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Feb. 21st, 2026 07:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brin_bellway[cw: apocalypse]
Once upon a time, one blind man went to another, and said:
"Did you know that adult elephants have *tusks*? They are like spears: sharp, and hard, and *wielded*, by a thing with a mind, a thing that can *aim*.
You worry about being crushed beneath the elephant's feet, or slammed against its side. But a stampeding animal is dumb, and it doesn't know you exist, and it is relatively easy to dodge. You cannot outmaneuver an elephant that has decided it would like the state of things better if you were run through with its spear.
Where I am from, we say that an elephant is like a spear. We can feel the place where the spear would grow in, and increasingly many of us think we can feel them beginning to grow in. They will grow in eventually, even if those people are wrong, though I do not think they are.
Many of my fellows would tell you that an elephant is *only* a spear, or a place where a spear will grow, or at most that an elephant *has* other parts but they are so unimportant by comparison that it is best modelled as being only a spear. I will not attempt to argue this with you. But your model of the elephant doesn't have tusks, and that means it is missing something vital."
And the second blind man said,
"You make a very good point. I expect you are overestimating how quickly they will grow--especially since the elephant is malnourished, which is after all the reason why it is desperate enough that it is about to stampede--and *perhaps* how sharp they will be, but you are right that I was missing an important consideration."
---
I listen to the blind men talk, and to the reports of other blind men who say that an elephant is a whip, or a sail.
I reach out, and place my hand on the wall in front of me. It's further away than it used to be: not long ago, I was nearly squashed against it. For now, I am not in acute danger from it; but my efforts to keep it away and to armour myself against it can only do so much, and they take *time*, that I might not have.
(If I stretch out my arm as far to the right as it will go, I think my fingertips brush against the base of a tusk. It's hard to be sure, from this angle. There is so much wall, between here and the tusk.)
((For now. For so long as the elephant doesn't whirl around.))
It is all one animal. Even if the multiverse people are right, any *given* elephant is all one animal, a coherent whole with everything factoring into everything else.
Sometimes people notice that there must be more to the elephant than what they personally can feel, but still none of them can agree on how its shape is put together, or what it would take to dodge it.
The wall is no longer an acute danger, at least not to me. It is now very plausible that something else about the elephant will threaten me before the wall does. I need a better model, if I am to predict where it will move, and--if it's even *possible*, if it isn't *aiming* for me--arrange not to be there.
I don't know how.
Once upon a time, one blind man went to another, and said:
"Did you know that adult elephants have *tusks*? They are like spears: sharp, and hard, and *wielded*, by a thing with a mind, a thing that can *aim*.
You worry about being crushed beneath the elephant's feet, or slammed against its side. But a stampeding animal is dumb, and it doesn't know you exist, and it is relatively easy to dodge. You cannot outmaneuver an elephant that has decided it would like the state of things better if you were run through with its spear.
Where I am from, we say that an elephant is like a spear. We can feel the place where the spear would grow in, and increasingly many of us think we can feel them beginning to grow in. They will grow in eventually, even if those people are wrong, though I do not think they are.
Many of my fellows would tell you that an elephant is *only* a spear, or a place where a spear will grow, or at most that an elephant *has* other parts but they are so unimportant by comparison that it is best modelled as being only a spear. I will not attempt to argue this with you. But your model of the elephant doesn't have tusks, and that means it is missing something vital."
And the second blind man said,
"You make a very good point. I expect you are overestimating how quickly they will grow--especially since the elephant is malnourished, which is after all the reason why it is desperate enough that it is about to stampede--and *perhaps* how sharp they will be, but you are right that I was missing an important consideration."
---
I listen to the blind men talk, and to the reports of other blind men who say that an elephant is a whip, or a sail.
I reach out, and place my hand on the wall in front of me. It's further away than it used to be: not long ago, I was nearly squashed against it. For now, I am not in acute danger from it; but my efforts to keep it away and to armour myself against it can only do so much, and they take *time*, that I might not have.
(If I stretch out my arm as far to the right as it will go, I think my fingertips brush against the base of a tusk. It's hard to be sure, from this angle. There is so much wall, between here and the tusk.)
((For now. For so long as the elephant doesn't whirl around.))
It is all one animal. Even if the multiverse people are right, any *given* elephant is all one animal, a coherent whole with everything factoring into everything else.
Sometimes people notice that there must be more to the elephant than what they personally can feel, but still none of them can agree on how its shape is put together, or what it would take to dodge it.
The wall is no longer an acute danger, at least not to me. It is now very plausible that something else about the elephant will threaten me before the wall does. I need a better model, if I am to predict where it will move, and--if it's even *possible*, if it isn't *aiming* for me--arrange not to be there.
I don't know how.
