The Power of Understanding

Helping someone and truly understanding someone are two concepts that are often associated with each other, but are very different. In “An Elephant Crackup”, Siebert argues that our relationship with elephants has been deteriorating, but can be saved by “in effect, [becoming] elephants” (Siebert 537). Abrams on the other hand states that “we cannot know, with the same familiarity and intimacy the lived experience of” (Abrams 10-11) an elephant. Although we are helping the elephants recover, we still cannot understand everything about their position. We cannot feel the same way they do because we aren’t in the same situation; we as a race have never approached extinction. I agree with Abrams, in that we cannot actually become elephants, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try to. Understanding a person is how we make relationships and become closer. Understanding someone is what will help ease tensions around the world, both in human-human conflicts as well as human-other conflicts.