Living in an age of advertisement, we are perpetually disillusioned. The perfect life is spread before us every day, but it changes and withers at a touch.
– J. B. Priestley, English novelist
Everyone is familiar with the story of ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’, a fairy tale that must have been read by myriads of school going children in the era and age before the avalanche of social media and mobile apps distractions overtook the whole world by storm. The lessons of the simple fairy tale meant for kids are sorely missed in this time and age.
Even deep in the interior of Borneo, in the cool montane clime of the valleys of ‘Lam Bah’ in Bario Highlands, the story was available in the late 1960s for the school kids to read. That is, after taking turns to borrow the story book from the small collection of books our school had that made up our humble ‘library’, in a tiny corner in the teachers’ room.
Or maybe, the story was read together during a ‘read aloud’ session in class, an efficient way to study and learn together when reading and teaching materials were so scarce and scanty. Back then, the teacher or one of the smarter kids would read each line aloud and the whole class would recite or chorus the line after him or her.
The amazing story by prolific Danish writer Hans Christian Anderson has a very simple plot about an emperor who is obsessed with fine and beautiful clothing and is however swindled by two men – in modern parlance ‘crooks’ or ‘conmen’, who claim that they are the best of weavers in the whole wide world and could weave magical clothes that are so good, and exquisitely beautiful, that the apparel would appear invisible to anyone who is stupid or incompetent. So as long as you are not stupid or incompetent, you will be able to see and appreciate the marvellously magical clothes.
However, due to pride or out of fear, everyone in the story is caught in a mass delusion pretending that they could see the emperor in his new clothes as he is parading in a great procession to show off the new clothes before his equally proud subjects.
No one wanted to be seen as stupid or incompetent when in reality, everyone in the kingdom is seeing their emperor without his clothes! Because they fear being labelled as stupid or being accused of being incompetent, or not a team player, or not supportive of the Big Boss, and so on, they are all singing the false praises of their emperor’s fine and exquisitely woven clothing.
In their delusion, everyone is singing from the same song sheet made of musical notes and scores of false praises to the emperor, expressing their utmost admiration of the king’s new clothes. Everyone is competing to demonstrate their undying and blind loyalty to the leader. But as expected, the make belief can only last for so long until a child calls out “But the emperor doesn’t have any clothes on!”
Yes, it takes just a child to call out everyone from their mass reverie, voluntary total blackout and a groupies’ self-hypnotism. Sans the usual witches’ brew or magical genie. Or as someone has said, you can fool some of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time!
We all know the rest of the story. Well, those who have read it. A simple story that can be dissected and analysed for the moral lessons and insights that it contains. A testimony to the genius of the story writer. It kind of reminds me of the folk tales I heard as a boy from my dad, and also other parents to their kids, about ‘The Big Fool and Small Fool’ tales or in the Kelabit dialect, the ‘Palug Rayah, Palug I’it’ stories that I find, sadly, are no longer being told by parents to their children.
What a big loss since traditional folklores, oral traditions and the inherent wisdom or moral lessons of the ages, have all but evaporated with the passage of time. Technology, it seems, is an anathema to folk wisdom, oral traditions and the tribal treasures acquired over the ages.
The story telling by the fireside or under the shades of the baobab tree under the stars is no longer seen as being something ‘cool’. The idiot box has taken over the baobab tree.
One of the lessons from the simple story of ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ is something fundamental and powerful at the same time, to wit, we must not let pride or fear stop us from speaking the truth. Something easier said than done, obviously.
As we grow older and undergo different experiences, paradoxically we tend to acquire a sense of self-censorship and a strange imperviousness to the plain and obvious. Either, we suddenly turn selectively blind, deaf or dumb, or unexplainably, we become intermittently or even permanently amnesiac.
Maybe, we are cowed by some powerful magic portion or portent spell cast upon the whole population, like living under the shadows of the Towers of Sauron. Or we have morphed into ostriches who hide their heads in the sands on the first signs of danger.
