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In Defense of "Honest" Hypocrisy
Renée Fuller, Ph.D. Copyright © Renée Fuller, 2000 |
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The dinner had been delicious. The table, the place settings, the food, everything had been arranged in an elegant fashion. Kathy, our hostess looked equally elegant in her slim hostess gown. Her face was beautifully made up, belying her "elderly" baby-boomer age.
Sitting back we relaxed and the conversation turned to town gossip. That meant the latest scoop about our town's manager and the most recent scandal involving one of the big landowners - who was also Kathy's immediate neighbor. Neither Jimmy, the town manager, nor Bill, the immediate neighbor, was much liked by the group, which had probably been assembled in part because of their dislike of the town's power structure. "Jimmy's advanced colon cancer should have killed him ages ago. And Bill doesn't look so great either. Hopefully we'll soon be rid of both of them." Kathy's face remained beautifully composed as she said this. Her husband Monty added, "Hopefully, it will be sooner, rather than later". The matter of fact statements that "hopefully" two people we all knew would be dead and out of the way before too long met with no objection. No one appeared to disapprove of the statement wishing the two men dead. It was just an honest declaration of how presumably everyone felt. Besides, as we all knew Kathy and Monty are "good" people concerned about the welfare of our community. Not many years ago such an outright expression of homicidal feelings at a polite dinner party would have been out of the question. Before the late sixties and seventies - before the emotional liberation movement - we would have denied having such feelings, even if the denial was hypocritical. But after the mid 1970's expressions of negative emotions came to be considered a manifestation of honesty. Many of my clinical colleagues asserted that it is a positive act to admit your anger, even your hate, as long as it is for individuals and not for groups. Anger, being a natural part of human interaction, shouldn't be denied by pretending otherwise. Since negative, even homicidal feelings are natural, guilt for having them could have neurotic, even crippling affects on our personality. Kathy's and Monty's two little girls (the offspring of the second marriage for both) already know that expressions of anger, even of hate, are permissible. They know these to be emotions that everyone has. And since everyone shares them, guilt for having them would be silly. Proudly their parents, who take their parental roles very seriously, see their two very pretty little girls as exemplifying a guilt-free generation, freed of the hypocrisy of earlier times. About the murderous students in Colorado, and other places far from home, Kathy and Monty expect that the newly developed "anger management" will be an effective answer. And yet - is there some relationship between the murderous outbreak in Colorado and being free of hypocrisy? Does hypocrisy have a function? Is there such a thing as "honest" hypocrisy? Or were those of us who grew up with it merely being taught to be liars, to be neurotic guilt-ridden cripples? Was that all there was to it? Having spent my childhood in the hypocritical world of the past, I find that it taught me some essentials of human and humane interaction. The hypocrisy I was deliberately instructed in, as well as what I learned by imitating my parents, had important functions, both a societal and personal. Shortly after the elegant dinner party we saw a demonstration of one of the societal functions of hypocrisy. Not surprisingly, Kathy's and Monty's dinner party statements leaked out. Jimmy and Bill heard about what had been said within less than 48 hours. Some weeks later Jimmy sent loggers to the exact borderline of his and Kathy's and Monty's property. The buzz saws of the loggers noisily, at 6 A.M., removed all the trees on the north side that had protected their house from the winter winds. Gone was their ability to sleep until 7:30. And before long ugly-looking stumps replaced their view of the woods. Bill meanwhile raised some legal questions about Kathy's and Monty's land use. It took them considerable time before the matter was settled. The escalation of tit-for-tat was off at a full tilt. Some "anger management" might have helped. But "honest" hypocrisy would have been simpler. Fortunately, the minor, the little every-day hypocrisies, are still with us - at least sometimes. These are the ones that make life more pleasant for everyone. "I've been thinking of you for days. I'm so glad you called. I was going to call you today. . ." In actuality, the friend had been completely forgotten. There had been no intention to call. Should one tell the truth? Should one say, "I completely forgot all about you. . . ," implying that the friend was not important enough to be remembered. That is what the statement "I forgot all about you." would have implied - even if it wasn't an accurate inference. There are times when hypocrisy comes closer to the emotional truth than do the actual facts. But even if it was an accurate inference, is it really necessary to transmit that the friend is that unimportant? The implication might well hurt our friend's feelings - hardly a friendly act. Besides, such a transmission, if sent, is likely to produce one in return saying, "You too are unimportant," thereby starting another tit-for-tat. Looking back at my younger days, when "honest" hypocrisy was part of being a considerate and "decent" person, I realize that hypocrisy's two main functions - societal and personal - often overlapped. You were hypocritical, which meant hiding emotions that were considered inappropriate because (1) how you felt implied something that would hurt someone else's feelings and/or (2) because the emotion that was being disguised was one that decent people are not supposed to have. The last had a signaling function. It signaled to you that you should feel guilty about how you just felt. And guilt meant that not only was the emotion off limits, but also that under no circumstances was it permissible to act on it. Which is why in our not so distant past decent people like elegant Kathy and clever Monty