You know what I find particularly intriguing about humans-
“Creativity?”, “Emotions?”, “Poetry?”- Don’t confuse me now!
Oh wait, I presume you could guess this one based on the title.
On one end, I enjoy Maya Sarabhai’s hypocrisy (Sarabhai vs Sarabhai fans unite in the comments section) whereas on the other, I just can’t wrap my hands around how the pandemic ‘selectively’ seems harmless during political rallies…
I know I am not a ‘big’ social media influencer, well agreed I am not even ‘a’ social media influencer but just imagine that I post a tweet or Insta post endorsing a claim/ belief/moral standard, then boom- one day when I am spotted with a head held high, wearing a terrific outfit, and am not running late(to those who are reading this and know my lazy self- the word that has been used is ‘imagine’) and get caught not practicing what I preach- people, this is what I call a nightmare!
And the reason because of which I developed this would be identified as vicarious learning by Bandura (a Canadian-American psychologist). I observed how trolls treated (I know too subtle for a word to be used in this context) celebrities whenever they indulged in hypocrisy and eventually ended up imagining that scenario featuring me.
To debug a misconception here, a change of opinion after receiving a new set of accurate information does not count as hypocrisy. In my opinion, that should be deemed as progress.
Now this would be incomplete if I didn’t serve you some psychological soup on the said theme.
The universal concept of hypocrisy is a special case of cognitive dissonance. See humans tend to seek balance and harmony, right? So cognitive dissonance is not something our mind is going to like because it is the mental conflict or discomfort one experiences when one has two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, values or any sort of emotional reactions. For example:
LMNO loves to buy from fast fashion brands and they are aware that is unsustainable, now this would lead to inconsistency and discomfort. So generally we follow one of the four methods which in a way, act as a defence mechanism(an unconscious way to protect oneself from anxiety-inducing thoughts): i) Altering- LMNO claims that they don’t buy clothes frequently, ii) Trivialising- LMNO suggests that there are other industries which cause more emissions, iii) Denying any of the cognition- LMNO ignores the evidence available that suggests that fast fashion is not sustainable or iv) Adding a new cognition- LMNO says that they compensate for this by supporting green projects.
We might exhibit hypocrisy when making moral judgements because of contextual influences. Here’s a silly example from childhood: You won’t judge your best friend for back-bitching or excluding one person from the group when sharing something new and exciting but you might judge somebody else (especially that person you and your best friends don’t get along with) for the same.
Now of course, hypocrisies/pretense can act as obstacles when the long-term goal is genuine action and betterment. So, a good start can be made by introspecting and observing our behaviour for some time.
Before we reach the end of this article, do you want to know something personal? That isn’t related to hypocrisy, as much it is to inconsistencies that I now think were just there to make my personal fable (another psych reference, oops) look more amusing, just kidding of course. (A word of caution- it might sound absolutely ridiculous to you but at times, all that was just a result of unhealthy self-scrutiny/overthinking)
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Oh, you curious fellow, you couldn’t resist, could you? Hehe I won’t bore you with the details but you see I used to pressurize myself that I ought to have consistency throughout myself, because umm I ought to(I know, weird!) Inconsistencies can sometimes be beautiful too.
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