So from time to time we all need to take a moment and wax philosophical. To do so need not always rest on the largest topics at hand, but the more mundane and accessible are just as worthy though less profound of consideration. So I’ll indulge a little of my liberty and rewind to some thoughts on things that have been pestering me a bit lately.

This word hypocrisy, for instance, has been bandied about a lot lately. It is of course a handy word, just pick it up and club somebody over the head with it. It should be well within reach of everyone’s arsenal, but I confess, it seems to be losing a little of its thump of late. And, proving that I wander around in my mind too much, I wondered why?

Now, I could bring up plenty of names to provide examples of who is and who isn’t, and while that can be fun, if you’ll pardon me, I think I’ll side step that strategy and simply deal with hypocrisy in the abstract.

Let’s see the dictionary definition places much emphasis on “pretense.” That’s not really much help. Who doesn’t pretend? I suppose then the element of intent to deceive must be part of the meaning.
So some guy pretends to be something he is not and deceives others into believing he is other than he is--hmm putting forth an image of oneself that isn’t entirely true as an absolute under all circumstances. Well who doesn’t do that? Who doesn’t adjust one’s behavior depending upon context--and if so, doesn’t that entail an element of pretense? And if you don’t put forth a public self, could you please start doing so. Nothing personal, but I really don’t need to be exposed to every iota of what you think your absolute self is--that’s kind of unseemly.

Besides who has the capacity to be absolute. Let alone knowingly. Or, who is never not absolute?

Okay, enough of that. We all know what hypocrisy means. Its some guy that believes and states moral beliefs in public and engages in behavior counter to his belief. Well no wonder “hypocrisy” is so easily bandied about. You can call anyone a hypocrite (Jonah Goldberg of National Review has often well stated this point).

I mean who believes that lying is a good thing? Yet, who hasn’t lied? But to not be a hypocrite, a liar would have to disavow the idea that lying is bad. And then, if such a person were to call someone who advanced the idea that sex out of wedlock was bad--as said person was found to have engaged in sex out of wedlock--a hypocrite, well then such a person would be calling his own self a hypocrite, unless of course that person believed, that held, the idea and abided by the idea, that all morality led to hypocrisy, and therefore never engaged in moral judgments, which would mean that person wouldn’t utter the word hypocrite, unless to say the word was meaningless.

What in the world am I to do with such a word. What could be more useless than such a word. It’s not even useful as a club. Let’s just throw it in the trash bin and be done with it

*****
So I read about this guy, a public figure, who was married and he had an affair. “Who hasn’t,” you say. True (I mean read about a public figure having an affair). But my question is whether the guy is a hypocrite or no? Seems simple enough, the guy took an oath to honor and cherish and so forth, and well, it doesn’t seem very honorable of oath-holding to have an affair.

So “yes” says an acquaintance friend of mine.

But another asks, “did he preach Family Values?”

“What?” I ask.

“It makes a difference,” this acquaintance says, “because to be a hypocrite he has to believe and publicly state ‘Family Values‘.”

“Do tell,” I say.

So to be a hypocrite someone has to be foolish enough to believe and state one’s morality publicly. Who would be crazy enough to do that?

*****
Some people I’ve heard are audacious enough to believe that through self discipline, commitment and other acts of the will they can better themselves. Or at least believe they are bettering themselves. Crazy ol’ Benjamin Franklin discussed at length in his autobiography, his list, get this, his list of virtues for just that purpose.

Here’s the list for those curious enough:

1) Temperance--Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.

2) Silence--Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.

3) Order--Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.

4) Resolution--Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.

5) Frugality--Make no expense but to do good or yourself; that is waste nothing.

6) Industry--Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.

7) Sincerity--Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly; and if you speak, speak accordingly.

8) Justice --Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are only your duty.

9) Moderation--Avoid extremes; forebear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.

10) Cleanliness--Tolerate no unseemliness in body, clothes, or habitation.

12) Tranquility-- Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.

12) Chastity…..

13) Humility-- Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

What a strange, little, quaint list, or notion if you will. Regulating one’s behavior to better oneself? And such a list, quite impossible for anyone to live up to, why attempt something so futile? Even Franklin admits that living up to such a list was nigh impossible. He made a matrix with boxes, and on one axis were the days of the week, and on the other were the virtues. Whenever he found himself at crosses with his endeavor he marked a little black mark in the matrix. Yet, he says, that by practice and effort he made great inroads to bettering himself as he himself proposed to do. Note: I copied the list as I found it in my copy of The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. The anomalies with 12 and the ellipsis are his and do invite some conjecture, perhaps more than a little.

Needless to say my progressive left-wing post-modern friend found the list to be ludicrous, and concluded just such lists, “lead to societal and cultural dysfunction.”

*****

Naturally I asked, or rather what was I thinking, “why?”

To which he rejoined, “it leads an individual away from authenticity. It’s artificial, not real, its unnatural.”

This I admit I found curious, and still not grasping wholly my situation, I said, “its unnatural to want to better oneself, its not real, but rather artificial?”

I was certain that he was trying to get at something else, and when I mentioned the nigh endless time, energy, money spent on education, self help books, seminars and on and on and on. Well, he was a bit impatient with the whole thing.

“No,” he shouted, “of course people try to better themselves, but in real ways, socially conscious ways…being tolerant, green, diversity, social justice, peace, love, loving mother earth, recycling…” he started pacing, and I kind of drifted off, and there I was again being pestered by that word, hypocrite.

*****

And of a sudden I snapped too when he said, “its people like that talking about Jesus, chastity, family values and stuff like that which screw everything up. That’s why guys commit adultery. That’s why family values guys are hypocrites, because they’re not real.”

“And guys that commit adultery, but don’t believe in Family Values? They’re not hypocrites as you say, but do you think they feel guilt?”

“No,” he said, and then pausing, “some do I suppose, but that’s because of the culture making them uptight, planting guilt in their brains with all that ‘Christian Family Value stuff,’ it’s not real, it’s not natural.”

“So they’re victims of society because society makes them feel guilty about reality, doesn’t allow them to feel good about being natural.”

“That’s right,” he said, and that’s why men will be liberated by feminism.”

Swell I thought, and then I had an epiphany. I understood why a guy who has said he believes in Family Values and has an affair is relentlessly called hypocrite by progressive left wing post-modernists no matter how much contrition he may express.

And why is that you ask?

Elementary my dear Watson. To call someone a hypocrite that doesn’t speak about Family Values is then to say Family Values. And for a progressive that is a sin. Because traditional values built upon self discipline, personal virtue, individual responsibility, is the cause of social and personal dysfunction, or so we are told, and is the consequence of traditional morality, particularly a morality based upon free-will and free-will’s discovery of virtue.

Which is to say that when left wing progressives use the word hypocrite as applied to the individual who has fallen, they do not mean he has fallen against his higher meaning, against personal- or social virtue or both, but rather he has sinned against the zeitgeist of post-modernism. The individual has not allowed himself to be made into an object used to promote, propagandize, left-wing progressive secularism. The individual hasn’t admitted to being helpless, but to the contrary said individual asserts still his personal responsibility, and for such transgression that individual is not so much a hypocrite, but is rather, a traitor.

To what you ask?

To progress--of course.

*****

I fear I still haven’t found an acceptable usage for hypocrite, instead at best, I’ve discovered obscurantist and clubbing practices. Still, I think, the word does have its own proper use and meaning and maybe I’ll find it later.