would never have said "Hopefully we'll soon be rid of them." Even before saying it they would have felt uncomfortable about having the thought that could produce such a statement. That feeling of discomfort would have been perceived as a signal to feel guilt, guilt for wishing other people ill - the very feelings that a guilt-free society seeks to shun - the emotion that present-day Kathy and Monty are so proud their two little girls are freed from having to feel. So should we teach our children how to pretend "nice" emotions rather than "ugly" ones? Is the objective simply that one should lie in order to look good, while the reality can be so very different? The "honest" hypocrisy I was taught wasn't that naive, that simplistic. Rather it was that good people, whose ranks I should want to join, must not hurt other people's feelings, and must work hard to free themselves of ugly emotions. Ugly emotions were defined as those of envy, meanness, anger, hate, spite, and vengefulness. You were supposed to feel ashamed for having such emotions. If they snuck up on you, you were expected to get to work immediately in order to get rid of them - to free yourself of, yes, evil. That we all have potential evil in us - how could one miss it? But the reality of evil's existence did not grant a license, or give permission, of escaping the responsibility of getting rid of the ugliness that is in all of us. To the contrary! Even as a small child I could see that the "uglies" do lead to ugly consequences. Hearing the radio and later the television blare out the news of war and murder made it very clear that feelings of anger and hate made people do awful things. And I could readily understand why when other people sense your dislike or anger they reciprocate. Had I not found myself reciprocating when I thought myself disliked or treated with disrespect? So it was reasonable that when negative feelings rose in you, you were expected to pretend otherwise. In a way you were not telling the truth. But there was also the implication that you would try to make it the truth. For that is what this kind of guilt and "honest" hypocrisy is about. It lets you know that the feelings you just had are not the way decent people should feel. Above all, these are emotions that may not lead to "acting out". "Honest" hypocrisy was therefore, rather than just a societally approved form of lying, a way to (1) smooth people to people interaction. But even more important, (2) it implied rules of behavior and thought. It defined what decent people should do and feel - even when they often failed in these do's and don'ts. So how do you teach a child to become an "honest" hypocrite? Is it that you tell her/him to lie? That's not really what the instructions in "honest" hypocrisy were about. Rather they went something like this: "We all have our 'uglies'. We all have feelings that we should be ashamed of and shouldn't have. But one doesn't show off one's 'uglies', one doesn't exhibit them. "These ideas and their implication conveyed the message that exhibitions of outrageous and offensive behavior like those displayed on TV or reported in the media are off limits - that there is such a thing as shame as well as manners. And being ashamed of what you have just thought or done means you work at fixing your 'uglies', not at showing them off." My instruction in "honest" hypocrisy also taught that: "You don't blurt out that you wish something bad would happen to someone else. You don't tell people that you hate them, or even that they are unimportant, that you resent that they have more goodies than you do. Nor do you use offensive language in your disagreements with people. When you do disagree, you do so keeping the other person's feelings in mind. Instead of letting people know what unpleasant or ugly thoughts you just had, you work at getting rid of such feelings. You don't demonstrate that you are capable of loathsome words or thoughts." It's hardly news that we're all capable of mean emotions. But decent people try to overcome their 'nasties'. Which means that when nasty notions make their appearance in your thoughts, you immediately squash them. You do not offend or hurt other people's sensibilities by making a display of them. Above all you may not act out on your 'uglies'. However, also transmitted was that "There is such a thing as justified anger, even hate. That's when dreadful things are being done to others, or someone deliberately tries to do you harm. There are times when people, groups, or nations act out on their really bad 'uglies'. Then you have to stand up for the rights of yourself and others. That you do this is terribly important. It reflects who you are. But this kind of response to truly vicious behavior isn't required that often. And of course it's very different from being polite and avoiding hurting others by showing your dislike or anger about things that are of only momentary significance." As for the minor, the little hypocrisies that make life so much more pleasant, these were the ones that went under the heading of being polite. But looking back, these manifestations of politeness were actually much more. It's not that you were taught to say, "How nice you look" when the person addressed looked an awful mess. Rather, it meant tuning in on other people, of finding something positive to say - even more important finding out what was really going on with other people in order to interact in a humane way. The properly taught "honest" hypocrisy of my childhood not only taught us shame and guilt for having ugly emotions, it also helped create an awareness that other people have feelings and emotions, and that they too, react in response to their feelings and emotions. It helped us understand that other people can be hurt, can be made angry or disgusted. It was a part of learning how to let go of the egocentricity of thinking that the only feelings and wants that mattered were those of number one. "Honest" hypocrisy became an essential aspect of growing up, of learning that other people are not shadowy figures on a stage on which number one is the only live actor. It was learning that all of us are on the stage of life together, and that we must work at making this togetherness a caring encounter. |
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