Over the last few days, I have found myself wrapped up in another blog (blogs are hideous time sinks) which has caused me considerable consternation and self-reflection. With out going into extensive detail regarding the particulars of the entries or subsequent comments and rebuttals, I shall suffice to say that I felt obliged to point out the author's deficiency of tolerance and compassion with regard to people who have recently caused him annoyance, citing the decline to name calling in an effort to assuage his own irritations and thereby only fostering ill will through out the world, thus generating bad cosmic mojo for the universe.
And behold, when I turned once again to my own blog, I was confronted with such an impeccable example of my own hypocrisy, that I was immediately plunged into a fit of introspection that could only be reconciled with my own public admission of humiliation. Which immediately led me to ponder, as I often do, the unfortunate pervasiveness of hypocrisy in the human condition and the purpose it serves.
Why is it so much easier to point out faults in others that we oursleves embody, yet our ego remains blind to their existence? If, as Freud would have us believe, it is a form of psychological self-projection, why do we so readily turn our scorn upon the reflection and ignoring the self that created the reflection? Why do we feel it is necessary to address the shortcomings of others? Is it possible or even necessary to atone for hypocrisy?
I found some comfort in the pages of Wikipedia (as I often do) whose discourse on hypocrisy said that pointing out behaviour that one engages in oneself is not necessarily hypocrisy - only if one condemns the other person for doing it. (For example, a smoker telling someone they should not smoke is not hypocrisy, because there is a valid arguement for it. However, saying you are evil if you smoke, but it's ok for me, is hypocrisy.) I'm pretty sure my language did not involve such condemnation, only illustration.
However, as I have now come to the open admission of my own fault in stooping to name calling and harboring ill will towards the neighbors who annoy me, I am thus somewhat liberated from the guilt of hypocrisy. And now, having conscious verbal awareness of my own shortcomings, I can better protect myself against future occurences.
So, to the monsters upstairs - I extend understanding for the energetic joys of childhood (not to mention respect the particularly long and strident urine stream with which the man of the house awakes each morning); to the cunt downstairs, I extend compassion for the circumstances of you life that have lead you to bitterness and petty uncivility.
Ah, I feel much refreshed.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
My sister is so cool.
All I can say is... dang, your walls must be paper-thin if you can hear the guy upstairs peeing! hahahahaha. I agree that we tend to hold others, especially random strangers, to a higher standard than we hold ourselves. Not sure why.
Yes, the walls in Australia must be razor thin to hear those gentle rivers run. Nevertheless, I'm glad that you have found a way out of your own cognitive dissonance. Remind me tell you about Festinger's theory someday--It's 50 years old this year, and it really does a good job of explaining your feelings of hypocrisy.
Post a Comment