One-Eyed Giant

Once there lived a one-eyed Giant.

He was not born that way, like the Cyclops of ancient myth. He was born with two good eyes, like you (I hope) and me. With his two good eyes he explored and learned about his world. His parents taught him to use his eyes to see details and patterns, and to use his mind to think and figure out how things he saw and learned fit into the Great Story of Life, and--no matter what--to look for and live according to truth. They also taught him to use his mind to challenge whether what he thought was true--even what he thought was true about the Great Story of Life--was true and right. They taught him that sometimes shutting one eye or the other helped him see different dimensions of the truth, and thus understand the Great Story of Life better. Our Little Giant used his two good eyes well.

When he was old enough, Little Giant's parents sent him to school. They were glad for their son, and he was glad to learn to read and write and use numbers and ideas to learn and understand even more.

One day in school the teacher said, "Class, let's try something new and exciting. As we explore today, let's all keep one eye covered." Little Giant knew that looking at things with one eye, then the other, was fun and often hellped him understand things better, so he tried it with the other students. As the days went by they tried this more and more, and somehow none of the children (not all of them were giant children) noticed that the teacher always encouraged them to cover only their right eye and learn through their left. It wasn't long before everyone laughed when any of them (including Little Giant) even looked at things through their right eye. The teacher handed out right-eye patches and made everyone wear them all the time.

This arrangement was not all that upsetting to Little Giant. He found that watching the one-eyed tube in school was easier and more fun with just the one eye. At home, the Giant parents a little concerned as Little seemed to be having more and more trouble seeing from his right eye. They thought he must be growing up and learning to be more independent, but they did not suspect that Little's right eye was growing weak because of the ongoing exercises at school. Little watched programs that were written and optimized for left-eyed viewing; once or twice the Giant parents thought Little was keeping his right eye shut--which Little strongly and repeatedly denied--not only while watching one-eyed tube, but in more and more activities.

As he grew older Little began to prefer even listening to the government-radio news, which considered all things from a left-eyed perspective. The Giant parents never seriously considered that the government radio stations could be anything but fair and balanced, so they didn't think twice about this.

 Little was an intelligent Giant, and by the time he began applying to colleges he knew that it would be extremely challenging to succeed there, but he was confident in his abilities, and everyone knew how vital a college degree was to anyone who wanted to succeed. Little decided that he would have to take drastic measures, and secretly had his right eyelid sewn shut at an underground clinic in a procedure that made his eyelid appear open. Now, the Giants were good parents, but between the excellent cover-up and Little's single-eyed focus on college success, they never convinced themselves that Little's perspective wasn't quite their own. Little, himself, justified his deceptions as devious at worst, and certainly never out-and-out lied about his connivings.

After a few years of hard work, college graduation was in Little's sights. He avoided detection of his secret eyelid ruse, got excellent grades, and as sometimes happens, Little found himself on the way to graduate school at an even more prestigious university. Following his faculty advisor's guidance and recommendations, Little underwent a dangerous--but usually reversible, the clinic promised--procedure. To win a place in graduate school, especially those ranked in the top tier, a candidate lacking the very best of connections or overflowing finances had to be certifiably right-eye-blind.

Many promising scholars, unwilling to compromise by such a drastic measure, forfeited both their academic careers and humankind's future benefits from discoveries they might have made, and further, abandoned much of their potential for pursuing and discovering truth, and transmitting benefits derived to the world at large, and learning and diffusing the Great Story of Life.

(It must be admitted that, for many of these who refused to bow, all was not in fact lost, in a sense. Some of those who survived the traumatic loss of their vision in order to preserve their ability to see were strong pillars to their families and communities, though for the most part their voices were lost in the whirlwind created and maintained by the left-eyed dominators. But many of those who chose against compromise were themselves broken, never to rise again.)

This is what it came down to for Little Giant: forfeit binocular vision, or abandon credentials and dreams for good. Little's outlook was not so jaded that his dreams were negotiable. Nor were credentials, degrees, letters after his name.

What do you think will happen next? Should--or will--Little join the ranks of those willing to give their right eye for success and recognition?