The Blind Men
Describe an Elephant:
The Uniqueness of
Each Human Mind.
By Bruce Renehan

This article presents the theory of hermeneutics, which is a particular concept that the more distant two minds are from one another, the less effectively they can communicate. One of the concepts of the human thinking process, that completely escapes some people, is that there have never been two minds that have experienced the world in the exact same way and thus no two people can ever truly understand or fully appreciate what the other is thinking. Now, this not only teaches us something about the difficulty we have in communicating with one another but how one's concept of a deity is anchored and limited to one's own conscious mind. This principle has been understood by scholarly persons, at least in part, for a very long period of time. Let me give some examples.

One very old parable tells of four blind men who come upon an elephant during a journey they are making. Each man wants to understand what this strange creature is so they can tell the people in next village. One blind man approaches the elephant at the head and grabs its trunk which he inspects with his hands, another blind man approaches the elephant by its foreleg, another man inspects the elephant's side, and the last man catches hold of the elephant's tail. At the village each man tells what the creature is like. The man who had grabbed the trunk describes the elephant as a great snake-like beast. The man who had examined the leg, says it is very much like a tree. The man who had felt the elephant's side described an elephant as a huge living wall. The man who had only grabbed its tail said the elephant was very much like a whip.

We've all heard the pithy saying that one can never really understand how another person feels unless we've "walked a mile in his moccasins." Sometimes we assume that we can understand other people's experiences simply by imagining or comparing similar experiences we have had. Recently, I heard a clinical psychologist state that, even though she'd been a licensed psychologist for many years counseling sexual assault victims, she never knew the true feeling of victimization until discovering her daughter was brutally raped at home by an intruder. Suddenly, crude and overwhelming emotions obsessed her. The psychologist was startled by her own willingness to destroy her career and go to prison by hunting the man down and killing him, if she only knew who he was.

It is very common for cultural anthropology professors to spend their summers in the field studying other cultures. One sticky problem that they have to work through is something known as "ethnocentricity." Ethnocentricity is the belief that the values of one's culture are superior to the values and beliefs of another. For a scientist to distort or change something found in its natural environment would be unforgivable. It might seem ridiculous to think that someone would think that eating with a fork is superior to eating with chopsticks but what about a culture that believes that at the age of puberty a young girl must experience sexual intercourse with every male in the tribe, as one island tribe has believed for centuries?

There is a startling story of an anthropologist successfully spending the entire summer living with and learning the ways of a South American Indian tribe but upon the day of his departure making a drastic cultural mistake. Trying to show each male in the tribe his appreciation for their hospitality he presented them all their own individual gift from among his belongings. He was unaware, that to these men, he was challenging them to war. The man lost his life that day.

Within our own culture, we saw a similar shock in human conceptualization when the verdict came in after the O. J. Simpson trial. 70% of those blacks polled at the time felt that O. J. had been framed. While this doesn't reflect the views of all American blacks it does imply the majority view of blacks who are much more sensitive to being harrassed by the police. The majority view of whites, who haven't experienced the same mistreatment from the police sympathized more with the prosecution during the trial. We all see the world like those blind men who saw the elephant shaded by our own particular experience or blindness.

Now, we have found evidence to support hereditary proof that identical twins do some uncanny things that have the appearance their thinking is similar, even when they have been separated at birth and raised by adoptive families unaware of each other. Twins rejoined in adulthood have been surprised to discover they have the same exact type of job (fireman, for instance). One bizarre account was of twin brothers separated at birth, one living in Europe and one living with his father in Cuba, each unaware of each other's existence until middle age. When they met, they not only had the same taste in clothes, they both had the same hairstyle parting their hair in the exact same place. But most unexplainable was that they both had a habit of always wearing a rubber band around their left wrist, which they could not explain. Biologists and psychologists know that a certain amount (about 50%) of our thinking processes are genetic. At the same time there are many twin studies showing that subtle environmental differences for identical twins (for example, being placed in different classrooms) will alter the childrens' personalities from one another. From the many studies of twins, one major conclusion has been that two humans with the same exact genetic make-up (homozygous twins) will never grow up to think exactly alike, because no two people can ever have the same experiences in their environment. And thus we know that no two minds can ever think alike.

