How do you prevent hypocrisy?

I normally decide that when I do it, it's less extreme or just different, because it probably is. If I can't figure out why it's okay for me to do it, I decide to use the other person's problem to learn to make myself better, and I stop doing it.

i think after a time we all realize that we are hypocritical about some things. it seems that way in reference to children, the do as i say not as i do way. but i think we improve how we act or think and become less so over time! or i hope so....

I allow myself to be a hypocrite - I try not to be but I don't beat myself up about it, everyone does it sometimes.

brood

I'm sure I do all of the first four at various times.

I avoid making absolute "should/should not' statements that don't allow for exceptions. For almost everything, there is an exceptional circumstance. I also feel that it is okay to make mistakes. Just because I think it's generally not a good idea to lose my patience, It's so hard-wired that it is impossible not to. There are times when certain behaviors are totally understandable, despite the fact that they are behaviors that should generally be avoided. That's not hypocritical, it's human.

I might have to justify it somehow. But most likely I notice a bad habit, I stop the bad habit or make it so it isn't bad after all. You know, make a joke out of it.

Good question...

In order (usually):

Change how I act
Change my opinion
Decide it's different.

Anytime I'm the victim of something I don't care for, I consider it karma, and resolve to weed out similar behavior in myself even if it's already only 10% of what I saw in someone else.

I put myself to higher standards than I put others to. That's not to say though that others would necesarily find my standards high by their reckoning. I won't weed out being late in myself if it doesn't bother me that others do so, so a person who values timeliness would still find me lacking on that count.

I am never a hypocrite. I have my own morality and values therefore what I do, is OK.

If I say I'm going to do something. I usually do it. I'm not perfect,. and politicians are far from perfect.. When they mess up it's all over the news, If I mess up, it's my own fault, but at least I'm not on the nightly news.

Create a society where telling the athentic truth is safe and good. Try telling the truth they need to hear to your employer and see what happens. Of course, Truth could be relative.

Tell me about it. I'm a consultant contractor. It's a fine line when your client isn't playing with a full deck, infringes on your business with his delusions, and yet your job is to promote his business interests.

> Tell me about it. I'm a consultant contractor. It's a fine line when
> your client isn't playing with a full deck, infringes on your business
> with his delusions, and yet your job is to promote his business interests.

Yeah. I was thinking the other day how most of our unfulfilled life dreams are due to having to chase the dollar. Maybe years ago, like 20,000 years, they didn't have some things that make us safe and maybe there was strife between clans / tribes (depending on how far apart they were so not competing for the same resources) but how freeing that must have felt. I've had people say that women were trashed and I said that "No, a lot of women in the indian tribes were treated as equals and valued". Aahhh... maybe those were the days. Boomarang affect. Wanting that which seems heavenly until you get it. Sigh.

The only reason that is true is that we can ascribe monetary value to everything, we do diverse things for money, we acquire diverse things with money. The quantity of doing and acquiring probably isn't much different.

What I like about living in nature is that necessity of nature becomes the only clock. Everything is optional except beating the sunset, rain, or frost for vital activities, and that which is vital is readily apparent, not the amorphous result of arbitrary business decision. The rest is timelessness.

I take it you haven't lived in a truly rural area, or you wouldn't have to speculate as much about how freeing life was 20,000 years ago. It's still hard, but at least free of man-made BS.

The tribes were all different. For instance some honor transgendered people while others disdain them. I think you can be certain that the gender distinction between roles was greater, but that's not neccessarily a bad thing. We live in a ton of non-gender contextual class distinctions now that we don't even take notice of, probably far more than existed in any native tribe, in spite of gender distinctions.

I've spent time with shamans and an Alaskan tribe and have a great appreciation of their ways.

Well, you may be able to prevent hypocrisy on an individual level, but the truth is the very fabric of our society is woven from hypocrisy. Our social order is based on the assumption that the government can morally do things which would be immoral for any other group or individual to do.

No wonder you favor anarchy.

I don't believe a government should do things an individual could not do, nor that by nature a government must.

Could you give me some examples by which you derive this claim?

I for instance don't believe a government has more right to execute a person than an individual does, which is to say it doesn't.

