A Porcine Parable

In a far away a land, at a certain time, there existed a village of blind persons. These people heard there was an amazing animal called the pig who had come to their lands, but they knew not how to form an idea of its shape.

One day, a very large, ancient boar happened to emerge from the forests and marshes surrounding their place. For a while, he made a home in the village, where he fed on people’s gardens and waste, and slept in the sheltered, warm hay of their barns.

Over time the pig became relaxed around the humans, and the villagers worked up the courage to gather around the animal. Their curiosity intensified until someone finally announced: "we must inspect and know it by touch!" One of them grabbed his snout, another his tail, another his tusk, another his testicles, and so on.

The pig quickly became annoyed by their curious and invasive groping. He shook the blind persons off and left the village.

Afterwards, the blind villagers sat down together and began to share their ideas on what the pig was like. The woman who seized his snout concluded that the pig must resemble a sponge; the person who felt his tail said the pig looks like an oversized paintbrush; the hand who grasped the tusk thought the pig was akin to a knife, and the man who cupped the testicles claimed the pig was shaped like a football, and so on.

The blind persons started to disagree and argue, accusing others of lying, misinterpreting, or not getting a proper hold of the pig. Someone shouted "There were not multiple pigs, but one pig! How can there be such wildly different descriptions? Only one of them must be right!"

One self assured, yet somewhat naive, young man answered. “You have all been to examine this animal, it is true, and what you report cannot be false. So, I suppose, therefore, that the pig looks something like an amalgamation of all these things, a marvellous being composed of knives, brushes, footballs, and so on.”

Everybody roared with laughter, believing this idea of a patchwork Walmart pig to be ridiculous. And so, they began to argue again.

A distinguished older man of some judgement was also present. He calmly intervened: "Let us assume then, that we can only ever know the pig from a particular position and with our limited senses, instruments, and imaginations. So for each one of us, the pig is indeed how we have described it. But we can never compare to or speak about the pig beyond our own experiences and worlds."

People rolled their eyes and groaned in frustration at this ontological bind.

Finally a previously stunned older woman now spoke up: “We speak about 'the pig', and we all seem to agree that it exists as something apart from ourselves. But, it remains that unless we had infinite number of hands from an infinite amount of positions, we will not be able to apprehend the totality of the thing we call 'the pig'. We can never fully determine what relations they are capable of, nor identify the limits of their form. There is no end to 'the pig' - and so can we even say that there is a thing in the world distinguishable as 'the pig'? Perhaps the pig is, in fact, the world."

At that point there was an awe-full silence. The sun set. In the dark, the blind persons sat bewildered, silent, and in contemplation of the wondrous, multitudinous, infinite, and unfathomable nature of whatever.