Introduction
In the process of going through life, our experiences are like that of the blind men, we all tend to have a little knowledge of life and then we believe that our little perspective or knowledge of life is the whole truth or the general view. This doesn’t mean that my view or your view about the knowledge of life is wrong, but it is worthy to note that each of our views and perspective is an important piece of a puzzle, which if shared with others brings a better level of understanding and knowledge.
Statement of the Problem
Therefore, as we assess this fable of the blind men and the elephant, we need to understand each man view as a slice of a major puzzle, each blind man tried to create his own statement of reality but it was just a slice of the puzzle, therefore it possessed limited experience and perspective. Each man tried to turn his own version of truth into the major version of what an elephant looks like, although this does not mean each of their statement did not possess an iota of truth, because I believe the truth in fact in itself can be relative.
We also need to assess and understand that the fact that the blind men had limited access to know what an elephant is, that doesn’t mean their versions of truth are not equally valid, there the issue was that each man idea was a limited version of the truth, and each man tried to enforce a belief of his own truth on the other men.
A Social Constructionist Perspective of the Fable
The definition of what is true or real is just a social construct formulated as a claim, which we believe are true and unalterable, truth in itself can be quite fluid (Anderson, n.d.). Justifying each of the blind men decisions, all their views and perspective are a social construct, these believed perspective are aimed to undermine the position of relative authority of an experimental truth (Anderson, n.d.).
The blind men decisions was based on the perspective they were all touching the elephant from, they tend to transfer their sense of touch to form a realistic view of what they have think it relates to. From the fable, I could ascertain that each blind man had an understanding of a wall, a pillar, a snake, a rope and a sail. Therefore each blind man had an initial construct of a belief, and they only tried to apply their knowledge or belief to their new discovery of the elephant, by explaining from the perspective of what they are touching. A social constructionist would justify a belief with good evidence and reasons (Anderson, n.d.), and each men though blind had an evidence-based on what they could touch or feel, but undermining each of their view ad being justified with sufficient evidence and reason is the objection.
The key terms or requirement of social constructionism are reality and knowledge (Martin, 2016), this blind men had knowledge of what a wall, pillar, snake, rope and sail could be, and they applied the reality of their view or perspective of the elephant to their pre-existing knowledge to formulate a construct of what the elephant could be. Indeed each blind man has a limited perspective of the truth, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t any objective truth in their statement, but my question would be is objective truth discoverable at all? Or is it just a social construct?
According to Mary (1997), in the constitutive framework, representational and constitutive views are logically incompatible because, once language is assumed to construct reality, the idea of discursively representing something outside the domain of language is difficult to support. Therefore, among the blind men, they were all explaining their belief of how an elephant looks based on their view or perspective, but they all think they are right based on a pre-conceived social construct of knowledge, they all cannot explain their belief without making mentions of their reason, so I can say without their reasons it cannot be possible that they are right because their reasons totally justify the simple fact they need to explain their beliefs of what an elephant is.
Any view or perspective that doesn’t mention any justifying reason or reasons in the explanation of beliefs will have a hard time defending itself of being self-undermining (Anderson, n.d.). These blind men reasons were justified, each gave reasons for his conclusion these reasons justified their beliefs, then if the view that beliefs are caused by social interests is justified (Martin, 2016), then the blind men views can be said to be caused by social interests, this means their views can also be seen as a social construct in the context of the knowledge each of the men possesses.
A Feminist Perspective of the Fable
Feminist theory lies deep in exploring and advocating against discrimination, oppression, patriarchy, sexual objectification etc. (Marilyn, 2007). Feminism speaks against discrimination leads to a belief that makes the privileged, see those that are not totally privileged as being less privileged or as popularly known as “others”.
Feminism as a theory is a complex set of ideas and theories that seeks to achieve equal political and social rights and economic rights for men and women, it refers to any actions, especially organized, that promote changes in society to end patterns that have disadvantaged women (Andrea et al., 2008). Though the feminist may be against the discrimination of anyone due to not being privileged, they would be against the fact that the fable totally depicts inequality between men and women.
The fable of the blind men and the elephant would have been discriminated from a feminist school of thought based of the fact that the fable totally based its illustration on men, without giving any recognition to women, depicting the case of inequality, oppression and sexual objectification of women. In line with feminism, the interpretation of this theory would be to describe it as being discriminating. Feminism could assert that fables like the elephant and the five men are what still creates a gap of inequality between men and women.
Conclusion
One cannot hold up any of the blind man decisions as more real or true than the other, because they made their decisions based on perception and knowledge which generally depends on life experiences, therefore this led to a limited understanding and misinterpretations. In all, the blind men actually need to get more experience of the Elephant to be able to come to a conclusion, so as to have a more scientifically oriented decision.
All the blind men would need to have a feeling of each other’s perspective in order to get the big picture. In general, each of their perspective is a tiny fragment of an otherwise unknown whole (the elephant). This could serve as a challenge that promotes teamwork in organizations, encouraging employees to work together, we all could possess an approach which if shared could benefit everyone generally. This simply means we could all possess an important piece of the puzzle which if shared could bring an increased and better level of understanding.
Finally, while trying to assess this fable inversely, I thought what could the elephant think of man also, the elephant was getting to feel five mean in five different ways, the elephant would judge based on its own reality and perception, i.e. related to its social interest. For example, the elephant wouldn’t conclude that any of the men are blind because its scope of social interest isn’t with that reach, but it could feel that men are flat, because observation is not based on nature itself but based on the instinct of questioning available knowledge.