Ironically, as demonstratedly underscored in Han Anderson’s tale, it took just a child, ostensibly the weakest of the lot, who dared speak the truth and showed no fear in doing so. All the notables, the gentry, the rich merchants and powerful ‘rich and famous’ men and women of the realm were rendered timid as a field mouse.
It was the child’s pure and innocent soul that inspired him to speak the truth, and call out the obvious. For only the innocent, and the pure of heart, dares speak the truth, without fear or favour. So, it seems, and so it should be, going by the moral of the story. But not likely when the lambs are silenced when the wolves are roaming around free.
From the actions of the child, we can pick the message that free thinking individuality and freedom from unhealthy social conventions can allow the truth to emerge, even, as in the story, if no one else is initially prepared to admit it.
I think this remains true to this day and for a long while hence in this day and age. The innocence of the child is like the man who can see an injustice in society to which others are blind to.
The child reminds us that we should have the confidence to speak up. If we are later proven to be wrong, or ineffective, at least we can claim that we have tried our best and have shown some guts. But if we are right, people will appreciate the truth, and gradually society will change for the better. A wrong is a wrong and it should be mentioned, admonished, exposed, and punished if it is criminal in nature.
Transparency and sense of integrity are often the first victims when people fear to speak the truth or when false pride and hypocrisy gets in the way or becomes the core consideration or self-filtration default mode over the simple, honest and the plain telling of the truth of the matter in question.
I recall reading a magazine called ‘The Plain Truth’ in the old days, a free-of-charge monthly magazine, first published in 1934. I don’t see the magazine around anyone. Maybe, that’s another tell-tale sign of the times where whitewashing, cover ups, denials, shadow plays and concealment of facts, and the fabrication of so-called truths, is sprouting everywhere like wild mushrooms after a bout of wet, stinky and gloomy weather.
Sometimes, the metaphorical and real skies would open up so much that after the deluge that follows many things are laid bare, made open to the view of all and sundry. The truth either becomes obvious for all to see or as commonly happens, it is being explained away: to be conveniently washed away, carried out of sight, and out of mind, by the flood or avalanches of denial, the foisted confusions or the spiralling tornadoes of counter accusations.
The dangers of ignoring the obviously wrong or clearly untrue for fear of judgement, self-pride or the fear of what others may think, are obvious. Especially, when the context involves the ordinary people, general public or sometimes even the followers of some who are in leadership roles, will could result in wholesale blindness and general apathy. Like the storming of the White House by the hordes who were hardcore supporters of a particular candidate. A very crude attempt at power grab in the world’s most advanced democracy.
A debilitating malaise if allowed to fester and left untreated, that will bring down every one in the end. Just as in the story of ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ where an entire kingdom ignored or turned a blind eye on the obviously wrong thing that was going on, to wit, that their own emperor is walking around wearing nothing at all but his just his pride of prides.
The story also shows the natural tendency of many who will gravitate towards people who tend to tell things that they want to hear. That’s why those who are in positions of power like to have a chorus of ‘yes’ men around them. Like in a Parliament of Baboons, a picture illustration of which I recall seeing, the more powerful they are, like the Alpha Male Gorillas, the more ‘yes’ men they have around them.
Hitler was such a character and so are many modern-day despots. Some of whom we saw recently being literally hounded out of power by the long-suffering masses.
We also see those characters in the movies, some based on real life stories, some just fictional. They always like being told what they like to hear. So, they surround themselves with those who will flatter them like crazy, not those who can give them honest and sincere, or even painful, feedbacks. Stories which have pertinent message to all.
But then, from an innocent bystander’s view point, what is happening is obviously a mere facade and a meaningless charade. Everyone is actually caught in a pantomimic charade of self-beliefs and common delusions, and are actually lost in their own cocoon and, by such a definition, are severely deprived of a good 20/20 vision.
Clearly, they do not possess an 180 degrees vision or let alone a 360 degrees circumspection from where they stand. They are partially or even fully vision impaired. Wilfully blind, like everyone save the child in Hans Andersen’s fairly tale.
