Blind men and an elephant..

This is one of the accounts wherein I was blessed with a learning, and a food for thought, just like that. I guess this is why there is a saying - "Knowledge is always floating around us, we just need to be alert enough to catch it.." 

My colleague and I had just left our workstations to head for lunch when we bumped into another idiot from our clan of metaphysicists. Three of us do not meet very often, but whenever we do we have interesting conversations that are remotely related to work. This third idiot holds a very different portfolio of deliverables at work than what the second idiot and I do. He has an unusual interest and experience of operating in the mechanical crews of professional cyclists. A couple of years ago, he participated in a cross-country race where he rode across Sri Lanka, alongside a pro cyclist, in his support van. He reads a lot on the current geopolitical affairs. He doesn't read to acquire content for smalltalks, but forms deep understandings to draw actionable inferences. In one of our rare encounters last year, he gave an elaborate account of a foreseeable US debt crisis and dollar devaluation. He deferred his decision to buy a new car assuming that the prices may correct following an imminent global recession. An year later, he became one of the not-so-many folks around me who own a Tata Safari :). While my decision to but Tata Safari was driven by a childhood fascination and a philosophical liking of the Tata group, his decision to buy Safari was very well researched. When he decided to buy the car, I felt like receiving a little validation from a smarter mind. It made me happy and reassured of my choice.

So in this more recent unusual encounter, the greetings were followed by the question "What's happening?". With the usual "usual" answer, the probing started. I inquired if he restarted his investments in the Indian stock markets. It had been around nine months then since he exited the Indian stock markets. He told that he was still staying away. He asked me how I was doing in the markets, having stayed put at the peak that was followed by a series of major downfalls. I told that I recovered all my losses and reached my status quo of regular profits, as it was around three quarters back. I followed my answer with "What do you plan to do of your investable money then?". He told he was considering to become a venture capitalist, wanting to find and invest in others' budding ideas and make them work to multiply his money. 

I was aware that lunch would get delayed if I delved into the discussion, but I could not help but extend the rare encounter. The second idiot didn't mind the delay and, with an unspoken understanding, took the role of the observer. I cited my recent meeting with my cousin who is founder and CEO of an Indian unicorn, and has also become a venture capitalist over the last few years. Many in my family envy his success. However, I am not very impressed. I feel that my cousin's social interactions are quite bland and they lack the general Indian spice of existence (I'll defer the details around this aspect for now). Added to this the complexities of dealing with corruption and bureaucracy to keep an otherwise well intended and "potentially" profitable business afloat. In one of our meetings, my cousin had mentioned about how any news of his company receiving a funding would follow a bureaucrat turning up at his office with an "administrative" demand. He further told how he's paying and managing a team of lawyers to tackle the multiple lawsuits that follow his refusals to pay those demands, till date. Hearing this, the third idiot retorted that that's very normal and not as complicated as it looks like. He mentioned about a lawsuit that he had filed, some time back, against his landlord, for one of the unjust demands related to his rented house. He told how the case ran for many years, before going stale and unsettled. I told that my conditioning is very different. The very thought of these legal processes and associated stress make me feel unsettled and lose my peace of mind. I belong to the clan who would not mind paying a few extra Ks to a corrupt and skewed system rather than getting into a marathon of running around administrative structures. I want to relish the joys of a majorly settled life, otherwise.  

Then we talked about how some of my cousin's adopted ventures are generating only 3-5% annual returns on investments. To this he again told that that's sufficient if you're planning to park your otherwise highly taxed incomes. I cited the 20+ percent annualized returns that I have been able to generate from the stock markets, now consistently over the last couple of years. Then the discussion again drifted towards the geopolitics and its implications for the Indian stock markets and businesses.

While the second idiot appreciates the knowledge that he gains from our discussions, on our way to lunch, he asked me if I had heard the story of the blind men and an elephant. I told a curious "No" and requested him to enlighten me. Following is a version of the story copied from Wikipedia:

A group of blind men heard that a strange animal, called an elephant, had been brought to the town, but none of them were aware of its shape and form. Out of curiosity, they said: "We must inspect and know it by touch, of which we are capable". So, they sought it out, and when they found it they groped about it. The first person, whose hand landed on the trunk, said, "This being is like a thick snake". For another one whose hand reached its ear, it seemed like a kind of fan. As for another person, whose hand was upon its leg, said, the elephant is a pillar like a tree-trunk. The blind man who placed his hand upon its side said the elephant, "is a wall". Another who felt its tail, described it as a rope. The last felt its tusk, stating the elephant is that which is hard, smooth and like a spear.

In some versions of the story, the blind men then discover their disagreements, suspect the others to be not telling the truth and come to blows. In another version, a sighted man enters the parable and describes the entire elephant from various perspectives, the blind men then learn that they were all partially correct and partially wrong.

I felt very happy and thankful towards the second idiot, for sharing this little enlightenment. Maybe he was the sighted man in my this little experience. 

My core learning from this experience: One's subjective experience can be true, but that such experience is inherently limited by its failure to account for other truths or a totality of truth.

I went deeper into the thought while on our way to the food court. "Can we ever know the total truth? Then what do we do? How we should conduct ourselves in situations cast by judgements based on conflicting experiences?". Our world is flooded with conflicting perspectives on each and everything that's under the Sun. There's some social media story, some post, some reel, some research that can prove that what I am doing is "absolutely" wrong. There's an equal number of strong validations. 

The problem today is that being proven wrong does not suit us, the super informed and socially well-established intellectuals. Constant likes on our enviable posts, unseen but many followers, and superficial praises have put us out of practice of looking at our failures or mistakes. We are so used to yearning for validations that we feel offended when we come across a strong "objection" or a "negative feedback". "Nobody is perfect", ".. as if you have it all.." are used as excuses to escape when the "achievers" falter. 

I think the solution is in acknowledging the fact that we can never know the "total" truth. We ought to make conscious efforts to gain deeper understandings of our experiences and then derive our "little" truths or realizations. Embedded among all the social media noise are also the tools that can help us achieve this. There's never been a time in the history of our country when Millennials and Gen Zs and Alphas talked so much about Yoga, Meditation, Spirituality, and mental health; even if this is a part of superficial influences and temporary buzzes.

We ought to conduct ourselves in a manner that does not affect others in a bad way, inherently. If we take our decisions after trying to carefully understand the situations, we can explain to others what we did and why we did it. Better understanding may also help us to survive until we're actually heard :). If the understanding is proven wrong, we can accept our ignorance i.e. the blindness towards a part of the elephant. We can try to make the new understanding a part of our existing experience and maybe, one fine day, we will be able to describe the elephant better (if not whole) to the fellow blind men :).