LOL Interwebz: Say ‘Meh’ to #TheDress

Every Thursday in LOL Interwebz, Luke T. Harrington explores the quirks and foibles of Internet culture from a Gospel perspective.

You know the story of the blind men and the elephant? Goes something like this:

BLIND MAN #1: im so blind lol

BLIND MAN #2: me 2 lol

BLIND MAN #3: hey whats this thing

BLIND MAN #1: i dunno lol

BLIND MAN #2: wait let me feel it

BLIND MAN #3: ya ok

BLIND MAN #1: ya lets all feel it

BLIND MAN #2: feelz like a wall

ELEPHANT: u guyz

BLIND MAN #3: ur crazy lol its a rope

ELEPHANT: u guyz wat r u doin

BLIND MAN #2: actually a tree i think

ELEPHANT: u guyz stahp

BLIND MAN #3: na its like a sail 4 serious

ELEPHANT: this attention iz unwelcome

BLIND MAN #1: oh i think its a pipe

ELEPHANT: u guyz im so uncomfortable rite now

BLIND MAN #2: lol

BLIND MAN #3: lol

In short, it’s a fable that expresses how our personal experiences of reality are often irreconcilable, and it was hard to get it out of my head last week, when #TheDress was blowing up Twitter, and everyone from Taylor Swift to B. J. Novak weighed in on whether a dress in a photograph was white and gold or blue and black (IT WAS WHITE AND GOLD, PEOPLE).

At the time, it was a little disconcerting that something so stupid could fascinate the Internet on a day when actually important stuff actually happened, but I guess I sort-of understand. All of our day-to-day interactions are based on the shared assumption that we’re all experiencing the same reality, so when we’re suddenly reminded that we’re all just blind men groping at an elephant and hoping said elephant won’t sue us for harassment, it’s hard to think about anything else. HOW DO WE EVEN KNOW WHAT’S REAL, MAN???

I don’t know for sure, but here are a couple of thoughts:

1. Yes, our experiences of reality are subjective.

This is a simple fact—none of us can get outside of our own heads. There’s always the possibility that, even if we’re using the exact same words, we’re talking about completely different things. Even if you and I agree the dress is blue, I’ll never know for sure that your blue looks anything like my blue (maybe it looks like the color I call red—how would I know?). When something like #TheDress happens, it’s just this reality bubbling to the surface.

2. But that doesn’t mean reality itself is subjective.

This is important, because we Christian types like to believe in something called Truth (or rather, a guy called Truth), whereas the Eastern traditions behind the elephant story (Jainism, Buddhism, Hinduism) would tend to reject the idea of one, single Truth.

But here’s the thing: even in the fable, there’s one, single Truth about the elephant, and that’s that it was exactly like an elephant. Sure, it was sorta like all those other things, but it was mostly just like an elephant. Our knowledge of Truth can limited and partial, but the absence of knowledge doesn’t imply the absence of Truth.

It’s the same thing with the dress, really. Every time I look at the thing it’s so freaking obvious to me that it’s white and gold, but what I think I see is provably wrong. Ask the manufacturers—they’ll tell you it’s black and blue. And, well, they know a bit more about the dress than I do.

3. To claim reality is subjective is actually the height of arrogance.

That’s the whole problem with the story of the blind men and the elephant: whoever’s telling it assumes that he’s the only one with an objective view of the situation: “You’re all blind men groping at the same thing. Except for me. I can see what’s going on.” If we’re all blind men, we’ll never know whether my rope and your snake and that other guy’s wall are all the same thing. Maybe mine is a rope, and yours is a snake, and that other guy’s got Kim Kardashian’s butt or something. The only one who could know otherwise is someone watching the whole thing from a distance (the weirdo).

In other words, to claim that reality is subjective is necessarily to claim an objective point of view for yourself.

4. At some point, we all realize our understanding of reality differs from others’; then we each react one of three ways:

On the one hand, there’s what you might call fundamentalism—the assumption that you’re right and everyone else is either stupid or evil, or both. This is the guy who won’t believe the dress is blue no matter how much evidence you show him.

On the other hand, there’s relativism—the belief that, like, everyone’s right in, like, their own way, man. And really, this is just a variant of fundamentalism, since it claims for itself a point of view more valid than others. (“Don’t you see, you guys? You’re all feeling up the same elephant! Don’t ask me how I know that. I just do.”)

The third option, as I see it, is simple humility—the recognition that, while your point of view is valid in a sense, it’s also a very limited one, and you have much wisdom to find in others. A dress manufacturer probably knows more about their own dress than you do. A zoologist probably knows more about elephants than you do. The Church Fathers probably know more about the Bible than you do. And many of the beliefs you hold are likely to be wrong—not just limited in scope, but, y’know, actually wrong.

Not my belief about that dress, though. IT WAS WHITE, GUYS.

Images via Wired.