The joys of hypocrisy

Yeah so this whole ‘writing a new article once a week’ intention has lasted about as long as I expected it to. One week. But my new years resolution was to worry less, so instead of my usual approach (stressing, procrastinating to avoid the stress, stressing proportionally more) I present to you the third instalment of the newly renovated Plaunawack Chronicles!

I’ve decided to try and keep these things shorter. The last time I tried this was with the Palunawack Tours and it did not go very well. The January edition was a series of dot-points. The December edition took so long to type up that I actually had to finish it after arriving back in Australia, and if printed, could serve as a makeshift murder weapon.

Hell, just look at this post. I’m not even out of the introduction yet and it’s already 3 paragraphs long.

So what’s short, entertaining, thought-provoking and popular? Buggered if I know, so you get a post about hypocrisy.

Late last week I posted an article on facebook (as is my wont. Yes that’s a real word) about the value of tolerance and how fighting everybattle can work against you. A great article and I thoroughly recommend it.

I only got one comment (which surprised me given I’d had a go at atheists to try and spice things up a little) from Snarkpuppy, one of my many intelligent friends I rely on to keep my opinions from going right off the deep end. She pointed out that during my last crack at this blog in 2010, I had posted a long rant against tolerance. Would I care to explain this flagrant hypocrisy?

Would I care to explain something. About ethics. Consider the floodgates opened people.

Oh crap, I’m meant to be keeping these short. This is going to be tough.

Hypocrisy

Along with just about everyone, I find hypocrites extremely annoying. There’s nothing worse than getting a lecture from someone who does the exact thing they’re lecturing you about – I’m sure we’ve all had a boss who’s absolutely useless but sees fit to explain to you all his managerial awesomeness. Or a teacher who’d go on about ‘working hard to achieve your potential’ then bugger off to chain-smoke in his car during recess.

And while ultra-conservativepoliticians getting busted with gay prostitutes makes my day every time, the rather bleak reality is that hypocrites use their stated beliefs to try and control other people’s behaviour, even when they don’t control their own. Sometimes that’s annoying, as with the teacher, sometimes it’s detrimental to your work, as with the boss, but sometimes it’s a serious threat to your happiness or even freedom.

Take the ultra-conservative politician. Politicians want to tell you what you can and cannot do. That’s the job. So if anyone with a slightly radical agenda gets in and builds influence, that can be a serious problem. Sarah Palin would, without a second of hesitation, criminalise pornography, violent video games and homosexuality if she could.

On the other hand, I’ve met plenty of uber-lefties who would like nothing more than to declare anarchy and the end of all government tomorrow. Self-determination for all! Also, death and unrestrained gang warfare!

Extreme beliefs are bad enough, but when it turns out that the people promoting them and wanting to make you follow them don’t even follow those ideas themselves, well that’s just bullshit. Apart from anything else it shows how unrealistic those beliefs are, and why it would be so ridiculous to expect anyone to follow them.

Or would it?

The controversial twist. (gasp)

But what if they’re right? Let’s leave aside the extreme beliefs for a second and go back to the teacher. The man (for the same of using a pronoun) is clearly doesn’t live up to his own advice.

But so what? Does that make his advice incorrect? Nope. You do need to work hard to achieve your potential. In fact, the less hard you work, the less you will achieve. As advice goes, that’s pretty damn solid. Is it any less solid just because the teacher can’t live up to it?

Same thing goes with the politicians. The ultra-conservative wants to ban prostitution, but uses them himself. Does that have any affect on the argument itself? He can’t live up to the standard he sets, but that just makes him flawed.

The uber-lefty on the other hand wants to end government control, even while directly benefiting from that government and the rights it defends. So what? How else can you create change without functioning in the system as it stands?

What I’m suggesting here is pretty simple: a hypocrite can still have a point. An individual’s personal conduct has no direct relevance on their ideas, provided those ideas are good.

That’s a pretty big ‘provided’, but the point stands; idea stand or fall on their own merits. Who introduces them (and what they do in public toilets) really shouldn’t matter.