Flashlights, Death and Understanding

They called their village Safety. It was surrounded by a very dark forest that the light of the sun never reached into. The people were happy and lived well until the bear came.
They had heard myths of the bear but had never seem him until one day the bear crashed out of the woods and wreaked havoc upon a camp of the people near the forest. Many died that day and the people were afraid. If one bear could do so much to the people they worried what many bears could do. Their leaders told them there were many bears and they could only save themselves by leaving the village to go to the land beyond the forest that was called knowledge. No one had ever been in the forest and they knew not the path to knowledge but the leaders had a plan. Since there were two leaders they separated the people into two groups that were called the blues and the grays and met with each group giving them instructions. To the blues the leader gave each one of them a flashlight and told them all that everyone had the same flashlight that was dim but would cast enough light if they were careful. The leader of the other group, the grays, told them that each one had a different flashlight. Some were very bright and some were very dim but there was no way of knowing what each had until they went into the forest. The blues talked among themselves and decided that the best plan would be to combine their flashlights, dim as they may be, and try to remain close to each other so that they could slowly find their way through the darkened forest. The grays, each thinking they had the brighter flashlights, stuck out on their own not knowing if they had the bright ones or not for they could not see the others. There was much stumbling among the blues and the way was slow often striking the trees with their heads and they called each to each reassuring the others. The grays, the ones that thought they had the brightest lights, often mistook shadows for trees or trees for shadows but they were determined that they had the brighter lights and would make fewer mistakes. Often times there were correct and often times they were not and though they could not see each other they could hear the cries from throughout the forest of those among them that were confused and losing their direction. Some of them were lost becoming food for the bears. By the end of the journey the blues came out of the forest into a new land they knew nothing about. The grays circled about not realizing they had returned to the village from which they had started. The bears were still in the woods.