The point of that story is that everyone wanted to point out the flaw in the Emperor’s “wardrobe”, but everyone was too afraid to do it first.
An effect we see in real life fairly often: a chilling effect, an inconvenient truth that’s not talked about by implicit consensus, until someone decides to break the ice, at which point the acknowledgement of the problem cascades—which opens a way to its resolution.
I’ve seen it happen in open source communities, for example. I pointed out organizational flaws in project X, at which point people commented that they are glad someone finally decided to speak out.
I think the point in the story was that everyone assumed “I must be too sinful to see the emperor’s cloths. Everyone else clearly can see them. There must be something wrong with me, so I should pretend I can see them too.” Everyone, including the emperor himself, was burdened by the same self-doubt.
It was only when someone who was clearly without sin or guile said that he couldn’t see the cloths that everyone else realized the truth.
(Unfortunately, in reality, I suspect the ending of the story really would have been “The child is a sinner and a heretic, or he would see the clothing just like all the rest of us CLEARLY do. Quick, burn the child!”)
The point of that story is that everyone wanted to point out the flaw in the Emperor’s “wardrobe”, but everyone was too afraid to do it first.
An effect we see in real life fairly often: a chilling effect, an inconvenient truth that’s not talked about by implicit consensus, until someone decides to break the ice, at which point the acknowledgement of the problem cascades—which opens a way to its resolution.
I’ve seen it happen in open source communities, for example. I pointed out organizational flaws in project X, at which point people commented that they are glad someone finally decided to speak out.
I think the point in the story was that everyone assumed “I must be too sinful to see the emperor’s cloths. Everyone else clearly can see them. There must be something wrong with me, so I should pretend I can see them too.” Everyone, including the emperor himself, was burdened by the same self-doubt.
It was only when someone who was clearly without sin or guile said that he couldn’t see the cloths that everyone else realized the truth.
(Unfortunately, in reality, I suspect the ending of the story really would have been “The child is a sinner and a heretic, or he would see the clothing just like all the rest of us CLEARLY do. Quick, burn the child!”)