What’s the responsibility of the artist painting the picture?

There is an old Buddhist parable about some blind guys who come across an elephant. It’s been retold many times, but Wikipedia says the Buddhists were first so that’s who I’m giving credit to.

The story is that a group of blind men are hanging around and they hear that an elephant is in town and they want to go check it out. They’ve never seen an elephant before (they’ve never seen anything), and they are unsure of what to expect. When they get up close enough to touch it, they find that the animal is so large that no single blind guy can take in the whole thing on his own so they each describe the part of the animal they can reach. The guy by the ear says it’s wide and flat like a fan, the guy touching the tusk says it’s hard and sharp like a spear, the guy near the tail describes it like a rope, and the guy at the elephant’s side says it’s tall and wide like a wall. None of them are wrong and none of them are wholly right. The parable illustrates the limitations of subjective truth, and depending on how it’s told, the value of collective experience.

The parable pops into my mind every once in a while when I get freaked out about who to trust. I’m of the opinion that it’s wiser to trust the truth that comes from many different people than it is to trust the truth that comes from just one man. Remembering the story of the blind guys and the elephant helps calm my anxieties about which narrative to believe when it comes to vaccines, or climate change, or the shape of the earth. The thing that the majority agrees on is probably the truth. You’re telling me that every single fisherman is maintaining the myth that the globe is spherical? None of them have sailed up to the edge of the earth and thought I ought to tell someone about this. I don’t believe they would all lie like that. They strike me as trustworthy people. I get the same impression from doctors and scientists. I don’t know a lot about health or climatology, but I’ve met a few doctors and scientists, and they don’t seem like they are out to deceive me in favor of some sinister plot to rule the world. They seem like people doing a job. I trust that they are each describing their part of the elephant. If we listen to all of them, the bigger picture will take the right shape.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about this parable differently. What would happen if one of those blind guys decided to lie about his part of the elephant? What if the guy describing the face of the animal wanted the others to believe he was courageous, so he lied and told them that the elephant’s eyes are not at the sides of its head like a gentle prey animal, but rather at the front of its face like a dangerous predator? He says none of the other blind men should stand in the beast’s line of sight, and then he boasts his own bravery for staring down such a ferocious, man-eating beast. His interest is not in helping the others see the elephant, but to bolster his own self image. He lies to change the picture the others see.

Until now the other blind men have experienced the elephant without incident. This “vicious predator” has allowed them to play with its tail and ears. The men have felt the legs of the animal without being crushed or kicked. The elephant was still and quiet when they ran their hands along his spear-like tusks. All of the evidence the others have gathered tells them this creature is gentle. Should they believe one man’s description and fear the animal or stay skeptical and risk being eaten? What reason does the man have to lie? A contradiction in what can be trusted from one man opens the door to contradictions from all the others. Each man knows that they are telling the truth, but they can no longer rely on the truth to be told by the others. What if the man describing the tail is lying too? What if he only said it was like a thick, heavy rope so the rest would believe his hands were strong?

The parable of the blind men and the elephant teaches us that one man’s selfish desire to be seen as something more than he is can disrupt reality for everyone. But with his lies he does more than change reality, he instills doubt in the collective. If we can’t trust that others will accurately describe their part of the elephant, we can’t know anything for certain unless we experience it for ourselves. When we’re exploring an animal too large for any single blind man to know, parts of the picture will remain incomplete. Without trusting each other there is no way to put together a description of the entire animal. With one man’s lies, our vision of the elephant falls apart.