My Take | What Prince Harry, Humpty Dumpty and Confucius say about the age we live in
- The West may learn from the periods of Spring and Autumn and the Warring States, which were China’s ‘postmodern’ age and to which the ancient sage provided the answer
“If names are not correct, one cannot speak smoothly and reasonably, and if one cannot speak smoothly and reasonably, affairs cannot be managed successfully.” Zhu Xi, neo-Confucian philosopher
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Something Prince Harry said reminds me of Humpty Dumpty. For sure, the prince is far more handsome than that anthropomorphic egg. But their arrogance and self-certainty in their own truths when challenged by critics, whether it be Alice or a British journalist-cum-interviewer, set me off into a postmodern nightmare.
The accuracy of some of his accounts in his new autobiography, Spare, has been questioned. When asked about it, Harry said: “There’s just as much truth in what I remember and how I remember it as there is in so-called objective facts.”
“So-called”? Love that! It sounds a bit like that most famous of quotes from Through the Looking Glass, as the infamous egg said: “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”
To be sure, one said truth is whatever he remembers it to be. The other said a word means what he says it means. But at a deep level, they amount to the same thing: my words are always true; therefore, my truth – which must be expressed in words – is whatever I remember it to be or say it is.