I do however believe that a government has the benefit over individual actions of 'concensus'. The decision to lock up a person is the 'same decision' a majority of individuals would make if they had that power individually. Nothing hypocritical there.

> Could you give me some examples by which you derive this claim?
>

A group calling itself "government" can morally threaten an individual with loss of property and liberty if they don't hand over money to the government. This is legal and moral and is called "taxation". If another group, calling itself, say "the Mafia" does the same thing, it is illegal and immoral and is called "extortion".

Ok, at least I see where you are coming from now.

I can sue a person who doesn't pay their bill for the products or services they consumed.
The only thing different with the government is that everyone shares aggregate responsibility for payment and choice of these services.

What you seem to have an issue with is not so much hypocrisy between how individuals and collectivizations operate, but your inclusion in such collectives through no choice of your own.

Typical of my ideas is increasing the size of native reservations and letting anyone with similar beliefs become a native, and turning cities and communities into various types of communes. That's at least offers more choice of which collective you are a member of. Some might totally be anarchist. Some could pay federal taxes, others wouldn't. If you were a member of a rogue community (non federally taxed), interstate highways would be toll roads for you. There would be no disastor relief, etc etc, and probably any non-rogue community would treat you with less trust than as a tourist from the Congo or Georgia.

You wouldn't actually prefer to live in a society which doesn't tax, would you? In spite of the taxes for space programs, schools, highways, and such, almost every American lives better (materially) than any citizen of any non taxing region/society.

I'm sure I've mentioned by now my idea of individually distributing to budgets on one's tax return, or having an war-protestor alternate to H&R Block which collects the same taxes, but distributes them directly in current proportion to gov't departments while bypassing the defense budget.

>| I can sue a person who doesn't pay their bill for the products or services they consumed.

Sure, but this is just employing the government's power of extortion in your behalf. Don't get me wrong here, you have a right to money you are legitimately owed, surely.

Let's take another look at the concept of imprisonment. Government is the only entity in our society who has this authority. If anyone else tries imprisoning someone, they would be considered guilty of kidnapping and false imprisonment. Where does the government get this authority from? A decision of the majority? Why does the majority have the right to make this decision? Are we delegating that authority to government? We can't delegate an authority we don't have to begin with. If we do delegate authority we have, since when does that preclude us from exercising that authority ourselves in the future?

">| I can sue a person who doesn't pay their bill for the products or services they consumed.
Sure, but this is just employing the government's power of extortion in your behalf. Don't get me wrong here, you have a right to money you are legitimately owed, surely. "

It could be said that without that government though that I have right to beat them up or extract appropriate payment.

We don't seem to be seeing this from the same perspective yet.

The majority is an extension of the individual. No specific individual can be trusted to wield this power, but it is none-the-less the power we would extend to anyone who was a flawless representative of the collective majority view.
Parents are trusted to ground their children appropriately.
Police are examples of this theoretical flawless member of society because they supposedly represent the collective view free from distinct abberations which any other individual might have. {Unfortunately in practice they too do in fact have their distinct abberations.}

In an old west frontier town people did have that individual authority, as still theoretically incarnate in the form of a citizen's arrest.

In part it's also simply a practical issue. No one I know wishes to make a citizen's arrest of someone holding up a liquor store.

North Carolina is the only U.S. state which does not provide for citizens arrests.

Although I'm sure it's popularly perceived that a citizen's arrest is a delegation of collective rights to an individual, I would imagine that centuries or millenia ago it was the other way around, that a sheriff would assist when a citizen or citizens was/were incapable of handling a criminal on their own.

Arrests are a delegation of our own authority.

More significant than what individual rights are extended to our government, are what protections are extended to the government which are not extended to individuals. Arrest is such a case. A citizen is liable for any damages caused in an arrest, but the police are not. The logic is nearly reasonable enough though. If the government represents our collective body, wouldn't 'we' prefer to be immune from damages?

