The Emperor's Old Clothes
One day, as Sarkon the Prophet was once more about to leave for the vaporous mists of the spiritual paths, he noticed the sky was not as sunny as usual. As a matter of fact, it was quite cloudy, and the clouds were rather dark.
"That means some bad, bad ideas are hanging in the air," he whispered to himself. Maybe today wasn't the right day to stroll the paths of thought.
And indeed, a little further down the path he stumbled upon General Kwar the Dictator and Dr. Qworm the Mad Scientist, who were having a bitter argument about one of Dr. Qworm's experimentations.
"Stop trying to measure the speed of stone!" General Kwar was shouting at Dr. Qworm. "It makes no sense!"
"In my opinion, it does!" Dr. Qworm defended himself. "Every other basic concept our universe is made of – light, time, consciousness – does have a speed, so I think matter must have a speed too!"
"Time does have a speed?!" General Kwar was taken aback. "What would that be?"
"Sixty seconds a minute," Dr. Qworm explained with the most pedantic look he could muster.
General Kwar shook his head in disbelief. "This is the most stupid thing I've ever heard! Besides, hadn't we agreed that time was but an intellectual tool humanity made up to measure events?[1] It is no more basic a concept to the universe than the number 9!"
"Ok, then the concept of time is an intellectual tool, like the number 9 is. But even an intellectual tool can have a speed!" he argued.
General Kwar rolled his eyes. "And what would be the speed of consciousness? I don't think I ever heard that one before, either!"
"That's most probably because your speed of assimilation of knowledge is way lower than it should be," mocked Dr. Qworm. "The speed of consciousness depends on the life form, of course. There also is a very big difference in the speed of passive consciousness, which is the information we gather from the senses, and the speed of active consciousness, which can be assimilated to thinking. For humans, scientists have measured the maximum speed of active consciousness at roughly one thought every half a second. Passive consciousness goes much faster."
General Kwar took his face in his hands. "Alright… I give up on that. But stone has no speed!"
"We'll see that," answered Dr. Qworm, tight-lipped.
Sarkon felt it was time to intervene. Since General Kwar obviously was the most powerful of both, Sarkon felt obliged to speak out in Dr. Qworm's defense. "General Kwar, I think you should be more tolerant of Dr. Qworm's beliefs," he lectured.
"But he's trying to measure the speed of stone five times a day!" complained the Dictator.
"The more often I do it, the higher the chances are that I will eventually succeed," explained Dr. Qworm. "Besides, I need to repeat the experiment because the statistical data I will get will allow me a greater accuracy in determining the speed of stone."
"And what are your results up to now?" asked Sarkon, trying to show understanding and interest.
"Up to now, my experiments have measured the speed of stone as 0.000 millimeters an hour," answered Dr. Qworm, "but I would like to be able to get at least two decimals further in precision-"
"Stop it!" interrupted General Kwar. "Please stop it!"
Sarkon looked at General Kwar in a severe manner. "Dr. Qworm has the right to pursue any experiment he deems necessary, and you have no right to prevent him from doing so!" he lectured.
"But I cannot stand that stupidity invades my world!" exclaimed General Kwar.
"It is not necessarily stupidity. It may just be a different way of thinking," said Sarkon. "Who knows, maybe stone does have a speed. In any case, we should not judge Dr. Qworm on his beliefs. This, my dear Dictator," he put a soothing hand on General Kwar's shoulder, "is called tolerance."
General Kwar sighed. "But…" He seemed to be at a loss of words for a moment, putting his hands on his hips and looking towards the dark clouds that were breezing closer to the Welgon Age. When he looked at Sarkon again, he had a large grin plastered across his face. "Well, I actually think you are right this time, Prophet," he declared. "Measuring the speed of stone is a wonderful thing, and Dr. Qworm is free to pursue this belief for as long as he wishes," he acknowledged in the softest voice he could manage. Then he turned and walked away.
Sarkon was puzzled. So puzzled, in fact, that he ran after General Kwar, grabbed him by the arm and made him stop. "I need an explanation here," demanded Sarkon. "You are not that quick to give up your point of view usually!"
"Well, I was… wrong," admitted the Dictator, still smiling.
"There's something else," pressed Sarkon.
General Kwar took a deep breath. "Look at him," he pointed at Dr. Qworm.
The Mad Scientist was kneeling on a carpet in front of a pebble, trying to measure a movement that was not happening.
"He does this five times a day now," General Kwar commented.
Sarkon had to admit that it was not a very rejoicing sight. "Still – we have no right to criticize him," he said.
"Have you noticed how the rest of his scientific interest has faded since he took up this belief?" asked General Kwar.
