A vulnerability exists in individuals who take the highly ritualised nature of certain activities as evidence of their legitimacy. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could take partial control of an affected mind.
Almost everyone understands literary allusions to things like "crying wolf" and "chicken little", which are very economical in place of lengthy explanations, but I get the impression that the moral behind The Emperor's New Clothes hasn't penetrated anywhere near as deeply into popular thought.
If the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton is anything to go by, the idea that they and other members of the British royal family are in some way more remarkable than other people called 'Bill' and 'Kate' seems very much alive and well, so I've been thinking. I've been thinking that I should declare myself king. All I need is for enough people to go along with the idea, and then I really will be, and in exactly the same sense as the current queen is the queen. If anyone objects that her claim to the throne is more legitimate than mine by virtue of being the eldest, brotherless daughter of King George VI, I will simply reply that "My father also has a name and I am the only one of his sons to be born in July", which is, as far as I can tell, equally significant. Indeed, I am descended from a long line of beings running all the way back to even before the earliest and most noble of eukaryotes. I assume they were noble because none of them ever cut anyone's head off, being as they were single-celled organisms living in a world in which heads hadn't been invented yet.
But I suspect there are one or two stumbling blocks in my path. One is that I'm not terribly interested in tradition purely for its own sake and it seems that reverence toward tradition is essential for keeping everyone from admitting there is no meat in the sandwich. In any event, my monarchy is too new to have any history or established traditions yet. But this can't have been very important for other monarchies in their founding days either. I'm just going to have to claim a divine right. I'll go down to Cash Converters and buy myself a sword and tell people that because I am the true king, I was able to pull it out of a rock in the car park, a rock that only true kings can see, but which complements the existing garden very well. All I need is for a few people to believe me, since any kind of following will lend legitimacy to my project. Imagine Braco the Gazer trying to get people to fork out money to come to his 'gazing' sessions without any testimonials from followers. People might otherwise find it crazy to pay money to sit in an audience and have Braco simply stare at them silently from the stage.
Braco the Gazer
The current heir apparent talks to plants, fantasizes about being a tampon, and thinks different vials of pure water can treat different ailments if the water has different histories. My own approach is not worse.
Another obstacle is that I'm also rather uninterested in demanding that oddly intricate rules of etiquette be followed about when a person can pat me on the shoulder or when they should and shouldn't wear a hat in my presence.
A hatless faux pas at the royal wedding
Without imposing the kind of arbitrary rules that have always prevented battered wives from doing anything right, I will simply have no compelling way of making my subjects feel inadequate in my presence. The rules shouldn't be completely impossible to follow, but any sense to them should be unfathomable to common folk, and the easiest way to make them unfathomable to common folk is to make them unfathomable. Hence, they should be at least as absurd as demanding that my guards wear impractical fluffy bearskin hats that tend to flop over their eyes, for I will know that those of my subjects who are willing to learn the most irrational of my rules are demonstrating that they are committed enough both to expend the great deal of effort that is required to do so, and to completely forgo their own judgement about what constitutes sane behaviour in deference to the unfathomable wisdom of the noble class of people who insist that stomping around in bearskin hats can be justified and on whom I have bestowed titles as recognition of their noble attempts to do so.
Exhibit A (truly one of the funniest videos on youtube):
Wish me luck!
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