It was once suggested to me by many that I sue the city for a bicycle accident caused by an open grate where none would expect such just around a curb, which could have easily been made bike-safe. I didn't however. I see government as a collective extension of ourselves, and suing the government as a counter-productive precedent towards that relationship. When one sues the city you are suing your tax paying neighbors. On the other hand, perhaps one could see it as socialized disastor relief or other insurance.

A citizen can only individually enforce the laws of society, not make them up. You can't do a citizens arrest for someone wearing shoes of two colors, no matter how much this personally offends you.

Laws of conduct are social things. A citizens arrest already implies at least two people, and the standards of society. In theory, anything you do which does not affect society is your own business.

..So yeah, there is a right society has which individuals do not, and that is to create the laws of society.

Um, I had missed the other root of your position:
"A group calling itself "government" can morally threaten an individual with loss of property and liberty if they don't hand over money to the government. This is legal and moral and is called "taxation". If another group, calling itself, say "the Mafia" does the same thing, it is illegal and immoral and is called "extortion". "

The thing is, a group calling itself the Mafia is some outside force. In theory at least, some group calling itself 'the government' is 'we the people' - big difference.

Besides any distinction this makes to your philosphical argument about extension of individual rights, your statement suggests that the heart of the matter is really that you don't feel the government is an extension of your own beliefs and powers, and is indeed some external force like the Mafia.

That's the unfortunate part about the tyranny of the majority. No matter where you went, no matter how closely the collective you found fit your own beliefs, that will always be the case to some extent unless you live alone in the wilderness. It's the nature of the system which no society has found a better alternative to.

It could be much worse though. At least here we try molding societal government to the current common denominator view. Compare this to a religious cult which strives instead to mold the individuals themselves to an arbitrary societal government.

> It could be said that without that government though that I have right to beat them up or extract
> appropriate payment.

If you are legitimately owed something, why don't you have the right to extract appropriate payment? (with or without government)

> Arrests are a delegation of our own authority.

Sure, but that authority has been steadily declining. Once upon a time in the US, the power of police to arrest anyone was no greater than the power of any citizen to do the same. This has changed over the years, for a number of reasons. Even so, the power of arrest is not akin to the authority to imprison someone.

> So yeah, there is a right society has which individuals do not, and that is to create the laws of society.

Right here is the key to the difference in our perspectives. You seem to perceive "society" as a concrete entity apart from the individuals it comprises. I do not. To me, "society" is a high-order abstraction, a verbal shorthand that refers to a perceived framework of laws, rules and customs which outline expected/condoned behaviors to guide the interaction of individuals and groups with each other and with other groups and individuals. The word "society", like the word "God", purports to be a noun, but it has no concrete referent; there is nothing you can take hold of, pin down and point to and say,"That is society!"

As a mere abstraction, "society" takes no actions, writes no laws, fights no fights and neither victimizes nor helps anyone. It is individuals and groups within society that do all these things.

> You wouldn't actually prefer to live in a society which doesn't tax, would you?

I have said before that ultimately it doesn't matter much to me what laws surround me. I can probably get along in just about any kind of society/governmental structure. Well, almost. If I lived in a society that wanted to exterminate Jews or Czechs or Africans or Asians or just skinny, underweight nerds, I would have a serious problem with that and might be pushed into violent resistance. Otherwise, my own plans would not change much, enjoy life as best I can, follow the rules when they do not interfere with my life, ignore them when they do and do my best to avoid getting caught.

I do not have any grand plan for a more perfect, peaceful society, I have no answers for the major problems in the world. I have a lot of questions about a lot of things though, and spend much of my time wondering why so few others have similar questions.

> It could be much worse though. At least here we try molding societal government to the current common
> denominator view. Compare this to a religious cult which strives instead to mold the individuals themselves
> to an arbitrary societal government.

Oh sure, things could easily be much worse. I understand that. Don't get the idea that I am whining or complaining about anything, I'm not. By and large, I'm pretty happy with my life in the modern world even if every little thing isn't quite to my taste.

> Even so, the power of arrest
> is not akin to the authority to imprison someone.

Well, I can't imagine it was ever historically convenient for a citizen to keep someone locked up in their basement for a year to keep society safe or as fair retribution.

> |> So yeah, there is a right society has which individuals do not,
> and that is to create the laws of society.