Sarkon stroked his beard. It was true that since Dr. Qworm had started to study the speed of stone, his scientific output had been close to nil. In fact, except for this elusive speed he was looking for, he didn't seem to be interested in scientific progress anymore.
"Are you also aware how noticeably less powerful he has become? That he is winning less and less philosophical arguments? Heck, he became so weak that you even have to start defending him!" exclaimed the Dictator.
Sarkon frowned. Was Dr. Qworm really on the way of becoming a secondary character in the Welgon Age?
"That's why I think that for this one time, Prophet, you are right!" General Kwar clenched his fist. "Being tolerant of Dr. Qworm's spoof will allow us to dominate him! Bowing over his stone as he is now, he will slowly fade away from the scientific and philosophical scene, which will ensure our economic and political dominance over him and the Welgon Age in the long term, and while he will still bow and pray, our progress in knowledge will have made us able to reach the stars!"
Lightning thunder struck at the end of Kwar's speech, making it sound the more terrible. The dark clouds were dangerously close now.
"You mean tolerance is an instrument of domination?" gasped Sarkon.
"When it is used for a behavior that is self-belittling, definitively!" erupted General Kwar. "Look at him – just look at him! Hasn't he made himself a slave to his stone?!"
Once again, Sarkon looked at the Mad Scientist, and seeing him huddled over his pebble like it was the ultimate goal in his life made tears come to the Prophet's eyes. "But what shall we do, then?" he asked despairingly.
"I say we tolerate what he does, even say that the speed of stone is a wonderful religion, and dominate him!" General Kwar answered sternly.
Lightning struck again. The air was tense with electricity.
"But that wouldn't be fair!" pleaded Sarkon.
"Who said life is fair?" shrugged General Kwar.
Sarkon realized he would have to convince the Dictator with other reasons. "But wouldn't Dr. Qworm not participating in our scientific and philosophical discussions anymore be a loss for us too? I know he talks a lot of nonsense, but with his help we were often able to think further. Wouldn't our progress in knowledge go slower if he stopped contributing?" he pleaded.
General Kwar frowned. "You mean we would waste intellectual resources if we dominated him, and thus become less wise and less powerful than we could be?" he asked. "That would be a problem, indeed," he admitted.
"But how to get him away from his stone, then? I absolutely refuse to solve this problem with forbidding him to try to measure its speed. That would be intolerance!" evaluated Sarkon. "There must be another way…"
"The problem is, he refuses to listen to our arguments. It seems we won't be able to make him stop by using reason…" analyzed General Kwar.
"No coercion, no reason… What else could we use?" wondered a preoccupied Sarkon.
On these words, skipping from the other side of the hill, cookie the harlequin made his appearance. He stopped in front of Dr. Qworm and looked at him and at his stone with an air of wonder.
"What are you doing down there?" asked the harlequin, his eternally curious eyes wide open.
"Measuring the speed of stone," answered the Mad Scientist without raising his eyes from the piece of rock he was studying.
cookie bent over the stone too. He looked at it closely. Then he looked at Dr. Qworm.
Then he started laughing.
Dr. Qworm went red. "cookie, this is a very important experiment –"
General Kwar and Sarkon were both smiling. "Maybe that's our solution," ventured the Prophet.
"Indeed," emphasized General Kwar. "Historically, mockery has always been a very strong tool in exposing the nonsense of old beliefs," he lectured.
"Won't Dr. Qworm get angry, though?" suggested Sarkon. And indeed, the Mad Scientist's face was turning quite red.
"That's inevitable. In laughing about what someone believes in, you laugh about his whole being, especially if his very existence is built around this belief. You laugh about what his whole life has been up to now. You are making his whole existence a joke," General Kwar explained sternly.
"But that's horrible!" shrieked Sarkon.
"Not as much as you think. Anger is not pain. cookie is not actually hurting Dr. Qworm – as you see, he's quite far from crying! This anger will help him put himself into question again: he will look for arguments to justify his belief. Being mocked can actually help him think. Anger can be a great catalyst for action."
"But won't he react violently against those who mock him? Won't he feel attacked in his honor?" asked Sarkon.
"Violence being the worst form of stupidity, that would just prove his being wrong. Besides, if you want to make the world a better place, you can't let yourself be stopped by something as trivial as a feeling of fear. And anyway, we don't have violence here in the Welgon Age anymore,"[2] shrugged General Kwar. "As for his honor…" he took a deep breath and went on, "it is definitely not worth much. Honor, you see, has always been considered a virtue. That, too, is a common belief that facts have proven to be wrong! Indeed, throughout history, facts have shown honor to be one of the biggest vices of humanity! For the sake of honor, senseless duels have been fought, women have been stoned, whole wars have been waged! In every culture, honor has been nothing than a justification to vent out an often-deserved frustration by harming someone! Now, look at us! Aren't we ridiculous?"
