Few people have tolerance for hypocrites. They are highly frustrating people, mostly because they are confusing to be around. How can you believe one thing and then act as though you don’t believe that at all? This makes no sense. These are the thoughts that came to mind as I read a magazine article regarding a new car, the Nano, to be released in India by Tata Motors. The potential for hypocrisy, you ask? This car will only cost $3,000, making it possible for hundreds of millions of Indian people to start driving. From the standpoint of environmental protection, this is disastrous, and it would seem that we have an ethical responsibility to resist this development. But can the United States, the birthplace of the automobile, legitimately oppose this without sounding like total hypocrites?

This is a tough call, honestly. Consistency is incredibly important in ethics, and if we are to ask India to curb its driving habits, we reasonably must also reduce our own. This seems reasonable, as well as being consistent with what most environmental advocates think we need to do, regardless of what India does. However, a deeper concern exists with regard to hypocrisy. Our nation, and much of the Western world, has grown prosperous by largely ignoring the environmental damage that we wrought. How can we ask developing nations to voluntarily forgo similar advantages?

In this case, and more generally, I think its okay to sometimes be a hypocrite. We cannot change our nation’s history any more than we can change the realities of environmental destruction or climate change. We must, in both our personal lives and at the level of global politics, deal realistically with the conditions that we are actually facing. Not speaking out against India’s efforts to become a driving nation is akin to remaining silent about your child’s drug use because you did drugs yourself.

Philosophically, the issue of hypocrisy in personal conduct is a matter of failure to separate old beliefs from new ones. In the past, you may have had certain beliefs that led to particular actions. As you have progressed, you have developed new beliefs that hopefully improved upon your old beliefs and led to ethically preferable behavior. It does not make sense to then evaluate current actions based on previous beliefs. You should not decide how to address your child’s drug use by referring to beliefs that you held at their age, any more than the United States should evaluate India’s efforts to put one hundred million cars on the road based on beliefs that we held fifty years ago. Why would we do that? Why would you do that? This is totally illogical, but we do it all the time.

There are essentially two types of hypocrisy, and it is crucial that we make a distinction between them in order to avoid false senses of hypocritical actions. The parent who won’t discipline their child because they used to act in a similar way is dealing with a false sense of hypocrisy based on a change in belief that is not being properly acknowledged. This is no hypocrisy at all. The parent who disciplines their child for actions that they still engage in is a hypocrite. There is no change in belief at work, only a discrepancy between belief and action. This is not appropriate for a person interested in self-improvement and growth. However, recognizing that beliefs change and not holding yourself hostage to old beliefs is not only not hypocritical, it is crucial to moving beyond our outdated belief systems.

About the Author

Eli Weber is a graduate student in Environmental Ethics and a Graduate Teaching Assistant at Colorado State University. He holds bachelor’s degrees in sociology and philosophy from Chapman University and currently lives in Fort Collins, Colorado with his wife Laura. He is a regular contributor to Mindful Source.

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