We all see bits and pieces of reality; not a one of us sees whole picture

I found myself involved in a couple of online debates Monday that I wasn’t happy about. In both cases, someone who disagrees with me attacked me personally about that disagreement. In both cases, I felt attacked personally and responded more harshly than I meant to. I avoid those kinds of arguments these days, so they both upset me — partly at the other people, but partly at myself.

Both of the debates were about military action around the world. The specifics don’t matter, but in both cases, the other person was attacking the idea that the United States has behaved inappropriately with some military actions around the world in the last decade or so. (In one of the cases, the woman called those of us who opposed her position “dissenters,” as though that was a vile thing to be.) The truth is that arguments such as these don’t end up being about the subjects themselves. The arguments end up very personal. They end up between two people (or more) who have very different views of the world — and it’s about each trying to convince the other than his model of reality is the correct one.

How in the world can we deal with humans living together when we see the world in so many different ways? And does it have to be this way?

The world is almost infinitely complex, so each one of us sees a tiny subset of reality and declares what we see to be reality. We draw conclusions from what little we can see, even though it makes no sense to do so. Since no one can know everything — and the entire human race collectively has a very rudimentary understanding of reality — it’s bound to cause trouble when people argue over which tiny subset of reality is reality.

It seems that most people are unable to understand that their model of reality (and truth) is based on a tiny sample of the relevant information.

It reminds me of the old story about the elephant and six blind men.

Once upon a time, there lived six blind men in a village. One day the villagers told them, “Hey, there is an elephant in the village today.”

They had no idea what an elephant is, but they said, “Even though we would not be able to see it, let us go and feel it anyway.” All of them went where the elephant was. Every one of them touched the elephant.

“Hey, the elephant is a pillar,” said the first man who touched his leg.

“Oh, no! It is like a rope,” said the second man who touched the tail.

“Oh, no! It is like a thick branch of a tree,” said the third man who touched the trunk of the elephant.

“It is like a big hand fan,” said the fourth man who touched the ear of the elephant.

“It is like a huge wall,” said the fifth man who touched the belly of the elephant.

“It is like a solid pipe,” Said the sixth man who touched the tusk of the elephant.

They began to argue about the elephant and every one of them insisted that he was right. It looked like they were getting agitated. A wise man was passing by and he saw this. He stopped and asked them, “What is the matter?” They said, “We cannot agree as to what the elephant is like.” Each one of them told what he thought the elephant was like. The wise man calmly explained to them, “All of you are right. The reason every one of you is telling it differently is because each of you touched a different part of the elephant. So actually the elephant has all those features that you all said.”

“Oh!” everyone said. There was no more fight. They felt happy that they were all right.

In the same way, we all see bits and pieces of the truth, some more than others. I don’t see everything clearly. You don’t see everything clearly. Nobody does. We all see whatever we can and extrapolate from there. Then we arrogantly assume we know enough to declare what the truth is. After that, it gets worse, because we then try to force other people to live according to the model of reality that we’ve decided is true.

Shouldn’t this make it clear that people have to be allowed to go off in their own directions about how to live in society? Any attempts to agree on one true model of reality — in any area of life — is pretty much doomed, and when groups try to impose their models on other people, it inevitably leads to conflict and it frequently leads to bloodshed.

Can we humans ever learn to quit trying to force others to do things our way? Can we ever acknowledge the complexity of reality and quit assuming that our narrow experience represents all of reality? Can we ever allow other people the freedom to live as they please, even if we believe they’re wrong?