This brings us to the notion of hermeneutics. Originally this concept was limited to scholars who tried to understand what the authors of the Bible meant in their writings (much like the Worldwide Church of God interpreters who tried to give a meaning to various scriptures). How is it one can subtly misunderstand the meaning of some piece of ancient text? Well, we just don't know the common experience of the author or the subtleties of his/her culture, environment, linguistics, education, or socio/political thinking--nor can we. What is the result of not knowing what the authors of the Bible meant when they wrote what they did? To begin with, in the past two millennia we have witnessed the birth and distorted progress of hundreds and hundreds of Christian sects and denominations each believing their Bible interpretation is most correct. Then within each denomination is the different view of each and every minister, laymember, and laymember's child, egocentrically thinking their own view is the only view to have. We are not much different than those blind men feeling the elephant.

Historians are also aware of hermeneutics when they read documents written by previous generations. Do we know why the Spaniards felt that they had a divine right to plunder the New World? Do we know whether Andrew Jackson was an idealistic leader, a brutal killer, or a money grubbing swindler? (There is supporting evidence for all three types of personalities.) Historians find it difficult to piece together the incomplete evidence of past eras and so various theories arise.

One might ask why all of this is important for us to spend our time considering. Part of the answer lies with appreciating our own limitations of understanding any shared concept at all. But, combined with other psychological needs, there is a more important implication for the believer. All humans seem to have a need to believe in a deity. The existence of a deity provides an answer for those questions we cannot provide our own answer for. These are usually questions about the universe (how big it is and how old it is) as well as those ubiquitous questions about time (its beginning and its end). There are also those questions about our own goodness.

We know that all cultures, historically as well as geographically, have their own concept of the deity that controls everything, contains everything, keeps us safe from harm, and causes the world to be a just place. But, for each culture and subculture this ultimate and supreme being is very differently portrayed. Anthropologists and sociologists have also noticed that the deity of every culture always represents what is important to that culture. For instance, in a culture where shepherding is the main way of life, their deity is always represented as a shepherd and he may be given the qualities of a lamb; in cultures ruled by women the deity is always female; in a culture where industry and power are important, the deity is all powerful and almighty; in cultures that live close to nature, animism prevails, where the deity resides in the trees, the wind, the earth, and so on.

Likewise, as the concept of God changes from culture to culture, it also changes from person to person. Therefore, it should not be any great leap of logic to understand that one's own concept of God cannot possibly exist outside of one's own mind. If God is perceived of as the ultimate of all beings (the ontological God), this God can only, by necessity be the ultimate as you or I perceive ultimate beings. For instance, if love is more important to me than authority, my God must be more a God of love than authority or else I have a psychological conflict. Patients in psychiatric hospitals often have a very conflicted image of God which leads to their own personal madness. The most tortured psychotic patients I have interviewed, while working at a psychiatric hospital, would talk about a very vindictive God who continuously condemned and criticized them. God would tell them that they were better off dead and that they should kill themselves. Sometimes God would tell them to kill someone else. Now, of course, this story may seem bizarre but the Bible has immortalized Abraham, as the father of the faithful, for having the experience where God told him to take the life of his son Isaac.

Ontology is the philosophy that since God exists in everyone's mind this is a priori proof that God really must exist. One of the arguments they present for the necessary existence of God is a sort of pecking order of the universe theory. In other words, we could take any species on earth, ants for example, and if we studied every ant on earth, we would eventually find the ultimate ant among his fellows. Therefore, summing the total of living things in the universe, there must necessarily be an ultimate being in the universe.

Ontology seems to share common ground with the psychologist Carl Jung's description of archetypes. Jung felt that all people have archetypal images biologically built into their minds at birth. Some of the images are collective among the human species and have been personified as gods. For instance, we all know what martial law is. Anything with the descriptor of being martial refers to the armed forces or war. The word "martial" is derived from Mars the god of war and humans collectively have an archetype that unites them to go to war when necessary. Jung felt that archetypes held us together as a species much like instinct among animals. If we did not share our archetypes we would no longer be human. But, even though we have deified our human instincts does this make them real?

By understanding that our own minds are limited to personal experience, it seems imperative that I must come to appreciate my own uniqueness and realize that no other person knows what it is like to be human the way I am human. The fact that no one can ever experience the universe the same way that I do means that I must come to own my own life as a unique experience in itself. By doing this, I can understand and appreciate your uniqueness also. We all have a right to be. Armstrong and other cult leaders have never understood how profound this concept is. There is no sin in diversity. Diversity is prevalent in nature. Insecure cult leaders try to deceive their followers that diversity is heresy. They try to make yellow pencils out of people. Again, buying into such a fraud causes psychological conflict--dissonance. Every fingerprint and every snowflake is uniquely different. The same is true for every mind.

 

 

If you have anything you would like to
submit to this site, or any comments,
email me at:
thepainfultruth@hotmail.com.
Back to "Painful Truth" Contents Page.