The emperor’s new clothes

Once upon a time, in a kingdom far, far away (actually in a remote corner of the Pacific), the emperor went for his annual walk around his kingdom to show off his glittering robes of state, a band of coterie on his heels to hold up his heavy mantle and planted “clappers” among the crowd to prompt the applause at appropriate moments. As he made his way down the street, with his chin up and his shoulders squared to better show off the majesty of his person, he could see in his mind’s eye the masses oooh-ing and aahh-ing at the magnificent figure he presented, the perfect cut of his clothes draping themselves flatteringly around his person and highlighting his manly, hairy arms while keeping from public sight his skinny legs and flabby stomach. He ignored the trickle of sweat making its way down his spine, thinking to himself: “I am feeling darn well and everything is well with the rest of the kingdom.”

There was only one hitch, though. The fiery glitter on his robes, the imponderable weight of his splendid crown that shimmered under the noonday sun, and the fulsome praise that he was drawing from the crowd—all these were mere figments of his imagination. As the emperor strutted his way down the avenue wrapped up in his imaginative flights of fancy, all the crowd could see was a naked man, with his privates flapping in the breeze and the only shimmer coming from the balding spot on the center of his head. Too courteous, however, to rudely shatter his illusions and too reticent to make any remark that would be contrary to what the emperor’s spin doctors are saying, the people could do nothing but stare stonily at the bizarre apparition and clap politely whenever prompted by the planted “clappers.” From time to time, someone in the crowd would whisper to his neighbor about the emperor being naked and they would share a conspiratorial snicker at the emperor’s expense but they were much too intimidated by the solemnity of the occasion to actually voice out what everyone else was thinking: That the emperor has gone starkers and is the sole inhabitant of an imaginary place that he has created in his mind.

The question, though, on everybody’s mind is: How did this come to pass? What has happened to the emperor that he cannot see what is so obvious to everyone else? Is he under a spell? Is the emperor under the grip of a powerful magician that he sees gold where others see dross? How can he say that all is well, when the kingdom is falling apart piece by piece, essential services are stretched much too thin to function effectively and efficiently, and people are paying much too high a price just to live a normal life?

According to German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world. That, to me, seems to be the case with the emperor. Since he lives comfortably in his palace, the air-conditioner always humming a happy tune from morning ‘til night, and his lavish, globe-trotting lifestyle essentially a bottomless expense account that he always charges to the local taxpayers, he thinks that the degree of comfort that he enjoys is also being enjoyed by the rest of his kingdom. “We are comfortable, hence the rest of the world is comfortable, too.”

Well, as Queen Victoria famously said, we are not amused. The problem with this emperor is that he bought his own hype. He has come to believe what his spin doctors have been churning out and his sense of objectivity has become befuddled by the haze of misguided optimism that court witch doctors have been brewing for his pleasure. Like Michael Jackson, the emperor has become an adamant believer in his own greatness and the superiority of his leadership, effectively creating mental blinders that limit his vision to only those that support his image of his universe and discarding those that threaten to wake him up to reality. Matters are not helped by the emperor’s tendency to listen only to his cordon sanitaire, that bunch of court jesters and courtiers constantly surrounding the imperial person. With such a limited view of the world and cramped understanding of imperial dynamics, the emperor has become a prisoner in his own psychological world, making him oblivious to the misery surrounding him.

The state of the emperor’s mind could be gleaned from the fact that, besides the contradiction inherent in his insistence of the empire being in “darn good shape” and the people already paying way too high a price for their electricity, there was also that declaration of a state of emergency, purportedly to resolve the ongoing power crisis that had the kingdom’s power plants running on fumes. Then there is that impending decision by one of the foreign dragons to stop transporting visitors into the empire, which threatens to poke a gaping hole on the ship of state.

No, the empire is not in “darn good shape” and the sooner the emperor wakes up to this reality, the sooner can the kingdom go back to living happily ever after.