Saturday June 12, 2010

Behold the Elephant

 

 It
was six men of Hindustan


To
learning much inclined,


Who
went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind),


That
each by observation


Might
satisfy his mind.

John
Godfrey Saxe, 1816-1887

 

We re in a period of prolonged economic
stagnation. This is the inevitable result of the 1982-2000 period of boom. This
bear market will root out failed strategies and require new perspective if one
is to survive it intact. Another feature of such a period is the idea of
exclusion. Other ideas and indeed peoples will be excluded rather than
included. Already there are calls to nationalize British Petroleum (a third
world idea of expropriating assets of foreign company) and Israel is under fire
even more than usual. To appreciate and endure what is happening, we return to
the parable of the six blind men of India who attempt to describe an elephant.

Saxe’s poem quoted above is the most famous
Western version but there are Jain, Hindu,  Buddhist  and
Muslim versions as well.  
Here is the Jain (an Indian religion of the ninth century) version.

The
blind man who feels a leg says the elephant is like a pillar; the one who feels
the tail says the elephant is like a rope; the one who feels the trunk says the
elephant is like a tree branch; the one who feels the ear says the elephant is
like a hand fan; the one who feels the belly says the elephant is like a wall;
and the one who feels the tusk says the elephant is like a solid pipe.

The point of the story of course is that
everyone has a totally different perspective of the same facts. Working in
groups of faculty, administration, and students has brought this home to me the
last few years. Indeed, there are many elephants on the same campus.

Now, to complete one’s understanding of what is
happening, appreciate that the power of Point of View prevents each blind
person (or the one sitting next to you in a meeting) from seeing the
perspective of anyone else in the group. Dale Carnegie put his finger on this
one, each person believes that he or she is the center of their own
universe.  And so each argues that
the ‘elephant’ is a tusk or a pillar but certainly not a rope.

This difficulty takes many forms. Peace in the
Middle East to Syria means an absence of Israel.  A ‘clean environment’ may mean some fantasy escape from the
necessity of carbon based fuels. Access to health care may actually mean
considerable re distribution of wealth.   Just his week Oliver Stone was extolling the virtue of
Hugo Chavez to Larry King; a Congressman expressed amazement at this view.

The ultimate negative social disagreement is
war. With the Dow at 10,000, North Korea has already sunk a South Korean vessel
resulting in loss of life.  Israel
may well attack Iran.  If my
assumptions come true, that the Dow will revisit its March 2009 lows in the
next two years, expect that opinions and actions will harden that much further.

Saxe sums all this up as follows, and remember
this observation has floated around for hundreds of years, nothing is going to
change human nature.

Moral:

So oft in theologic wars,

The disputants, I ween,

Rail on in utter ignorance

Of what each other mean,

And prate about an Elephant

Not one of them has seen!