> Right here is the key to the difference in our perspectives. You
> seem to perceive "society" as a concrete entity apart from the individuals
> it comprises. I do not. To me, "society" is a high-order abstraction,
> a verbal shorthand that refers to a perceived framework of laws, rules
> and customs which outline expected/condoned behaviors to guide the
> interaction of individuals and groups with each other and with other
> groups and individuals. The word "society", like the word "God",
> purports to be a noun, but it has no concrete referent; there is nothing
> you can take hold of, pin down and point to and say,"That is society!"

I wouldn't call it something 'apart'. We individually have behaviors, we collectively have behaviors. One can say dolphins fight and play, but I doubt all dolphins do both. It's no more an abstraction than the terms 'in general' or 'on average'. The physical body of which it is comprised unquestionably exists, and it unquestionably has aggregate rules of behavior even if individuals can be exceptions.

> As a mere abstraction, "society" takes no actions, writes no laws,
> fights no fights and neither victimizes nor helps anyone. It is individuals
> and groups within society that do all these things.

Any group is a society. The smaller the group, the greater the deviation.

> |> You wouldn't actually prefer to live in a society which doesn't
> tax, would you?
>
> I have said before that ultimately it doesn't matter much to me what
> laws surround me. I can probably get along in just about any kind
> of society/governmental structure. Well, almost. If I lived in a
> society that wanted to exterminate Jews or Czechs or Africans or Asians
> or just skinny, underweight nerds, I would have a serious problem
> with that and might be pushed into violent resistance. Otherwise,
> my own plans would not change much, enjoy life as best I can, follow
> the rules when they do not interfere with my life, ignore them when
> they do and do my best to avoid getting caught.

Well societies did evolve as reflections of the members present. If you have religious members, you have a religious society. Any society wishing to exterminate a group didn't really have that group as a member in the first place.

I might add though {You'd love Alan Watts if you aren't already familiar with him}, that even societies require self identification, and often this takes the form of identifying themselves by who they are not. Religions are particularly guilty of this. The Nazi notion of purity for instance would have been meaningless without the fabrication of impurity surrounding them.

> I do not have any grand plan for a more perfect, peaceful society,
> I have no answers for the major problems in the world. I have a lot
> of questions about a lot of things though, and spend much of my time
> wondering why so few others have similar questions.

I would imagine this question is one half of those people who think have already considered and accepted, usually in High School. Look at the huge range of rebels out there. That was their answer. There individual behavior is a form of self identification against this back-drop of society you call abstract, and of course, since society comprises the sum of it's members, even rebellion is an aspect of society. It's a feedback loop not much different than the hormones in a body.


> |> It could be much worse though. At least here we try molding
> societal government to the current common
> |> denominator view. Compare this to a religious cult which strives
> instead to mold the individuals themselves
> |> to an arbitrary societal government.
>
> Oh sure, things could easily be much worse. I understand that. Don't
> get the idea that I am whining or complaining about anything, I'm
> not. By and large, I'm pretty happy with my life in the modern world
> even if every little thing isn't quite to my taste.
>

Did I suggest you were whining? You know you are. It's your method of inquiry.

I get you're making a philosphical argument. We could almost as easily have traded places arguing positions I suspect, with me arguing that society was merely an abstraction. You can't have any fun analyzing the zeitgeists of societies without accepting their existence in the first place.

If we relate quantum mechanics to individuals, saying society is an abstraction is like saying physical reality is an abstraction - tendencies of pattern forming collective objects and events while each electron is really just free to do whatever it wants.


One interesting thing about humanity/society is that after all this evolution you can still go anywhere on the planet and find with a large group of people who are naturally artists, engineers, planters, poets, thinkers, fighters, or mystics.

Most everyone is working on the question 'Who are we?'. Your angle may be philosophizing about the existence of society. Someone else may be doing pure mindless lab work, learning by seeing who they can become, or refuse to be. Even those who are ignorant and indifferent of those around them and become their own islands are on this journey, as are the celebrity watchers. Everyone is asking the same questions from their own angle. This is the kaleidoscopic eye and dance of Siva Nataranga - all seperate parts at once. Every ego, the collective consciousness, particle science and natural science at once.

