Why is hypocrisy so terrible?

I don’t really see the example you cite as being hypocrisy. To qualify as hypocrisy for me, there has to be an element of pretense; one is trying to appear to be something one is not. There is a famous quote from Samuel Johnson that expresses this well:

“Nothing is more unjust, however common, than to charge with hypocrisy him that expresses zeal for those virtues which he neglects to practice; since he may be sincerely convinced of the advantages of conquering his passions, without having yet obtained the victory, as a man may be confident of the advantages of a voyage, or a journey, without having courage or industry to undertake it, and may honestly recommend to others, those attempts which he neglects himself.”

@thorninmud Thank you for that, I learned something new today. I’ve always thought of hypocrisy as simply not practicing what one preaches. That quote is fabulous and more eloquently states the exact thought I was trying to convey in my question!

Great question @Mariah.

@Mariah: “Is a hypocrite really always a terrible thing to be?”

Is the alcoholic a hypocrite here? It appears that he is just offering some constructive criticism to his friend Joe. It might be tough for Joe to hear, and the easiest way that he can ignore those comments without fully investigating them would be to look at the source of those comments and determine that since the source is an alcoholic, the message/comment is crap.

As @thorninmud so eloquently stated above, the alcoholic is not really exhibiting hypocrisy here. It may be perceived hypocrisy by Joe who doesn’t want anyone to tell him what to do.

@tom_g I agree; I think for Joe to discount his friend’s advice, he is committing the ad hominem fallacy – discounting the argument based on the source’s faults, not the faults within the argument itself. I never knew before that this wasn’t a situation of true hypocrisy; definitely learned something today. Thanks you two.

Note: I believe this type of perceived hypocrisy is often a tool used in politics. The purpose is usually to ignore important issues. For example, if a certain advocate of policies to address anthropogenic climate change happens to fly in a jet, he’s a hypocrite and therefore we should ignore his message.

@Mariah – Yes! Definitely ad hominem in my opinion.

In a sense the alcoholic is in a good position to offer the advice. Once you become an alcoholic then it is difficult to beat the addiction. So the alcoholic is saying in effect, you don’t want to end up the way I did.

I would say that in order to be a hypocrite, the person offering the advice has to be capable of following it. Then the obvious retort is, if this is such good advice, why aren’t you following it?

@LostInParadise: “I would say that in order to be a hypocrite, the person offering the advice has to be capable of following it. Then the obvious retort is, if this is such good advice, why aren’t you following it?”

There could be any number of things that are different between his and Joe’s situation. It’s possible for him to provide advice that takes into consideration Joe’s situation and not his own. The advice needn’t apply to the alcoholic himself. It could be finances, age, mental health, etc. There could be many reasons why the alcoholic’s advice to Joe could turn out to be a completely lucid prescription for Joe’s recovery, yet still not apply to the alcoholic’s situation.

Which is probably what you’re saying now that I’ve looked at this again.

To be truly healthy in the psychic sense ones thoughts, words and actions need to be congruent.
This is the difference between a fraudulent personality and an authentic, genuine personality.
I have let go of two hypocritical friends this year.

Both always claimed to be ‘victims’ of others wrongdoings but failed to see their own hypocrisy.

The first was enraged and devastated that a boyfriend had taken another woman to lunch while they were officially broken up, yet she justified screwing around on him when she back in the relationship and refused to come clean with the boyfriend. Of course there were other issues with her I was waking up to, but, when she pulled this hypocritical justification to absolve herself from her own duplicitous behaviors I was unable to look away any longer.

The 2nd ‘friend’ was a self promoting and self righteous type that saw herself as the arch angel of the world, always done wrong by inspite of being such a ‘caring’ and generous person.

She was always making claims of her moral superiority and how she would always apologize IF she ever did anything wrong or harmful to another.

Hah!

Well…when I confronted her with some of her manipulative little games she flipped out and refused to take any responsibility and further attempted to manipulate me with just about every trick in the book.

Denial, guilt tripping, you name the game, she played it. haha

She picked the wrong person to play these games with and I immediately severed our relationship.

Actions always speak louder than words and true hypocrisy often comes from those that make the most moral noise about others yet fail to walk their own talk.

A picture may be worth a thousand words but, a hypocrite is worth a thousand false claims as to their integrity. lol

There’s a reason people say ‘opinions are like assholes, everyone has one’. And there’s a lot of wisdom in the Bible verse saying we should remove what’s in our own eye before we start commenting on what’s in someone else’s (loose translation there). Nothing makes a smoker want to smoke, a drinker want a drink, or a ‘sinner’ of any kind want their ‘sin’, more than a well-meaning ‘friend’ stating the unasked for obvious. Aside from the fact that no one really quits doing anything until they’ve decided it for themselves. Hypocrits aren’t terrible as much as they’re common .. and annoying. Psychopaths are terrible.

