the emperor's new clothes

Or, speaking truth to power.
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There is a reason why the only person in that Hans Christian Andersen story who was able to speak the truth about the Emperor's nakedness was a small child. It's such a wonderful story -- in my view, possibly one of the truest children's stories ever written -- because we are so often complicit in the very deceptions and corruptions that we deplore in others. And we all recognise this, just as the Emperor and his courtiers recognised it by the end of the story, but the procession goes on because to disrupt the show would be too costly for us.
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The interesting thing about contemporary culture is that so many widely accepted "truths" are in fact ideas posited by people on the fringes, based on the marginal experiences of these individuals who then go on to attempt to extend their experiential knowledge into all-encompassing theories that, in my view, constitute a kind of cultural-intellectual colonisation. There's no denying that these theories do hold some truth. But their truths are not universal. And the problem is that these thinkers gain so much traction, at least in the intellectual / cultural spheres, partly because the whole point of being a career-intellectual is to explore new frontiers, discover new ideas. Who cares about the old ideas that apply to the majority. Let's chase after the shiny new things that will get us honours and acclaim and secure our careers, even if these ideas by their very nature are descriptive only for a minority of the population who share our issues, problems, or even personal weaknesses.
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After i'm gone, i'd like the executors of my will to put together a collection of all my politcally-incorrect gripings, and publish them posthumously. i suspect that from that distance in time (God-willing it will be some distance ... ), some of these thoughts might even look rather visionary. Haha.
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