Hypocrisy and Verbal Contradictions

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

Most incidences where an individual is considered “hypocritical”, the perceived contradiction is actually derived from a verbal misinterpretation of context.
I can not think of an example of a situation where someone was “hypocritical” without this being a result of rhetorical contradiction.

For example, Joe says “I’m good today.” then several seconds later he says “I’m not doing good today.”
We could consider this a contradiction. However, we have actually just misinterpreted the context of what Joe was saying. He was actually trying to say “I feel good mentally, but I don’t feel good physically.” Either due to his lack of a vocabulary, or just coincidence, he did not make a point of noting the difference between his two statements.

This “misinterpretation of context” is present (although not to as blunt of an extent as noted in the example above) in all instances of “hypocrisy”.

There really is no such thing as hypocrisy - and all instances of hypocrisy are explained by variances in mood/state of mind of the hypocrite OR a misinterpretation of context.

Often times, when a person determines another individual to be a hypocrite, it is an intentional misinterpretation for the purpose of ego-justification. In a sense, the individual labeling others as hypocrites will intentionally search for rhetorical contradictions in others to justify their superiority over them by accusing them of hypocrisy.

We often do this subconsciously without realizing it. Can any of you give me an incidence of “hypocrisy” that was not a mere misinterpretation of context.

2

I used to be surrounded by people who believed themselves to be “open-minded”, loving and considerate of the needs of others.
As it turned out, they were just as prejudiced as anyone else… with so-called open-mindedness etc actually being conditional upon where they judge that persons morality to be, whether they were “on-track” and/or “moving-forward”. They would be an example you seek.

Hypocrisy in this way is to do with people saying/acting/believing one thing while unconciously or conciously placing conditions upon that thing.

One hiphop group said; “Hypocrisy is the greatest luxury, raise the double standard.”

3

But from their own perspective, they were being accurate in calling themselves “open-minded” in whatever context they were using it. I would bet that they had some incidence in their memory when others were close-minded and it seemed obvious to them - so they use this as a justification for their own sense of superiority.
But, perhaps due to the nature of “close-mindedness”, they were unable to realize incidences when they, themselves, were being close minded.

So there is a continuity issue in their perception of themselves - but does this truly constitute hypocrisy? Like I said, t ultimately boils down to subjectivity and context.
From their definition of what “open-minded” is, they consider themselves to fit that definition.
A major problem in finding oneself to be “open-minded” is that you can’t efficiently compare open-mindedness to other individuals (unless you can read minds). Essentially,the attribute of “open-mindedness” is a self-proclaimed one that has no feasible way of measurement. Any attempt to find evidence that disproves their self-proclaimed attribute of “open-mindedness” is bound to fall victim to selective interpretation - that is, you look only for evidence which supports your own theory, and an unavoidable bias is placed on your conclusions.
So when “disproving” the open-mindedness of another, you essentially look for any action/mannerism/expression in them which verifies your theory, and subconsciously block out any evidence which contradicts your theory. This is something that everyone does.
We basically look for the first thing that we can consider a “negative quality” in somebody who we have a negative predisposition with.
The hidden variable at hand is whether or not we actually want to like the person. Other variables play into it to, such as our current mood, and how accurate our perception of others is.

It is a tricky thing to play the “finger pointing game” when it comes to hypocrisy and close-mindedness, because the very act of participating makes us just as guilty as those we criticize. Therefore, I find it absurd that anyone can use “hypocrisy” as a serious accusation against somebody - since we are all guilty of hypocrisy within our unconscious minds.

4

It seems like you are rationalizing away the meaning of hypocrisy. There are certainly acts that can be called more hypocritical than others.

A variance in mood or state of mind may be an explaination for hypocrisy, but the term still applies. If someone eats meat each day, but is overcome with a sudden deep compassion towards animals, and begins pointing fingers at everyone because they eat meat, that’s hypocritical.

A misinterpretation of context can lead to a misuse of the term. A smoking doktor saying to his patient, smoking is bad for you, isn’t hypocrisy. Nor is a campaigning politican hypocritical because he tells things he doesn’t really believe or act on.

5

But wasn’t the hypocrite in this situation actually trying to say “All of you people who eat meat should be ashamed of eating meat. I eat meat, and this is wrong, but it is slightly less wrong than your situation because I know its wrong and feel shame after eating it.”
Or something along the lines of that.
However, it is much easier and simple (and given the context that the pseudo-vegetarian was on a verbal offensive) to say “Don’t eat meat, its wrong!” and to point his finger.

The “smoking doctor” scenario seems to be a commonly used analogy when discussing what hypocrisy is, and I’d agree with you that it is not technically hypocritical - perhaps ironic, but not hypocritical.

6

a politician claiming to have the needs of the people in mind (the promise to work for the benefit of those needs)in the media, while robbing the people in private at the same time.

someone who says abortions should be illegal because only god gets to say who lives and dies yet at the same time supports the death penalty based on ungodly laws.

7

When one acts in a way that benefit oneself but disapprove of others, or does not permit others acting similarly, that’s hypocrisy.
The smoking doctor’s habit does not benefit him, and knowing that he cannot tell others otherwise.

8

I don’t know what he was trying to say, I just made up the example. Point is that mood/state of mind is just an explaination, and that doesn’t mean you can’t use the word anymore. Hypocrisy has a lot to do with consistency, so it’d be odd to say it’s not hypocrisy because he’s not being consistent, eg change in mood/state of mind.

