Hypocrisy is necessary for the functioning of society. Everyday social relations are regulated by a well-understood code of self-censorship half-truths and (occasionally) outright lies. Contrary to moral intuition this element of hypocrisy is something that must be vigilantly protected.
In early February the controversial Web site JuicyCampus.com shutdown. The site was designed to be a forum for students to post anonymous gossip about their peers but the site experienced a sharp loss in online ad revenue and became economically unsustainable.
In 2008 Pepperdine’s Student Government Association made the much-publicized decision to censor the site on the school’s server noting the many racist sexist and otherwise offensive notes that flooded the message boards.
The problem with sites like JuicyCampus is that they introduce the most subversive element into the social fabric: The Truth. The transmission of peoples’ honest feelings to each other all the time would ultimately destroy this fragile social fabric.
The problem with these sites is they encourage the public and anonymous disclosure of people’s deepest feelings towards others which is often mercilessly cruel. This phenomenon makes clear a troubling fact of social interaction: beneath the thin veneer of respect and politeness that defines the daily social interactions is a dark pool of judgment cruelty and other anti-social feelings (mixed in of course with positive feelings and evaluations).
This reveals another point: the customary suppression of these “true” judgments and feelings is the necessary precondition for the smoothly functioning social interactions.
One might respond “Hey I don’t want people to be artificially polite to me I want to know the truth.” What if this was to happen? What if people always told the truth? This scenario plays itself out in the “Seinfeld” episode aptly entitled “The Truth.”
George trying to get out of a bad relationship begins going through the polite (and dishonest) routine: “I don’t think we should see each other anymore. You’re great but I’m riddled with personal problems … It’s not you. It’s me. I have a fear of commitment. I don’t know how to love.”
After his girlfriend insists on hearing the truth George caves in and spouts off a list of her annoying quirks and undesirable qualities – after which the woman checks herself into a depression clinic. When George reports to Elaine and Jerry of his decision to “just tell the truth Elaine responds, How would you like it if someone told YOU the truth?” George is shocked at the thought but he shouldn’t have been: hypocrisy is a social imperative.
Hypocrisy evolves naturally and necessarily out of social interactions. Thomas Hobbes envisions a state of nature that is chaotic and dangerous forcing people to join together in a social contract where they give up their natural aggressive impulses and learn to live together in relative peace. JuicyCampus returns humans to the state of nature – a state much like that of 4-year-olds who unhesitatingly say whatever thought is in their heads (“You are fat ugly stupid etc.)
However, as people grow up and occasionally are hurt by the honest” words of others they all implicitly agree to a social contract of hypocrisy and untruth.
In daily interactions people often suppress their honest feelings in favor of delivering false compliments and encouragements to one another. This is often not even done consciously and it eventually becomes a kind of “honest hypocrisy.” The phrase “fake it till you make it” is often the natural evolution of one’s feelings toward others. What began as a necessary lie becomes over time a social fact that is integrated into genuine social interaction.
What lies at the heart of this matter? Why is hypocrisy so fundamental to social life?
Every person is characterized all the way down by imperfections and shortcomings. Each person is psychologically required to tell themselves coherent stories that make these imperfections acceptable or even desirable and it is the responsibility of everyone else – except occasionally a close friend – to perpetuate these self-justifying narratives.
The close friendship is the proper location of Truth where each friend is authorized to disrupt the narrative of the other when appropriate but the public is rightfully the location of hypocrisy. This is the precondition for personal psychological coherence and social life.