Tuesday, September 1, 2020

Reality versus "Emperor's New Clothes" and "To Serve Man"

 When I was in elementary school we read the "Emperor's New Clothes" in class. That's the Hans Christian Anderson story about the Emperor who walks down the street naked because his advisors con him into believing he's wearing magnificent robes though he's really naked. The Emperor is deluded because he's so vain. In the story the crowd, en masse, sees the fraud with their own eyes and laughs at him.

The reality is the crowd is the most likely to believe the lies told by the Emperor's advisors even contrary to what their own senses say. That's the harder, but more sensible lesson children should learn.

The Twilight Zone episode "To Serve Man" is really the "Emperor's New Clothes". The horrifying fraud is revealed all at once. In that story humanity's credulity and vanity, and desire for novel experience is their undoing.


The real ending to that story would be the "it's a cookbook" moment, but the people in line shrug, then willingly climb onto the spaceship.

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