Sarkon looked at General Kwar, the self-proclaimed Dictator who ruled absolutely nothing, the most power-lusting person he had ever met who had no power at all. He looked at Dr. Qworm the Mad Scientist, who had never succeeded in accomplishing a single experiment that made any sense in his life and who abbreviated his first name Dreitos into "Dr." to give an illusion of academic credit to himself. He looked at cookie the harlequin, who seemed to be the least serious of them all. He looked at the whole Welgon Age, whose tinyness certainly made it look ridiculous compared to the huge nations and universes General Kwar and Dr. Qworm were sometimes speaking about. "We live in a world without honor," he finally noticed.
"Is it something you miss?"
Sarkon had a smug smile. "I see your point."
"If we weren't ridiculous – if we had some kind of honor – our world would definitively be less pleasant, less secure and less fun!" concluded General Kwar, plastering a quite ridiculous and very fitting air of self-satisfaction over his face.
Sarkon nodded. "Still, there is something that's not clear to me yet… Why would the world suddenly become a better place if Dr. Qworm stopped believing that stone has a speed?" he asked.
General Kwar frowned as if the question made no sense to him. "Why would… Well, isn't that self-evident?"
"Not to me," Sarkon said meekly.
General Kwar had to think hard. "Why do you always need to have everything explained, Sarkon?" he complained. "Alright – here's why. First, there is the matter of wasted resources: if Dr. Qworm believes stone has a speed and uses his time and thoughts trying to measure this speed, he'll think less about other mysteries of the universe that are more worthy of being solved. The result is that our whole progress goes slower than it could go. Maybe later he'll teach his children to believe speed has a stone, and they will center their lives on that, too. Maybe his children's children will make up a whole civilization someday, and wonder how from one of the most advanced cultures they turned into a culture that is reduced to adopting the tools and language of people who never believed stone has a speed, wonder why it wasn't they who invented planes, television, computers, the internet, wonder why it wasn't they who got to the moon. And although the explanation will be shining into everybody's eyes, they'll still refuse to acknowledge their belief in the speed of stone as the reason for their getting behind. Thus a belief in the speed of stone can create a more unfair world, and that's a very good reason we shouldn't tolerate it silently and make it our duty to ridicule it – except if we want to dominate people who do have such a belief, of course."
"I don't like what you say, Dictator," Sarkon sighed, "but I can't see where you are wrong."
Lightning struck again. It was raining now.
"There is another reason why the world would become a better place if Dr. Qworm stopped believing stone has a speed," resumed General Kwar, and that would be… Our frustration. For let's face it: we are frustrated that Dr. Qworm is trying to measure the speed of stone – we wouldn't stand here talking about it otherwise! If he stopped his measurements, our frustration would stop, too, and thus make the world a better place inside ourselves."
"But we are not frustrated about the actual deed; we are frustrated about the consequences!" Sarkon defended himself.
"That's quite the same, if you think about it. But I just wanted to point out that we do have our egoistical reasons," remarked Kwar.
cookie was still laughing at Dr. Qworm's stone, and the Mad Scientist was doing his best to keep his concentration and his temper amidst the laughs and the rain.
"But what if, in the end, we are wrong, and stone does turn out to have a speed?" Sarkon tried as a last-ditch question.
"Then it will turn out that we are the ridiculous ones," judged General Kwar. "But wait – aren't we already anyway?"
They both burst out laughing.
"Alright, alright – I give up!" exclaimed Dr. Qworm when he heard everybody laughing (cookie was still having fun too). "This pebble doesn't seem to move anyway!"
On these words, the Mad Scientist gave his stone a mighty kick, and it soared through the Welgon Age's sky with more speed than Dr. Qworm would ever have dreamed of measuring. It went through the dark clouds and tore them away, and suddenly the sky was as clear as it used to be.
"It is kind of a relief, actually," the Mad Scientist remarked. "Now I can concentrate on measuring the maximum length of a ray of light!"
Sarkon and Kwar both sighed very, very loudly.
* * *
"Well… It was quite time the emperor's old clothes were exposed," summarized Sarkon.
"Hm. This emperor still has a lot of invisible things on, though," said General Kwar.
Sarkon nodded. "Maybe one day somebody will get him an actual outfit to put on," he sighed.
"That could be your mission, Prophet. But then," Kwar concluded with a wink towards Sarkon, "maybe he's best seen naked anyway!"
They both burst out laughing, and went on to the Welgon Age's tea room to celebrate the freeing of a friend's mind.