Hypocrisy is the New Black

Posted by zeno on March 31, 2009

It seems that, since the wheels fell off the world’s financial systems, the latest fad to hit the high street is hypocrisy and judgmentalism. To be fair, they have been pretty popular for years, but their current prominence is  frightening.

It would be easy to point the finger at the media for this new trend, but that would be a little disingenuous. The media certainly feeds the market it creates, but its creative power is limited to unleashing the need within each of us to feel superior, especially in times when we feel insecure. Even when we know that we are as bad, or worse, than those we sneer at, it seems we must be able to join together publicly and affirm our own moral sanctity. The media is our “town square”.

When something goes badly wrong we need someone to blame so Sir Fred Goodwin has his home attacked. When we feel harm has been done to us we need to assuage our anger so we wax frothy at the CEOs and COOs of bankrupt companies, and the politicians who enabled them. It may make us feel better to be clawing at Jacqui Smith but shouldn’t the focus be more on the abuse of parliamentary allowances rather than her husband’s predilection for dirty movies.

I would suggest there are few people reading, watching or listening the news today who have not watched porn in some form, who have not “borrowed” some printer paper from their office or who have not been economical with the truth at some time in their lives.  But, my God, how dare the Home Secretary’s husband have a private chug?

At best this is all simply bullying on a national scale, at worst it amounts to monumental self delusion. And those who shriek loudest appear, eventually, to be the greater criminals.

We need to be aware that we, individually, have colluded in the whole global scam by virtue of our blind complacency and greed. When the gravy train was slopping onto the common table, we were lapping it up like hungry dogs and paying no attention to the fact that the train drivers were high on their own hormones, the engine had no brakes and we were all accelerating downhill towards a solid and immovable cliff-face. We allowed ourselves to be encouraged to aspire to enormous wealth and, when we couldn’t actually get there, to live as though we had.

Prioritise and focus. The situation we face needs leadership not blame, ideas not judgmentalism. We need to feel confident that when the man or woman at the helm makes mistakes he makes them honestly. We need to be able to believe that our leaders put us first, not themselves, and we really need to forget about “Looking out for Number 1”.

We are in this together and the only way we will get out is together. Anger is a legitimate response to being fiscally humped. By all means feel angry, but let’s use the anger positively.

We need to forget blame, hypocrisy and judgmentalism, the only thing that will take us forward is hope.

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