The fairy tale can also be seen as a lesson on the dangers of taking shortcuts. The two swindlers and fake weavers were bent on taking a shortcut to untold wealth. They were willing to take great risks. When they arrive in the city, they have no hesitation to claim to be the best weavers imaginable.
Knowing the emperor’s infatuation with clothes, they make the claim that the clothing they can weave is the finest of all and with beautiful, intricate patterns. They say with confidence that this clothing is also magical and would therefore appear invisible to anyone who was stupid or incompetent.
Typical, ‘too beautiful to be true’ tales that the conman, sweet talker, drug peddler and professional swindler cleverly spins to catch the unwary and gullible. There are many out there trying their luck, and with the aid of the digital revolution and online platform we hear of the ignoramus being swindled of their hard-earned money or entire savings.
Truly, we are now in ‘The Age of Degradation’ as one of my Indian friends mentioned not too long ago, where the truth is indecipherable from the falsehoods.
While the story is silent as to the fate of the two scoundrels, their shortcut to wealth would have been really very short indeed as it is narrated that a child has had the insight and the guts to call out the obvious and make the people realise the truth.
We can deduce that most likely they would have lost their lives or, at the bare minimum, lost their freedom for having had the cheek to pull a fast one on the emperor and launch their shortcut to wealth, which deservedly turns out to be just an illusion.
No, there are no shortcuts to wealth. That’s one moral or lesson to keep in mind. If you think that there is any shortcut, be forewarned shortcuts are an illusion. Or remember the story of ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’.
How many people have fallen into debts because they thought that by merely swiping their credit cards they can get whatever they want? It is so easy to ‘swipe and pay’ but it’s a rude wake-up call from a bad dream when the credit card invoices come in the mail at the end of the month.
And hardly a day passes when we read about people being swindled. It’s their greed which made them gullible and blind to the traps being set for them. No, there are no shortcuts to wealth.
Even Ali Baba has had to work hard with his band of forty thieves to collect his undeserved and short-lived wealth. A victim of his own greed and the machination of his own brother Kassim Baba.
Taking shortcuts are just illusions, better avoided then being made the core philosophy of life.
Finally, another lesson learnt revolves around the main protagonist in the story, the emperor himself. Being vain, proud, pompous and having a heightened sense of his own self-importance and indispensability, and with no sense of shame, he was an easy target for manipulation by the two swindlers.
They knew his weaknesses and used flattery to get him to agree to their scheme. It made it easy for the scoundrels to manipulate him, to his own loss and shame in the end.
His own pride made him blind to the manipulations inflicted upon him and to his own foolishness in seeing himself naked but claiming and admitting to everyone that he is beautifully dressed up in the best of garments.
By surrounding himself with a coterie of ‘yes’ men and a massive followership who are willing to live the same lie that he has crafted for himself he ended up with nothing left to be proud of. In taking a short cut to his own sense of popularity and pride, he is literally laid bare. Instead, of realising his dreams he ends up becoming a laughing stock when an innocent child calls out the truth.
As the saying goes, pride comes before a fall. The more pride you have, the more difficult it is to admit your fallibility, and the more likely you are to allow that fallibility to influence your judgment in a bad way. Emperor or not you are not immune to the disease of pride which leads to a bad and hard fall.
Some would also hasten to say, that scoundrels deserve each other and often have shifty eyes. Why, shifty eyes? Maybe, an allusion to snakes like the one in the Jungle Boy film who could easily hoodwink those who dared look into his eyes. Mowgli (character and the protagonist of Rudyard Kipling’s film) fell victim to those shifty eyes. When you look them in the eyes, they with them shifty eyes will quickly shift their sight away.
On the contrary, honest, decent people do not avoid eye contact for the eyes do reveal a lot and the honest and decent folks have nothing to hide. Blessed are the meek and humble for they shall inherit the earth, goes some words of wisdom and, I believe, of prophecy.
NOTE: This posting is fictional and a satirical piece of creative writing. The views and opinion herein are the author’s own compilation and does not reflect on any particular individual person or group of persons and neither do they purport to be the views of this paper.