In case of the doctor, politician, lawyer,… saying things they don’t act on personally, I wouldn’t call it hypocrisy because they are saying these in the context of their job. The are internally consistent in the roles they have to play at the moment.

This is a good example of being inconsistent and hypocritical :

9

  1. The greatest hypocrisy is to deny being a hypocrite. Truth is, we all are in some way or another, so that kind of denial really bugs me.

  2. Piling rules and ‘truth’ upon people and calling it freedom or ‘love’ is hypocrisy.

These are the 2 most signifant experiences of hypocrisy I have had.

10

On a very, very general level this can be somewhat true, we all fool ourselves to some extent. But there are definately degrees in hypocrisy, some people just aren’t as aware of their own tendencies towards self-denial. And people claiming to be absolutly above any form of hypocrisy, can be some of the worst hypocrites, that’s true.

11

Every conscious thought is an act of fooling ourselves.
Our thoughts always have the tendency to reflect our current emotional state.

Realizing this has no practical value - other than locking yourself in cognitive dissonance.
Denying this is even worse, because then you have to try and create new artificial values to negate the truth.

The only plausible solution is to accept the fallacious nature of our minds.
The sole purpose of our unconscious mind is to hide truths because:
A) We can not consciously acknowledge these truths without damaging our ego
B) These truths have no apparent application in the conscious mind. Therefore, in order to avoid flooding our conscious mind with useless information, the “useless” information is stored in the unconscious mind.

It is actually possible to “open up” our consciousness to our unconscious mind - but from there on, any attempt to alter/remove/revamp an unconscious construct will result in cognitive dissonance.
A lot of artists illustrate their mistake of “opening up the gateway to the shadow” and the infinite amount of cognitive dissonance that came with it, essentially locking them in a prison within their own minds.

Because of this, it is impossible to take a proactive stance for determining “righteousness” and morality - our concept of morality can only efficiently emerge through our mitigation and endurance of suffering.
Hence, the origin of all morality is our unconscious act of compensating for personal inferiorities.

We are all hypocrites, but only those who aren’t good at hiding it are labeled as hypocrites.

12

Like I said, in a very general way this is true. But framing it in this absolute sense doesn’t do all that much to further understanding. There are degrees in fooling ourselves and acting hypocritical. The word has his uses. Saying everyone is hypocritical is not saying very much.

I’m pretty sure I used to fool myself a lot more when I was younger. And then after i started to realise this, I tried to divest myself of all hypocrisy to the point that getting out of bed seemed liked a lie. And I was still a hypocrite. Not I’m starting to learn how to willingly lie to myself with some style :mrgreen: .

Realizing it can have practical value. I think it’s a matter of looking for other ways to channel it, no taking one-self to seriously, working some humour into ones charachter… and at the same time not overdoing it. It’s a balancing act, and you can get better at it.

If someone is labeled a hypocrite, chances are he’s being hypocritical.

It’s not my intention to bring Nietzsche into this discussion, again, but it does remind me of a passage from BGE :

"31. In our youthful years we still venerate and despise without the art of NUANCE, which is the best gain of life, and we have rightly to do hard penance for having fallen upon men and things with Yea and Nay. Everything is so arranged that the worst of all tastes, THE TASTE FOR THE UNCONDITIONAL, is cruelly befooled and abused, until a man learns to introduce a little art into his sentiments, and prefers to try conclusions with the artificial, as do the real artists of life. The angry and reverent spirit peculiar to youth appears to allow itself no peace, until it has suitably falsified men and things, to be able to vent its passion upon them: youth in itself even, is something falsifying and deceptive. Later on, when the young soul, tortured by continual disillusions, finally turns suspiciously against itself–still ardent and savage even in its suspicion and remorse of conscience: how it upbraids itself, how impatiently it tears itself, how it revenges itself for its long self-blinding, as though it had been a voluntary blindness! In this transition one punishes oneself by distrust of one’s sentiments; one tortures one’s enthusiasm with doubt, one feels even the good conscience to be a danger, as if it were the self-concealment and lassitude of a more refined uprightness; and above all, one espouses upon principle the cause AGAINST “youth.”–A decade later, and one comprehends that all this was also still–youth! "

13

I think a major goal that Nietzsche had in his writings was finding a way to cope with this cognitive dissonance - by finding a logical way to accept the fact that we are evil, and not only are we “evil”, but it is okay that we are evil.

His way of doing this was denouncing the notions of “Good and Evil” altogether - saying that everyone is subject to a very similar human condition - and that those who view others as “evil” only do so to compensate for their lack of confidence (i.e. Slave morality).

Then, after Nietzsche illustrated this, he realized that not only did Slave Morality have its short-comings, but Master Morality did as well.
Somewhere in BGE (I can’t remember the exact passage), Nietzsche goes on to say that he dislikes both Master and Slave Morality, but he dislikes Slave Morality more.
He is essentially saying “There is no ‘right answer’, so we will just have to come to terms with this and make-do with who we were originally, which is, pleasure-seeking animals who are masters of our own fate.”

By the way, in that passage you quoted, Nietzsche is (as always) way ahead of his time. He is illustrating a lot of main principle’s of Jungian philosophy and the development/self-destruction of the ego. Jung was a fan of Nietzsche - maybe he took a lot more pointers from Nietzsche than he gave him credit for, eh? :smiley: