Sunday 6 May 2007

Pic of the day: The clouds are coming!

Land of the blind

This is obviously a parable, and it is partly inspired by things that will happen in three weeks, although it is partly old. I have said before that "in the land of the blind, the one-eyed is a mutant freak". Long ago I think I read a short story to that effect, too, though I remember little more from it than that they wanted to remove his eyes. (OK, it was by H G Wells.) So this is a simpler story, re-invented with some help from Will the Raccoon.

In the land of the blind, people go about their work as they have for generations. Small children are taught how to do all things by their hearing, feeling, smell, and knowledge told them by their elders. Nobody knows of anything else. But in one of the village there is born a boy who can see. He doesn't know that, though. Nobody talks about light (though the sunshine on the skin seems similar) and no one talks about colors. Neither does he. He sees them, but he has no words for them, and nobody seems to think it is important anyway.

As the seeing boy grows up, he starts to realize that he is different from others. He can sense what others do at a long range, long before he can hear them or smell them. Nobody else seems to be aware of things at such a range. He thought that maybe for some reason it was just not proper to talk about it, but over time it dawns on him that other people just cannot see. They cannot sense things at long range, and they cannot make use of colors to identify things at a glance, or sense the shape of a new thing before they have touched it all around. He starts talking to people, but they don't get what he is saying. What's worse, they think he is just lying. Perhaps he is crazy, they say, or just making it up to sound important.

It doesn't help that he has no words for some of the things he try to describe. Colors in particular are tricky. He uses the name of things that typically has the color, such as dandelion for yellow. But his claims that bananas are dandelions and raspberries are blood make him sound like a total loon, and he becomes an outcast.

Yet it cannot be denied that he has some strange power. He will say: "I see dark clouds coming in. Before noon the sun will be blotted entirely from the sky, and before evening it will surely rain." And it goes so. Not just once, but again and again does his "cloud theory" predict the future. There are also those who are fascinated by the world he describes. Despite his claims that he just reports what is already happening far away, the rumor spreads that he has the power to control the weather. People start imploring him to bring rain when it is too dry or sun when it is too wet, but he claims that he cannot. And yet from time to time he does say that the weather is going to change, and it does. It is all very confusing to people.

One day there is a terrible hailstorm and much of the crops are struck down. The elders come together and decided that something must be done about the man who controls the weather. Since he is not willing to help them but seems quite willing to let this disaster happen to them, they are better off with the weather running its good old course, without him and his arcane powers. In the night while he sleeps they catch him and puts him in chains, and he is sentenced to death for sorcery and killed.

But bad weather continues to happen, and now there is no one to warn them. Over time people start realizing that they have made a bad mistake. The young ones start collecting all his sayings that they can remember, about the banana and the dandelion, the raspberry and the blood, and many others, as well as the many stories of his predictions that came true. They make it into great poems that are recited and venerated, and handed down to their children.

As the village grows, it eventually starts meeting members of a neighboring village that is growing in the opposite direction. It turns out that this village as well have traditions of a man who could hear things many miles away and tell the weather beforehand. They had even collected his sayings, but something is strange. Whereas it is now accepted that on a higher levels, bananas are dandelions, those from the other village claims the bananas are actually buttercups! In so far as there is any mention of dandelion at all, it is also said to be an instance of buttercup. The villages are enraged that these strangers hold the dandelion in such low esteem. One word takes another, and soon the two villages are at war.

Those who have eyes, let them see what I am talking about!