The Blind Men And The Elephant — a fable for our time?

There is a well known Indian fable which supposedly dates back to the mid 1st millennium BC called The Blind Men And The Elephant. The fable tells the story of six blind sojourners who encounter different parts of an elephant on their life journeys. As the fable progresses, each blind man, in turn, conceptualises what the elephant is like by touching a different part of its body.