> I would imagine this question is one half of those people who think have already considered and accepted,
> usually in High School.

So I am an arrested adolescent? Perhaps. I won't bother to deny it. But which question are we considering here? The taxation one? Or the imprisonment one? Or perhaps the more general one of where does government get its authority?

I am of course familiar with the preamble of the Declaration of Independence, which asserts that governments derive "their just powers from the consent of the governed". This is actually true of all governments though, of whatever kind. The most vicious despots in history held their power only so long as those they ruled accepted that rule. For the worst of these tyrants of course, when the consent of the governed was withdrawn, it was done violently. The preamble to the Declaration recognizes this as well; "and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."

As for High School rebellion, well, when I was a sophomore in High School, a couple of girls and I tried to organize a walkout to protest compulsory education. We didn't get anywhere. Your average High School student, it seems, is willing to rebel to the extent of stealing a six pack of Pop's beer or a bottle of his Old Crow, rack up a few speeding tickets or total the family heap on occasion. But as far as actually questioning some the fundamental aspects of our society is concerned, I would be hard-pressed to name a more class-conscious, status seeking, conformity ridden herd beast than the American Teen.

My question is trying to probe a bit deeper though. I still don't understand how government justly gets the authority to imprison anyone. Delegated authority doesn't cut it. No one can delegate authority they don't have to begin with.

A person has legitimate authority to prevent someone from harming them. Thus a society also has this authority. So if someone is harming people, the society has the authority to prevent that someone from continuing to harm people. Imprisonment is legitimate as a means to that end.

> Imprisonment is legitimate as a means to that end.

Except that it doesn't work. Imprisonment ends up incarcerating people for non-violent crimes along with those guilty of assault, rape, murder, etc., creating a sub-society that is inherently violent. Members of that violent society are subsequently released into the larger society. There is a strong tendency for non-violent criminals, after repeated terms of imprisonment, to escalate to violence. I submit to you that imprisonment does more harm to society than it prevents.

No individual person has the authority to imprison anyone. Certainly they have the authority to prevent harm to themselves or others using reasonable force up to and including deadly force in life threatening situations. Individuals even have the authority to restrain an offender pending the arrival of police on the scene. This authority does not extend to imprisonment though.

You're certainly right that we imprison people who are not a threat to anyone else, or for whom imprisonment is not an appropriate way to control whatever threat they are. And by doing so, we cause more damage. That's why I put it in the terms I did. I think if we, as a society, had a clear idea of the purpose of imprisonment, that it's not for punishment but for protection, we'd have a much saner and less destructive system.

"But which question are we considering here?" - Tha nature and rights of society vs. liberty and identity of the individual one. This is why our HS English professors load us up with books like Catcher in the Rye and Dune.

As a teen I attended sci-fi conventions, played D&D, and lived my summers as an actor at the Renaissance Faire where I was a 16th c. celt living on oat cakes and and doing 25 pike marches by the light of the moon, hanging out both their and in urban america with various pagan ministers/sorcerors. Sure some teens try hard to fit in, other rebel or explore, but he process is definitely most pronounced in the teens, with the second phase coming in one one needs an income, which for me happened as a teen as well. I still have nighmares on occasion when I work too hard of flipping burgers at Jack-in-the-Box.

"No one can delegate authority they don't have to begin with." - Well, I gave you my explanation. Something similar must be sufficient explanation for others as well.

If you can't see it as extension of indiduality, look at society itself as a body then. Not every cell in the body is an antibody, but we can't by without them, just like that magic mix of artists, engineers, and farmers I was saying crop up spontaneously in any group.

Or you could go deeper yet, become a buddhist, and not presume there is an explanation, that people have good reasons or even know what they are doing, but flow with nature instead.

No matter how deep you go, you will find the conclusions of others on the matter in conflict. There may be some ingrained natural wisdom in those ignorant easy-adopter teens, to avoid a life of internal philosphical conflict, if nothing else.

