The value of Hypocrisy

Hypocrisy is defined as saying one thing but doing another, in which the thing that is done is worse than the thing being said. An example is a man professing to love all humanity in public but telling his little son in private to "stay away from those dirty niggas/chinks".

We generally regard hypocrisy as bad.

However, hypocrisy does serve a necessary function in society. Before I elaborate, let me pose a thought question - you are a parent of three young daughters. There is currently a pop singer who is extremely popular and your daughters worship her as an idol. You happen to find out from private sources that this pop singer has been to bed with more than a hundred men and loves to do drugs.

Would you rather the pop singer be honest about her lifestyle and promote it on TV, or to hide it and assume an air of innocence?

I'm pretty sure most parents would choose the latter.

The fact is that all of us exert some influence on the general moral standards around us. Our circle of influence may be big or small, strong or weak, depending on our position vis-a-vis others and our standing in society. Nevertheless the influence is there.

Now the effect of our influence is partly caused by what we say, and partly by what we do. Over an extended period of time, with people who know us well, I have no doubt that the "what we do" part has a stronger influence on their moral standards. However if the period of time is short and the acquaintenceship is not that deep, what we say would probably have a stronger influence, assuming we are half-decent in covering things up, which most people are.

The crux of the matter is that, say on the general moral scale most people behave at a 5, but talk at a 7 or 8. The "accepted general moral standards" of society would then be roughly at a 6, but since we all cut ourselves some slack quietly we still behave at a 5.

Say we behaved at a 5 and talked at a 5 as well. The accepted moral standard would then fall to 5, then we would actually behave at a 4. This would obviously be detrimental to society as a whole.

Now, some people may say that our dislike for hypocrisy, despite its social necessity, springs from a distaste of people who maintain hypocritical standards in public and succeed because of this. I do agree that this distaste is deserved. However I also feel that the majority of successful people in society succeed not because of their sterling moral character, but instead other elements such as charisma, looks, intelligence, etc. I am not maintaining that successful people tend to be bad, just that whether a person is successful or not has not much connection to whether he is good or bad.

When a person is successful, the chance to be selfish is increased. Rich people can spend more money on immoral acts, attractive people have more chances to cheat on their partners, powerful people have a greater capacity to bully others, smart people have more chances to cheat people in general. The resulted hypocrisy in covering up these acts is then not due to a lower moral character than the average person, merely due to a greater opportunity to be selfish.

So when we criticize such people for being hypocritical, we are in a way being hypocritical ourselves.