This is part of a series I like to call “Things we should agree on before we talk.”
Humans are, by nature, hypocritical animals and when you put a bunch of us together, being hypocritical is actually a healthy sign. So, if you have a large population with a notable degree of personal freedom, a lack of hypocritical behavior is actually a bad sign. Take, for example, the United States of America. We regularly bomb countries, to whom, we also send foreign aid. This assumes that you cannot tell the difference between the groups within our nation who have a nuclear powered Navy and the groups that beg for prop-planes and volunteers to help to drop bags of rice for starving refugees. The first-world West, in general, very notably gave a Nobel Peace Prize to a first term sitting US senator who was then elected President of the USA and proceeded to tomahawk missile the f&^k out of a North African nation on live television 17 months later.
We use derogatory words in our music and claim artistic license but then condemn any TV personality who uses it in an interview. We claim to have equality under the law, but look at the incarceration rates and police brutality rates and tell me everything is working as planned. We appear, incredibly, hypocritical.
In politics, the anti-abortion party supports the death penalty. The anti-big-business party support workers unions that can't exist in a small businesses/free market economy. The pro-religion party wants to keep out the most devote immigrants. The save-our-planet party seems to only want to crowd us into pollution causing cities where we can't feed or care for ourselves.
My initial argument was that “this is natural” and I meant it because, as creatures that filter everything through their perceptions and then communicate them, we are prone to idioms and hyperbole. We constantly speak in metaphors. I am trying not to do so now and it is excruciatingly hard. It would be much easier to break out some literary analogy and say “We want to be 1940’s Earnest Hemingway but we’re actually 1950’s L Ron Hubbard.” (see what I did there?)
Then there’s the “many-different-me’s” theory. One of my favorite youtube/podcast personalities preaches how he is not who he was before [/paraphrasing]. It’s not some born again/AA/making-things-right bull shit. He’s saying that as you grow and mature your brain changes and you become someone new. Another family example is my ultra left-wing sister who got pregnant, worked her way through college and is now basically 180 degrees (politically) from where she was. If you quizzed her on certain topics, such as immigration, you’ll find that she is still the person she was at 20, but ask her about her taxes or guns andwow!
From these (and dozens more) examples I am extending the hypothesis that I WILL BE hypocritical at some juncture in the future. So understand that I am about to explore what things mean to me and how I perceive the world around me. If, at some point I seem at odds with myself, it’s because we all are.
(There's so much more I should have written about this but I am pressed for time. So be it.)