I suspect I make more of a distinction between society and government than you do. You are questioning the rights of government - I never saw it as having a natural rights in the first place. I do however see see society as having natural rights, and government as man's best attempt at codifying those rights with just regularity. Society has needs of smooth survival. As long as people hang out with each other, society is a real, not abstract entity.

I would suggest that all your contemplation has been too weighted towards existentialism and misses the ant-farm minus egos. There's quite a wiki index for 'self'. Political philosophy is only a subset realm of the larger questions of ego and the consciousness of nature.

An ant farm has no egos choosing political philosphy. Regardless of what political philosphios societies claim, I think you will find that they appear similar from an examining ant-farms perspective.

That's not exactly where I was going though, but rather that the bigger or more local the picture, the more existentialism and mindless ant-farm reflect each other. I'm trying to promote hindu mysticism here, but strangely it get backs to your own question of extension of individual rights on the way, in the form of extension of 'human consciousness', which is where I think the key to your queries will be found.

Now that I think of it, your whole question is rather silly. You question if the rights of government are an extension of individual rights; who says individuals have rights, or even that rights aren't a pure abstraction themself? (slighly more so than the existence of society, I'd say). One reason philosphy has become so grounded in logic is that none of it has any context without resting on premises which are dubious to begin with.

~

Almost totally off subject, it just dawned on me yesterday how rediculously backwards the western premise of souls was. In eastern religions, the soul wears egos like theater costumes. In western belief the ego is actually responsible for safe-guarding and molding the soul towards good or evil. This makes about as much sense to me as baptists singing "God is worthy to be praised", as if their was some question about that and the judgment were in our hands.

If you're looking for entertaining hypocrisy, I think you'll find far more of it in the near-primary roots of western religion than in political philosophy. Either realm is built on abstractions though.

You could probably work your way up to writing some decent books if you applied some comprehensive disciplined framework to the set of questions you examined. It will take you another decade to build up such a framework though. It might make more economic sense to keep it as an avocation as I do with my spiritual pursuits.

Practical application may have some bearing on the interest of others in your work as well. If you question government and society by questioning the existence of individual or any authority at all, what have you accomplished except the groundwork for an unattainable idealistic vision?

Actually, I know from a week or two of personal mystical experience that that vision is not unattainable, but you will have to vastly increase your scope to get there.

I believe what you can rationally conclude will add to the useful body of published contemporary global thought, and is worthwhile to pursue, but you have a long way to go to get there.

If you want to be readable, and most solidly founded, I suggest that you remain purely empirical, and only cite the parallel conclusions of other philosophers, politicians, and spiritualists in your side bars.

I also suggest that if you were in fact interested in such work, that you start taking notes now, as by the time you are ready to publish, such citation details may all be forgotten except as your own absorbed empirical conceptual framework.

You might also consider your motive (esp. in respect to your audience) which currently is nothing but to challenge contemporary thought for no reason but the challenge itself. Your audience would thus likely be those who pride themselves on seeing the truth of things first. Another route to go is application, for which visionary idealism is an intermediate step. ..or you could take people on intangible head trips, in which case truth becomes just another entertaining mental occupation, or possibly forms the seed groundwork for them to develop the practical application on their own - a most noble cause if you can indeed identify and clarify deeper truths. ..or you could just acceptingly do what you naturally do without questioning why, and live in non-judgmental observation of your judgmental mental behavior until a deeper truth about it becomes apparent.

..or I can give you a dreadful spoiler now and inform that you that the answer to the 'meaning' of anything is not within the realm of that which asks in the first place. All thoughts are meaningless abstractions of the truth.

I sense you are compelled to find this out for yourself, and forewarn you that it is a nuclear bomb to the ego, a step away from imagining you've found that you don't exist in the first place. Buddhist teachings will better you prepare for recovery from such a revelation than anything western philosphers have yet offered.

Um, one more suggestion, download the monday and thursday night lectures from Roy Hollywood at KPFK.org . I wouldn't be surprised if you become one of those lecturers a dozen years from now.

You might though just have any other kind of typical job like business management, in which case your particular strength is questioning if theory matches application.

In myself, recognising it is a pretty good start. In society, I'm not sure that there's a huge amount that I can do.

I check myself