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What's wrong with hypocrisy?
I've just noticed that a lot of people complain about hypocrisy as if it were the worst thing a person could do.
Now, it's defined as:
I can see many situations in which hypocrisy could produce good results. For instance, if you realize that you need to respond with a different standard to a different but similar situation, you can do that.
Hypocrisy also allows you to keep your image consistent as you reexamine your actual values. The thing is, if you changed your image as quickly as you began to doubt your current values, you would change too rapidly for people to be able to get an idea of what you were like, and they wouldn't trust you. In many cases, you have to display hypocritical traits in order to be trusted.
There's also the advantage that it allows you to acknowledge that the choices you tend to make are not the best ones, and thus encourage others to choose more wisely than yourself, if they are able to do so.
Finally, I believe that most people (including myself) are hypocritical about something, consciously or unconsciously. I haven't met any who I would say weren't, but there might be one out there. So, what's the point of condemning it? What exactly would be the advantage if people were never hypocritical about anything?
Thoughts?
Now, it's defined as:
hypocrisy, n.But seriously, what's wrong with it? I hear people railing against it all the time, but they never seem to explain themselves... they just expect me to agree that there's something wrong with it.
1: a feigning to be what one is not or to believe what one does not ; especially : the false assumption of an appearance of virtue or religion]
I can see many situations in which hypocrisy could produce good results. For instance, if you realize that you need to respond with a different standard to a different but similar situation, you can do that.
Hypocrisy also allows you to keep your image consistent as you reexamine your actual values. The thing is, if you changed your image as quickly as you began to doubt your current values, you would change too rapidly for people to be able to get an idea of what you were like, and they wouldn't trust you. In many cases, you have to display hypocritical traits in order to be trusted.
There's also the advantage that it allows you to acknowledge that the choices you tend to make are not the best ones, and thus encourage others to choose more wisely than yourself, if they are able to do so.
Finally, I believe that most people (including myself) are hypocritical about something, consciously or unconsciously. I haven't met any who I would say weren't, but there might be one out there. So, what's the point of condemning it? What exactly would be the advantage if people were never hypocritical about anything?
Thoughts?
Comments
The biggest problem with hypocrisy is that it enables and perpetuates extreme and ridiculous viewpoints by allowing them to seem normal.
If people were less hypocritical, there are several clear and obvious advantages. For one thing, people would be better informed about others, and that would likely lead to a more compassionate society.
Really, I think it's just that being real about your wants, needs, and passions is the fastest way to be a really cool, respected human being.
Someone who espouses X while simultaneously avoiding it for himself, and who is unable to hide this dissonance from others, is both incompetent and a liar.
Hypocrites are either unintelligent, willfully ignorant, or incompetent liars.
There's two other possibilities, especially for those that aren't found out - they can be evil, or have been placed in a really shitty situation.
"Hypocrisy is the state of promoting or trying to enforce standards, attitudes, lifestyles, virtues, beliefs, principles, etc., that one does not actually hold."
I think hypocrisy comes from a inability to consider your actions from another persons point of view. And that leads to holding everyone else to a standard other then yourself, because you don't see your actions the same as theirs. And we as humans tend not to like people who consider themselves above everyone else.