Paul Buckingham - Blog Philosophy and life in general

Stephen Pinker has just brought out a new book. This one is based on the story of the emperor’s new clothes. The imperial ruler is parading completely naked, his passage watched in reverence by the crowd until a little boy shouts that he has got nothing on. At this point everyone erupts with laughter, and awe turns into ridicule. Before the boy cried out, everyone could see the emperor had nothing on. But those in authority had told them what they should be seeing and so they wondered if everyone else could see the same thing, or was it just them? They couldn’t know for certain what others knew.

But then the boy called out and the state of knowledge of all the spectators changed. The emperor’s nakedness was now more than what a particular individual thought he knew. It was something everyone knew that everyone-else knew. And so the crowd’s reaction to the authority figure suddenly became quite different.

A good example of this in real life was the fall of the dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu in December 1989. People may hate a dictator and assume that others feel the same way. But the behaviour of crowds or nations largely depends on their knowledge of what everyone-else thinks. While they remain uncertain about what side others are on, it is unlikely that anything will change. Nobody wants to put themselves unnecessarily at risk.

Economic conditions in Romania were terrible; the security services and army were demoralised. Everyone suspected that the government had almost no popular support. People were being bussed into rallies to applaud their great leader and isolated protests were suppressed.

Then, Ceaușescu made the mistake of staging a celebratory rally in the capital. A section of the crowd started booing and Ceaușescu’s look of shock and hurried exit from the stage was broadcast live on TV. Suddenly everyone knew that the dictator had lost control and, importantly, that everyone-else shared that knowledge.

The protests rapidly escalated, the army took the side of the people against the security services. Ceaușescu was overthrown within a day and executed, along with his wife, within four days.

What happened to Biden after his debate fiasco followed a similar path. For some time, many people had suspected that he was physically and mentally incapable of running for re-election and serving another four years. However, while this was suspected, it wasn’t obvious that everyone knew he was incapable. His team disgracefully denied it. In the right light and on the right day, he just about managed to get through it. Trump's attacks on ‘Sleepy Joe’ probably meant that the Democrats would refuse to believe his narrative on principle.

So an uneasy equilibrium kept Biden in the running until he made a complete mess of what he was saying on live television. At that point it became obvious to all that what had been denied had become undeniable. Biden was no longer up to it. Individual knowledge became common knowledge. Within days, it was all over.

A couple of weeks ago there was the curious incident of the attempt to shore up Keir Starmer which backfired. It seems that his staff, knowing that he had lost a lot of support, both in the country and in the party, decided not to admit it openly, but to say there was a plot to oust him. They must have thought that the ‘revelation’ would bring the party back on side.

Of course it had the opposite effect and the presumed plotter, Wes Streeting, denied his involvement. In his denial, he used some humorous references to the Traitors and so came out of it more popular than before.

And by then everyone knew that Keir was indeed in a weak position. What had been muttered before by his opponents was now confirmed through the clumsy actions of his own supporters.

It’s not surprising, because he is incapable of telling us what his overarching plan is or of following through on decisions he has made – ID cards, reducing personal independence payments and the winter fuel allowance, confusion over the budget...

He is going to be very lucky if he lasts much beyond the end of this year. Why? Because we now all know that pretty much everyone, including his own supporters, is in agreement that he’s in a very weak position. And when everyone knows and knows that every-one else knows, then action can more easily follow.

We’ve also seen this fable played out in the recent debacle over the Andrew formerly known as Prince. After the Emily Maitliss interview, no-one had any respect for him as a member of the royal family. He was just too puffed-up and ridiculous for words.

The Queen decided that the best course was to hide him away in the Royal Lodge and pay off Virginia Giuffre, an approach to the problem which worked until it no longer worked. And it no longer worked after Giuffre’s suicide and the publication of her exposée. Which meant that an alternative path had to be found.

This time it was to strip his various titles from him and reduce him to the ranks of a commoner. Not that we commoners were particularly anxious to welcome him as one of us. But we’ve all now seen underneath the flimflam of the titles and the highnesses and majesties – all of them are so insubstantial and meaningless that they can be removed with the stroke of a leaky royal fountain pen.

