The Emperor Has No Clothes

The Emperor Has No Clothes

                                                                                    *Saumitra Mohan

            Notwithstanding the world contracting geographically and digitally, we have actually gotten more distanced from one another instead of coming closer. Faster transportation, faster communications, abundant knowledge and better creature comforts have not meant better inter-personal relationships amongst us. So, despite being closer to one another physically, people are no more close to each other emotionally than they ever were. Often lost in the impersonal cyber world through their digital devices, many of the Homo Sapiens have become more of automatons today.

            A new ‘Digital Divide’ is perceptible in our society notwithstanding the amplified access to the World Wide Web. Oxymoronically, the facile access to the very digital devices has created this digital divide where many of us are too engrossed in our alienating material world to look for more uplifting meaning to our ephemeral lives. The upshot of it all is a reality where despite being online in the cyber world, a good number of us are offline in our relationships and oblivious to the transcendental non-material reality.

            Overwhelmed by our bloated ‘Ego’, many of us have so much dug ourselves in our respective cocoons that we don’t wish to see beyond our ‘Self’ and it is this ‘neo-narcissism’ that is doing us in. Our over-inflated ‘Ego’ often incapacitates us to be able to cognize the existence of the ‘Super Ego’ (read society). Our perceived superiority complex is nothing but a masquerade for our inferiority complex otherwise a ‘superior’ individual does not need to assert or prove one’s superiority. Such a mindset also prevents us from accepting any critics or criticisms. Critics are, in fact, seen as ‘Green Devils’ out to hurt and harm our existence.

            By imbibing such spurious belief systems, many of us have unwittingly surrounded ourselves with apple-polishing toadies who keep fawning on us. The consequent blinkered vision does not allow us to look beyond the tip of our nose as we shy away from facing the stark reality. By cultivating such outlook, we habitually don’t want to hazard to do the same to others as the same compromises our immediate short-term interests. Hence, most of us neither accept the truth nor do we tell the truth. The consequent result is often disastrous, much to the chagrin of us all.

            There have been several instances of people in history who had the delusions of invincibility about themselves, but they were all consigned to the footnotes of history as a small speck or dark dots, just because they refused to see the writings on the wall. Be it the real-life personalities like Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Saddam Hussain, Osama Bin Laden, Joseph Stalin, General Noriega, Idi Amin, mythological figures like Ravana, Duryodhana, Kansa or organisational entities like Orkut, Nokia, USSR, League of Nations or closer home, Indian National Congress or CPM in India-they have all suffered from cognitive derangement or delusions of self-importance to cut themselves away from the truth or winds of change to lose out in the race of survival to go down as failed entities who could not keep pace with time.

            Though as failures, they definitely have their own significance for the posterity, but the point is today the number of such people is increasing by leaps and bounds – both in our personal and public life – who neither comprehend the reality themselves nor are enlightened by others. They are, actually, the ‘Naked Emperors’ walking the lengths and breadths of our planet who don’t have the luxury or privilege of having genuine advisors or critics who could tell the truth on their face. Otherwise, there would be no reason for politicos like Donald Trump, Kim Jong-un or many of our home-grown politicos to keep conducting themselves the way they have done so far, unconcerned and oblivious to the harsh truths or hollowness they preside over. Such people think that if they plug their ears, others will not hear the toll of the bell or if they shut their eyes, the bad and ugly would cease to be visible.

            Such people decline to believe that in this world of complex interdependence where global problems could be resolved only through globally-coordinated moves, such self-seeking and self-centred approach would boomerang to their own detriment. So, if the US is debunking the Kyoto Protocol today or if North Korea is brandishing its nukes (which Mao Zedong once termed ‘paper tigers’), they don’t know that their unsuspecting Frankenstein would slowly sneak on them to finally devour them at a time when they would have no time or opportunity to react and respond.

            Being victims of exaggerated self-image, these people or entities never have their feet on the ground and often float in the rarefied ethereal world, not realising that the Newtonian Law of Gravity catches up with us all by ensuring a very hard crash-landing for those who don’t prepare for the same. Such ‘Naked Emperors’ are walking in the buff without any veneer of dignity, without sensing the quiet chuckle the world is having at their expense.

            The tragedy is that such a thing is happening at the micro level as much as at the macro level. The advisors don’t share the inconvenient truths, the spouses don’t tell the truth to each other, the parents don’t share the truth with their children or our friends ingratiate to us without being truthful. Our apprehension of earning others’ wrath or jeopardising our interest has attenuated our spine and guts. The ‘Homo Erectus’ is forever stooping and bending to conquer his world with insidious consequences. Their triumphs are confined by the four walls of their own self interests.

            A herd mentality has ensued and enveloped us all. In our bid to feather our nest, none is willing to question others and ruffle their feathers. This is turning out to be dangerous as the same has ensured the continuance of the ordinary and mundane beyond the prudent limit. Below par is par for the course now. There are ‘naked emperors’ all across in abundance, not realising themselves being without any dignity as there are not many left among us who could call a spade, a spade. Most of us are looking sideways when it comes to declaiming the inconvenient truth because a selfish interest keeps us from doing so.

            As a human being, we have created false images and imaginary values and have been chasing them ever since. And most of us are doing this at the expense of our eternal self interest i.e. our own spiritual growth and liberation from the cycle of life and death. People are not at all clear about the purpose of their birth in this world nor do they want to even know the same immersed as they are in their daily struggle for survival.

            Ergo, if we wish to grow as a society, we not only need to realise the immediate purpose of our advent in this world, but we should also start questioning and countering the normal and regular to go rediscover the values of life as hidden in this vast universe, to progress further and take our civilisation beyond the routine and mundane. We need to reinvent ourselves to subsist and survive. Otherwise, as a civilisation and as God’s best creation, we shall remain doomed. We should also stop being ‘naked emperors’ ourselves and we should ensure that the other ‘naked emperors’ amongst us are appositely clothed. The sooner, the better. A life of open, free and reinvigorating discussion and discourse enriched by constant criticisms is something we must nurture with due care and caution to continue cherishing and relishing this human life.