there's a buddhist story:

a few blind monks were ordered to examine an elephant. so one monk touches the elephant's nose, another one its skin, another one its horns. they all arrive at very different conclusions as to what an elephant is because they're all examining different parts of the system. same as when two people try to interpret what society is, because society at large enough scales behaves just like a giant organism that has many parts. from this come the different results that people come to when they are asked to describe society.

it's a powerful metaphor about how one can only understand the whole by understanding that it has necessarily all of its parts. an elephant without legs cannot move, without nose it cannot drink and without mouth it cannot eat. yet all of these parts, while so different, are necessary for the total system to make sense. the analogy explains that it's not about the parts, which the monks should concern themselves with, but to understand the overall purpose of the elephant (which is to be an elephant, reproduce and eat, as a whole) instead of only looking at the parts themselves.