When they first arrive at the University, the fishmen (they used to be called freshmen, then fresh fishmen, then fresh fish; but fishmen was finally settled on), these new arrivals study exclusively with the Minister. The Minister asks them to close their eyes and to imagine something so great, so powerful, so essential to their lives that they are utterly dependent on it. The fishmen all try terribly hard to imagine such a thing, but then confess that they cannot. The Minister at that point always cries, "Exactly so. This thing is so much larger, so much more terrifying and so much more benevolent than we can imagine. And we call this thing Water!" "But how can we believe in 'Water' if we cannot imagine it?" cry the fishmen. "Because you must!," cries the minister, "and woe to you who does not. Because if you do not believe in Water a fate awaits you worse than you can imagine, and if you do believe in Water you will find your reward in a paradise that is also beyond your imagining." Terrified, all the fishmen would shout in unison, "We believe! We believe." But underneath that belief there always lurked this nagging doubt. "What if there really was no Water? What if we believe only because we are afraid not to believe?"
After the passage of some time of alternating believing and doubting, each fish, still seeking some solid truth, finds its way back to the University. These returning students now study with the second professor, the Marinologist. The first thing the Marinologist asks them is to not close their eyes at all, but to keep them open, wide open. He then leads them on a long journey of observation where they encounter arthropods, cnidarians, echinoderms, hemichordates, lophophorates, every possible form of sea vegetable and sea animal and every form of coral and rock and sand formation. At the end of this long journey the Marinologist says, "We have now seen all there is to see. So I ask you this: have any of you observed anything called Water?" And the entire multitude of fish confess in unison that they had observed no such thing. "Then do not let me hear you, ever again, refer to anything called Water. It is a myth, a delusion, a superstition. It is something that you learn when you are children, little fishmen, but now you are older and wiser. You are adults and to be a knowledgeable and sophisticated adult you must give up these childish things."
Older and wiser, they return to their homes, but after a while nagging doubts resurface. The minister had impressed upon them so powerfully, the need to believe in Water and the dreadful consequences of not doing so, that the thought occurs, "What if there really is Water and we just cannot see it?" So after leading this wise and sophisticated life for some time, the doubts and insecurities that underlie that sophisticated veneer come to the fore and the fish find themselves returning to the University yet again. This time they study with the third professor, the Mystic.
The Mystic says nothing. Rather than lecture his students, he takes them to a very high underwater mountain. The top of this mountain, which is a flat rock, protrudes at the moment of lowest tide, for a fraction of an inch above the water line. Then, in another moment or two, when the tide starts to rise, the mountain top is, once again, submerged. All the student fish follow the professor to the mountain top just before lowest tide. There they all, for a few moments, endure a ghastly experience including the inability to breathe or swim, but merely to quiver in helpless fear and anxiety, until the water returns, at which point every fish on that mountain top can now, for the first time, experience something that they can without doubt, refer to as 'Water.' For the rest of their lives, these fish do not believe in Water, because they do not need to. They know Water, because they have known 'no Water.' Although they may not have all the information that the Marinologist has, they are, in an important way, wiser; because they have experienced this world from a wider and deeper perspective; beyond the box within which the Marinologist, unwittingly, views the world. They also do not share the beliefs of the Minister. They do not believe; they know. And what they know they cannot observe, because water is not part of the observable content of their lives, but part of its unobservable context.
When they return home, they return with knowledge. They are not morally better than the Minister and his believers; but they are more secure and their gratitude for Water is never insincere. They realize that life within Water is, already, the paradise that the Minister had promised. Also, all the information that they received from the Marinologist is still with them. They do not know more than the Marinologist, but they realize that Water is the context, not the content, of everything that they had observed under his guidance.
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