8 Billion Right - My mental model of the world

There’s a Indian tale of an elephant and 6 blindfolded people.
Each is made to feel a different part of the elephant. One touches the bushy little tail and shouts, it’s a rope!
Another touches its massive leg and shouts it’s a tree!
One says it’s a spear, another says it’s a wall, and so on.
Each person comes up with a different answer, based on the perspective they’re made to look at the giant from.
Now you could say they’re all wrong, but that’s not true.

The lesson I’m drawing: given the information they have, none of them is wrong. Each, in their own reality, is right.

Life is much the same. If “life” is a massive blob filled with colors and objects and emotions that everyone gets a different pinhole to view and experience from, we’re all going to have different perspectives. Each person will establish their own ideals, belief systems, and rights-vs-wrongs.

So everything that anyone ever does, is right. (right != morally correct)

It is the right thing to do given their world, given their reality.

And if they change their opinion based on something they learn either from introspection or an external source, they’re still right. The person has now internalized the new information, and now gets a fresh point of view.

Take for example that person who first touched the elephant’s bushy tail now also learns about its massive trunk - they might now change their mind and say it’s a tree!
And based on everything they know, they're still right.

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I often spend time trying to understand people’s mental models, and rationalize why they do what they do. Most of the time, I don’t know their life’s story, and the experiences they’ve had, and hence it’s a very limited view from which I can see what they’re seeing.

But this way of thinking helps me not blame them for what they do, or who they are. Because in their reality, I try to acknowledge that they are right. Otherwise they wouldn’t be doing what they’re doing.

More importantly, this is also the reason why most of us think others are doing the wrong thing. From a different point of view, the same object might look completely different. 

So, in their reality of life, each person is doing the right thing.