And so I suspect that the royal family will only be able to continue in a much reduced form and in fact will only continue, if at all, because we can’t really decide on what we want to replace them.

Of course, people often have an interest in preventing information from becoming common knowledge. However, their motivation isn’t always bad. Sometimes, people are trying to preserve a social equilibrium which they believe benefits everyone.

Many opponents of Charles Darwin, for example, were more concerned about the consequences of his theory of evolution becoming common knowledge than they were about whether he was right. If the theory were known to and accepted by the masses, what would happen to religion and so our generally accepted moral values? Would not society simply break down?

That though implies a level of understanding of what the theory is saying which I doubt is shared by most people. Most people seem, quite irrationally, to see evolution as having purpose behind it rather than the blind chance of mutation and natural selection.

We persuade ourselves that we were always somehow destined to be the master species. It is probably for this reason that there are still so many who believe in ‘spirituality’ as a defining human characteristic, one which supposedly separates us from other species.

Just as a small boy pointed out the portly figure wearing no clothes, so a growing group of people are now seeing our politicians in a different and very unfavourable light. After more than a century of a common view that democracy is the best system of government, we are now seeing it under attack in many different ways and places.

In other parts of the world such as poorly-developed countries and the present and former bastions of Communist thought, democracy was never popular.

But there is, even in the West, a disenchantment with established political systems. We now have a view, commonly held by the coming generations, that would prefer the rule of a strong leader – one willing to ignore normal democratic constraints. Populist figures are increasingly looked to as the way forward, from Trump to Farage, to Orban to Meloni.

The view that whatever its shortcomings, democracy was indisputably the best of the bad solutions available is increasingly being rejected on the ground that it is not working, that we need another model. The reason is that we all see the five-yearly fight for a parliamentary majority producing stasis rather than progress in solving our woes. The main parties are unwilling to address the post-covid structural problems we have as a nation in favour of presenting sticking plaster solutions.

And so, increasingly, extremist politicians are proposing simplistic solutions which can never work, but attract those unable to think for themselves. And all this, because faith in the established political order and mainstream politics is breaking down.

