From: elf@halcyon.com (Elf Sternberg)
Subject: A parable...
Organization: The 23:00 News and Mail Service
Date: Mon, 7 Sep 1992 02:25:58 GMT

   This is disgustingly self-indulgent, but I also feel it's necessary.

   I was recently sent a copy of the following parable; I've seen this
before, many time, so I don't think post thing will violate my personal
injuction against posting another person's email.  This is a common and
classic story.

>A beautiful little boy is born into the world.  In this world, all children are
>given glasses to wear -- the glasses are called "normal".  Now, our little boy
>receives his glasses and wears them all the time.  But as time goes on, life's
>circumstances bear down on the little boy and his glasses start to chip and 
>crack.  It is a gradual process, and the little boy never really comprehends 
>what is happening.  Others around him with "normal" glasses also fail to see 
>what is happening, except to see that the little boy is no longer acting 
>"normal".
>
>And so the process continues.  The boy becomes a man viewing the world through
>his distorted lenses. He knows he is different, that he feels and sees things 
>differently, but doesn't know why.  Not satisfied with what "normal" people are
>telling him, the man makes contact with others whose glasses are similarly
>broken.  Many theories are espoused, and anecdotal evidence given, as to why
>having cracked/broken lenses is as normal as "normal".  The man is also readily
>accepted by this group.  
>
>The decisive factor in this man's quest for inner peace is that whenever he
>tries to not wear his glasses, he is afflicted with immense unhappiness.  These
>glasses, however ruined, are all he knows and nobody could tell him that he
>wasn't "normal".

   The person in question then goes on to tell me how cracked my
glasses are and offers to "help" me, if I want it.

   Unfortunately, he made a worse mistake than handing me a loaded gun.

   He handed me a loaded analogy.

   When I was born, I was given a pair of glasses the people around me
called "normal."  Looking through this set of glasses, I saw a great
many things, most of which were shaped by the specific nature of the
lenses.  I could feel comfortable with the fact that everybody else
around me had the same kind of lens, and therefore I could rely that
what I was seeing was the same as what everyone else was seeing.

   And yet, one day, I'll grant, the lenses did crack.  And although
nobody else saw the crack, it was a pretty big crack indeed.  In fact,
for the first time in my life, light struck my eye without the
intervention of the glasses I'd been given at birth.

   But the crack was small, and it took a while for me to notice things
through the crack when the much-larger remaining lens was still
filtering the world for me.  But eventually I noticed that there were
many different kinds of glasses, made up of different frames with
different lenses.

   For example, I noticed that, when looking through my lenses at two
different people, one of whom wore the same glasses I did and the other
wore glasses quite different from mine, the one with the different
glasses looked like a hideous and ugly creature.  When I looked at them
both through the crack... they were both just people wearing different
glasses.

   But everybody else who was wearing my glasses thought that that
person was a hideous and ugly creature, too.  Since they were still
wearing the glasses given at birth, they couldn't see anything else in
that person.

   I started to notice that this was true of everybody; people who wore
glasses saw only what was filtered through those glasses, and saw other
people who wore different glasses only as the product of the kind of
glasses they were wearing.

   One day, in trembling fear and alone in my home, I took off my
glasses and I looked at myself in the mirror.  And what I saw was just
another human being looking back.

   I did indeed seek out people who didn't wear glasses then.  At first
surreptitiously, then openly, I talked to them about how they lived
without glasses.  And eventually I did take off my glasses in public.
And I will say, loudly, that I took off my glasses.

   Now I know the lenses of my own eyes aren't perfect; God only knows
how imperfect they are.  But I am an individual, and I think it's
important that I look at the world _my_ way, rather than having someone
else's lenses do the job for me.  The people I associate with agree; we
look at each other, and since nobody here is wearing glasses, I have no
way of lumping them into a group.  It's a little confusing, admittedly,
with all these people to deal with.  But it's more fair to them, and
it's more fun for me.

   Take off your glasses.

         Elf Sternberg
-- 
Elf Sternberg    __   |     I have looked into the abyss, and the abyss
elf@halcyon.com  \/   | has looked into me.  Neither liked what we saw.
elf@polari.online.com |                              - Brother Theodore
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