Six Blind Men and the Elephant in the Geopolitical Living Room

Six blind men of geopolitics clustered around the elephant in their living room. How they got him in without breaking the coffee table is anyone's guess. But, there he stood, idly chewing on the settee in the middle of their outstretched hands.

Of course, to blind men, everything is invisible. I suppose that’s why they had such strong opinions. Something that you can’t see invites a huge amount of speculation, especially if you can feel it.

The first grasped around, felt a tail. "The elephant feels like a whip," he said "It's been divinely revealed to me. Also, I got this book written by some drunk hippy fisherman. It’s immortal truth too. Anyone who disagrees with me is a godless Catholic bastard."

”Pish!” The second felt his ear. "An elephant is like a sheet," he said "And you can't tell me otherwise. I know what I know... and what I know is that an elephant is flat. I can feel this elephant is flat. To say otherwise makes you a dumb Prod whore."

The third snorted at both of them. "Look at the two of you, practically identical and fighting with each other. Anyway, you're both ridiculously narrow minded. The truth is far simpler. What I feel here is more like a tree than anything else." His blind hands scrabbled up the elephant's leg. "In the pantheon of elephants, there are so many, many elephants. No one single elephant should ever be singled out for special treatment."

The fourth said nothing, but muttered obscenities in Arabic. "Elephant Akbar!" he suddenly exclaimed. "An elephant is like a snake." His hands fluttered over the trunk. "There is no point listening to any of you. You are all ignorant infidels, and you are beneath me. I have this on good authority from the Chief Elephant himself. You and your hippy fisherman stories!"

"Fuck you all!" whined the fifth. The other four moaned. "You all oppress the Sons of Moses, and you oppress the true and glorious knowledge that an elephant is like pussy. My people have undergone great suffering, and you would still oppress our truth?" His Jew-hand was wrist-deep in the elephant's mouth, the other one waving like a tattered flag in the direction of the other voices. “You owe me money now,” he declared. “This voice isn’t for free, you know.”

The last blind man felt the elephant's shoulder. "As far as I can tell," he said "An elephant is like a wall. But that is just my experience. What I do know is that this is first and foremost an animal. It's warm, it smells, I can feel it move and hear it chewing on the furniture. I know thousands of smaller animals that I can touch in their entirety. So, it would seem this elephant is a mass of biases and heuristics, more feeling than thought, capable of acts of cruelty and stupidity through no manner of evil, but instead merely because it loses its perspective. An elephant is a big dumb beast, like others are small dumb beasts."

"What's more, if it's a real elephant, it knows all this. It knows it is a rogue, and when in must it is not itself. It needs careful management and understanding."

His words, like all the others, fell on deaf ears as the other five were busy stabbing and raping each other, and pinching each other's share of the living room carpet.

The only one with ears to hear was the elephant, and he had moved on to eating the sofa.