22nd November 2025

Paul Buckingham

	What we all know – Common knowledge

	Stephen Pinker has just brought out a new book. This one is based on the story of the emperor’s new clothes. The imperial ruler is parading completely naked, his passage watched in reverence by the crowd until a little boy shouts that he has got nothing on. At this point everyone erupts with laughter, and awe turns into ridicule. Before the boy cried out, everyone could see the emperor had nothing on. But those in authority had told them what they should be seeing and so they wondered if everyone else could see the same thing, or was it just them? They couldn’t know for certain what others knew. But then the boy called out and the state of knowledge of all the spectators changed. The emperor’s nakedness was now more than what a particular individual thought he knew. It was something everyone knew that everyone-else knew. And so the crowd’s reaction to the authority figure suddenly became quite different. A good example of this in real life was the fall of the dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu in December 1989. People may hate a dictator and assume that others feel the same way. But the behaviour of crowds or nations largely depends on their knowledge of what everyone-else thinks. While they remain uncertain about what side others are on, it is unlikely that anything will change. Nobody wants to put themselves unnecessarily at risk. Economic conditions in Romania were terrible; the security services and army were demoralised. Everyone suspected that the government had almost no popular support. People were being bussed into rallies to applaud their great leader and isolated protests were suppressed. Then, Ceaușescu made the mistake of staging a celebratory rally in the capital. A section of the crowd started booing and Ceaușescu’s look of shock and hurried exit from the stage was broadcast live on TV. Suddenly everyone knew that the dictator had lost control and, importantly, that everyone-else shared that knowledge. The protests rapidly escalated, the army took the side of the people against the security services. Ceaușescu was overthrown within a day and executed, along with his wife, within four days. What happened to Biden after his debate fiasco followed a similar path. For some time, many people had suspected that he was physically and mentally incapable of running for re-election and serving another four years. However, while this was suspected, it wasn’t obvious that everyone knew he was incapable. His team disgracefully denied it. In the right light and on the right day, he just about managed to get through it. Trump's attacks on ‘Sleepy Joe’ probably meant that the Democrats would refuse to believe his narrative on principle. So an uneasy equilibrium kept Biden in the running until he made a complete mess of what he was saying on live television. At that point it became obvious to all that what had been denied had become undeniable. Biden was no longer up to it. Individual knowledge became common knowledge. Within days, it was all over. A couple of weeks ago there was the curious incident of the attempt to shore up Keir Starmer which backfired. It seems that his staff, knowing that he had lost a lot of support, both in the country and in the party, decided not to admit it openly, but to say there was a plot to oust him. They must have thought that the ‘revelation’ would bring the party back on side. Of course it had the opposite effect and the presumed plotter, Wes Streeting, denied his involvement. In his denial, he used some humorous references to the Traitors and so came out of it more popular than before. And by then everyone knew that Keir was indeed in a weak position. What had been muttered before by his opponents was now confirmed through the clumsy actions of his own supporters. It’s not surprising, because he is incapable of telling us what his overarching plan is or of following through on decisions he has made – ID cards, reducing personal independence payments and the winter fuel allowance, confusion over the budget... He is going to be very lucky if he lasts much beyond the end of this year. Why? Because we now all know that pretty much everyone, including his own supporters, is in agreement that he’s in a very weak position. And when everyone knows and knows that every-one else knows, then action can more easily follow. We’ve also seen this fable played out in the recent debacle over the Andrew formerly known as Prince. After the Emily Maitliss interview, no-one had any respect for him as a member of the royal family. He was just too puffed-up and ridiculous for words. The Queen decided that the best course was to hide him away in the Royal Lodge and pay off Virginia Giuffre, an approach to the problem which worked until it no longer worked. And it no longer worked after Giuffre’s suicide and the publication of her exposée. Which meant that an alternative path had to be found. This time it was to strip his various titles from him and reduce him to the ranks of a commoner. Not that we commoners were particularly anxious to welcome him as one of us. But we’ve all now seen underneath the flimflam of the titles and the highnesses and majesties – all of them are so insubstantial and meaningless that they can be removed with the stroke of a leaky royal fountain pen. And so I suspect that the royal family will only be able to continue in a much reduced form and in fact will only continue, if at all, because we can’t really decide on what we want to replace them. Of course, people often have an interest in preventing information from becoming common knowledge. However, their motivation isn’t always bad. Sometimes, people are trying to preserve a social equilibrium which they believe benefits everyone. Many opponents of Charles Darwin, for example, were more concerned about the consequences of his theory of evolution becoming common knowledge than they were about whether he was right. If the theory were known to and accepted by the masses, what would happen to religion and so our generally accepted moral values? Would not society simply break down? That though implies a level of understanding of what the theory is saying which I doubt is shared by most people. Most people seem, quite irrationally, to see evolution as having purpose behind it rather than the blind chance of mutation and natural selection. We persuade ourselves that we were always somehow destined to be the master species. It is probably for this reason that there are still so many who believe in ‘spirituality’ as a defining human characteristic, one which supposedly separates us from other species. Just as a small boy pointed out the portly figure wearing no clothes, so a growing group of people are now seeing our politicians in a different and very unfavourable light. After more than a century of a common view that democracy is the best system of government, we are now seeing it under attack in many different ways and places. In other parts of the world such as poorly-developed countries and the present and former bastions of Communist thought, democracy was never popular. But there is, even in the West, a disenchantment with established political systems. We now have a view, commonly held by the coming generations, that would prefer the rule of a strong leader – one willing to ignore normal democratic constraints. Populist figures are increasingly looked to as the way forward, from Trump to Farage, to Orban to Meloni. The view that whatever its shortcomings, democracy was indisputably the best of the bad solutions available is increasingly being rejected on the ground that it is not working, that we need another model. The reason is that we all see the five-yearly fight for a parliamentary majority producing stasis rather than progress in solving our woes. The main parties are unwilling to address the post-covid structural problems we have as a nation in favour of presenting sticking plaster solutions. And so, increasingly, extremist politicians are proposing simplistic solutions which can never work, but attract those unable to think for themselves. And all this, because faith in the established political order and mainstream politics is breaking down. 22nd November 2025 Paul Buckingham
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