instead of looking at all ways and thinking from all directions, we tend to look at only our side and make invalid assumptions. We do not prefer to check all sides of reality. But sooner OR later, we realize that reality is different than what our short mind told us. But, then it is too late because we had become intolerant by now and end up breaking relationships (if we did nothing violent).

 

Had those blind men asked some scholar as to whose version of elephant is right, they would have been alive by now. Sorry, but who cares about this? We know stories and we forget them and choose to move on.




  • Thinker

    View Comments

    • Most of us live on assumptions and make the biggest mistakes of our life. ASSUME is made up of up ASS U and ME. That is assume is making an ASS of U and ME

    • Well, to some extent, all of us are guilty of ignoring hard facts at times when we have to decide on certain matters, and give in to our prejudices. However, we need to look beyond and ensure that our decisions are free of bias, else the decisions might impact us much more than what they do to others.

    • Truly some are fond of making half decisions. It. is good always to get to the get to d tail of things before making conclusion.

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