I disagree that this is a representative parable. Putting eight blind men in a room to touch an elephant is a very controlled, very well-defined, problem; the insinuation is that if the blind people could merely collect the correct data, they'd arrive at the correct solution. Very few things in life exhibit these niceties, and the parable absolutely fails to generalize.

What about for the actual day-to-day of our lives? If I do not already value perspective, then why should I?