Fall 2001THE SOCIAL C - PDF document

Fall 2001THE SOCIAL C 58 This is the Preface to (and thereason for the title of) NakedEmperors: Essays of a TabooStalker (1982) by GarrettHardin, Ph.D. What Heretics Are Forby Garrett HardinM said Salustios, a“things that neverhappened but alwaysare.” Though distinguishable from the best of the fairy talesshare this paradoxical relation toreality. A truth we are reluctant toacknowledge can be insinua intothe mind by the account of an eventthat never happened. HansChristian Anderson’s The New Clothes tells justsuch a story. His emperor is a unnamed and unplaced intime (“many years ago”), but he isal all of us at all times — and no swindlers who fleeced the first caught him in a neat trap. The exorbitantly pricedand nonexistent clothes theytailored had the wonderful quality,they said, of being invisible toanyone who was “hopelessly stupid unfit for his office.” Given theEmperor’s acceptance of thiscriterion of reality, his loyal subjectswere psychologically bound to seethe invisible. Behold, then, the nobleEmperor, naked as a jaybird,marching in parade to theen plaudits of the throng! denouement comes when theinnocent child protests: “But theEmperor is naked!”This scene, first projected on themind’s eye of a delighted, g is periodically recalled by of the external world.Every generation brings newswindlers (many of them, curiously,s and more newclothes for credulous emperors. Atany point in time a sizeablewardrobe of such clothes is beingparaded in the marketplace ofideas. There are far too fewchildren, too few iconoclasts (to useanother image), to keep up with thebusy looms of the weavers ofinvisible cloth.The story of The Emperor’sNew Clothes no doubt strikescompletely socialized, other-directed adults as preposterous, butreality outrages myth. InAnderson’s story the child’s outcry to a rapid erosion of faith the spectators; truth str Emperor naked. Unhappily, in life, majority opinion frequentlyoverwhelms perception.Some experiments carried outby the social psych Solomonsch are most enlightening. Aschasked a small group of college men identify the longest of severallines drawn on paper. Unbeknownst one of them, all the others hadbeen instructed to agree on a wrong answer.Choices were announced in openmeeting. As the responses forced “odd man out” to becomeaware of his position, he notinfrequently gave way to themajority and expressed hisagreement with them. It does nottake an Inquisition to make heresypainful. (“Heresy” comes from aGreek word meaning “to choose foroneself.”) Out of 123 mensubjected to this ordeal, 37 percentconformed. (Is it significant that this about the same percentage ahat of “placebo reactors,” peoplewhose pain is reduced by the of a placebo, a known to have nobeneficial effect?)Asch’s experiment might tempta cynic to rewrite the Andersonstory to make the little child yield toadult opinion. We would not acceptsuch a rewriting, of course, becausethe cynical version would depriveus of hope. The progress of science— indeed of all positive knowledge— depends on the courage ofThoreau’s “majority of one” in the of nearly unanimous error. Yetthere are many naked emperorsparading the streets of learning, andwe need a few people who havethe Anderson child’s confidence in own senses and judgment.Statistically speaking, the populace well be right more often thanwrong — but sometimes theEmperor is indeed naked.What follows is one heretic’s to point out some of thenaked emperors of our time. is no guarantee of truth, but us not forget (as T. H. Huxleysaid) that every new truth begins as