Writing about culture is always a perilous undertaking. That is definitely the case when writing about another culture than your own, and when you can’t go “on location” to take interviews and observe the proceedings for yourself. Whether you’re a light-hearted bystander approaching little subjects here and there, or a full-blown cultural critic putting together a comprehensive tome, you are always, more or less, like one of John Godfrey Saxe’s six men of Hindustan…
- It was six men of Hindustan
- To learning much inclined,
- Who went to see the Elephant
- (Though all of them were blind)
- That each by observation
- Might satisfy the mind.
- The first approached the Elephant
- And happening to fall
- Against his broad and sturdy side
- At once began to bawl:
- "Bless me, it seems the Elephant
- Is very like a wall"
- And so these men of Hindustan
- Disputed loud and long,
- Each in his own opinion
- Exceeding stiff and strong,
- Though each was partly in the right
- And all were in the wrong.
Saxe wrote this parabel to mock theological dispute (The disputants… / Rail on in utter ignorance / Of what each other mean, / And prate about an Elephant / Not one of them has seen!), but it is applicable to about any field of experience. There is no such thing as complete and objective knowledge.
But let’s not take lightly the other side of the coin, namely that the six men of Hindustan, though blind, at least were curious and went out there, and had an adventure!
