Recently, I notice a trend or fashion in the mainstream media to assert that the world out there is "eager to learn from us", "emulate us" or "see us as a role model" for this and that.

It is psychologically not very healthy. It suggests the existence of a collectively sick elite segment of society whose desire for recognition has become dangerously obsessive and pathologically narcissistic. If we are really good, others would certain know about it and there is no need for us to blow our own trumpet almost every day.

It seems that our elite still cannot comprehend that it is a convention for foreign governments, diplomats and businessmen to use only positive language publicly to deal with each other, even though they may have negative opinion of us privately.

We may be deluding ourselves if we accept diplomatic expressions as affirmation of realities.

Since honesty is discouraged in Malaysia, it may also be a situation where everyone is praising the emperor's new clothes when the emperor is actually walking naked in the street.