On Trusting our Emperors
David Smail writing in Manufacturing Victims by Tana Dineen

We human beings are on the whole extremely trusting of authority. It is, I suspect, something to do with having once been an infant, where trust is the almost inevitable product of having been looked after by people who were sensed as all-powerful and whose care was good enough to ensure our survival. Our total dependence on and reverence for these all-powerful care-givers sets a mould for our later dealings with authority which is broken, often, only with the greatest difficulty and trepidation.

However this may be, and though we may be suspicious and prickly to a degree with almost everyone else, when it comes to those we regard as, authorities, our readiness to trust seems almost boundless. In a well-functioning, essentially benign society, this no doubt has its advantages: things run more smoothly if those charged with the direction and care of others (and doing a good job of it) are not questioned mistrustfully at every turn.

However, smooth functioning and benignity are far from necessary features of society. There are times - and arguably this is one of them - when societies become infused and corrupted by the pursuit of vested interest, and in this case the more power people have within the society, the easier it will be for them to become corrupted, perfectly possibly without their really noticing it. Those having authority of one kind or another within the society will of course be among those particularly vulnerable to such corruption.

The problem is that, because of our apparently in-built trustfulness, it takes a very long time for the vast majority of us to credit the possibility that the authorities who shape and mediate our culture could in any fundamental sense be mistaken or misleading, let alone corrupt. However conspicuously naked our emperors, we still manage to screw our eyes tight shut and imagine them impeccably decked out in the regalia of their office. Apart, that is, from one or two clear-sighted spectators who, for reasons almost impossible to fathom, are both unable to fool themselves and unable to keep their mouths shut.

Being a vocal witness to nakedness is not a comfortable role to find oneself in. Almost nobody likes a whistle-blower. It attracts neither honour nor thanks. It tends to upset the credulous as much as it infuriates those it exposes. Not only are whistle-blowers likely to be the object of censure and disqualification by the established social institutions which are threatened by their clarity of vision, but they will also find themselves disbelieved and derided by their fellow citizens. The most likely response to a blast from the whistle is a hail of stones from those who, did they but know it, stand to gain most from the truth.