Hypocrites are the reason I stopped going to church. They’re all about fixing you when behind closed doors they’re more fucked up than you are.

@redfeather – I’m all for leaving the church. However, how does their “behind closed doors” activity affect the message they are providing during a church service? If the message is legit, shouldn’t the unrelated, private actions of the messenger be irrelevant?

It depends on what you’re being a hypocrite about, who you are, your status in society etc.

To give advise and not be hypocritical, one has to come clean before dispensing any, I see.

And the manner one dispenses it plays a pivotal part as well. Doing it in a hateful way, with harsh words and sneering…whether it’s genuine hypocrisy or not, it’s going to be terrible.

The guy’s not all that bad…....is he? ;¬}

Why is hypocrisy so terrible?

@the100thmonkey I don’t get it…..

Sweet holy moly, I think first you have to separate the advice from the person who is giving it. The advice, if sound and logical, is just that even if the person giving it never follows it themselves. If I give you advice to always securely clamp your project before you drill and wear eye protection, that is valid even if I think I am so skilled I never take the time to do it myself.

In your example of the person telling Joe he drank to much also admits to drinking too much himself, or they are both in AA thin it is not hypocrisy, because the other man admits he is no better then Joe. I he drinks like a fish and is a falling out drunk but tries to act as if he is not a lush but that Joe is because of his drinking, then IMO he is a hypocrite.

You may want to live green but there are times when you can’t go completely natural. Even those who want to be as green as possible have to leave a carbon footprint unless they are going to live as cavemen. That would not be hypocrisy but a survival paradox.

Hypocrisy in itself, might not be a good thing, or ever will be. If one does it they can at least admit to themselves that they don’t hold the same standard, they can at least be noble hypocrites.

Advice if it’s wise, from experience or a newly discovered truth or reason, that’s important even if it’s delivered from a less than perfect source. It’s do as I say and not as I’ve done/I do, it can save a person a lot of trouble.

@tom_g it’s bad when they’re judging me publicly and calling it “help” when they’re doing worse. Where do they get the nerve?

My old church is home to a very well known woman author and recently, a good friend’s boyfriend was secretly hooking up with this author’s underage granddaughter. They hushed it all up because they didn’t want to ruin the granddaughter(really her author grandmother’s) reputation. I got pregnant and they had a lesson about the wrongs of premarital sex and publicly made an example out of me. Yeah… Fuck that.

@redfeather Ouch…..been ostracized much lol…

To me, hypocrisy would be better illustrated when a person claims to be in favor of family values and says abstinence needs to be taught in school, then her daughter has a baby out of wedlock.

It seems wrong to voice an opinion about something and then turn around and do exactly what you say you are against.

@YARNLADY Thank you for your example. I can use that to illustrate my point better.

I do definitely understand that it’s irritating to listen to a hypocrite spew their hypocrisy, but people make mistakes and don’t follow their own “moral codes” to a T all the time. If somebody makes a mistake, do they lose the right to consider that action a mistake? Do people have to support all of their own actions?

Say a woman has a baby before she is financially secure enough to support it. She has to drop out of high school to raise the child as a single mother because the father disappears from the picture. Later, she promotes “family values” and abstinence because she doesn’t want other young girls to have to go through the hardships she did. Is she being hypocritical, and is it really so bad?

@redfeather – ouch. Good point. These sound like real shitbags.

In your example the first friend may not be an hypocrit. He could just state it’s wrong to keep going on that path [words coming from personal experience].

I don’t really know. Hypocrisy is a part of us either if we want to admit it or not. We all have some aspects of it in our lives some more hidden then others.

So a hypocrite to me is one who proscribes a behavior, but then says the proscription is not for them. Like a governor ranting and raving that a federal program should be shutdown, but applying for the money for their state at the same time. Or Medicare recipients who protest against health care reform while showing up at a town hall meeting in their Medicare-paid-for electric scooters.

Hypocrisy = double standards. To put it simply.

If anyone is interested, the formal name for Joe’s mistake is the tu quoque fallacy.

Based on personal experience,I believe hypocrisy is terrible because you have somebody telling you to do something or not do something that they don’t do themselves. They don’t practice what they preach and have the nerve to point out things to you that they have themselves.