I was having dinner with a couple of friends – some new, some old and enjoying one of my loveliest evenings in a long time. As I was gulping down the last few fries from my plate, somebody casually remarked “You don’t really practice what you know you should be doing”. Implying that being a public health person I should be eating healthy and by stuffing myself with fries I was somehow wrong. The statement irked me slightly but I was too busy enjoying a high calorie cheese filled burger to give it much thought.
A few days later, after the Boston water leak I am once again guilty of ignoring the public health warnings and not having boiled my drinking water (I am from India for God’s sake, I’ll survive the bugs from your tiny leak), and another friend who is not a public health person said that if I am preaching something I am not doing myself it makes me a hypocrite. This time not having high calorie food to distract me, I could give full vent to my annoyance with the judgment being meted out to me. If I am a physician who advises people to eat less, quit drinking and smoking, exercise more, sleep just the right amount – and I don’t myself practice this entire gamut of healthy behaviors – am I then to be labeled as a hyprocrite? By that definition perhaps all physicians are hypocrites.
I was having trouble getting my friend to see my point, I asked two other people who compounded my frustration by concurring with my friend – that if I am a smoker and I am telling others to quit it makes me a hypocrite. I was almost beginning to pull my hair out in exasperation when Wikipedia came to my rescue –
“Nothing is more unjust, however common, than to charge with hypocrisy him that expresses zeal for those virtues which he neglects to practice; since he may be sincerely convinced of the advantages of conquering his passions, without having yet obtained the victory, as a man may be confident of the advantages of a voyage, or a journey, without having courage or industry to undertake it, and may honestly recommend to others, those attempts which he neglects himself.”
Words written by Samuel Johnson a great English author of the 17th century who among other things authored a “Dictionary of the English Language” which remained the main dictionary in use for about 150 years before the Qxford Dictionary was published. He too said that it is ok to preach what you do not yourself practice and that does not make you a hypocrite.
The question arises – what then is hypocrisy?
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it as ‘feigning to be what one is not or to believe what one does not”. The American Heritage Dictionary states “The practice of professing beliefs, feelings, or virtues that onedoes not hold or possess; falseness.”
Hyprocrisy is about being what you are not; it is not about preaching what you don’t practice. If I profess to be a honest person in public but I take bribes – then I am a hypocrite. A hypocrite is someone who pretends to be your friend but then turns around and criticizes you to the next person. In all these cases the person is doing something different from what they profess to be.
A parent who smokes and tells her children not to, is NOT a hypocrite. He is just not going to be very effective at keeping his kid from smoking. You would agree that even smoking parents SHOULD tell their kid not to smoke, even if they can’t stop smoking. But according to my detractors – that would make him a hypocrite. So if he tells his kid not to smoke he is a hypocrite and if he doesn’t tell his not to smoke then also he is doing something wrong. There is an inherent logical fallacy here.
Who then is to blame for this misconstruction of this word? With due respect, I think Gandhi messed it up. There is this Gandhi story that all of read in school. A mother comes to Gandhiji and tells him that his son eats a lot of sweets what should she do. Gandhiji doesn’t say anything to her but tells her to return after a week. A week later Mom comes to Gandhiji and he helps her get her kid to quit eating sweets. She asks Gandhiji why he couldn’t do it earlier. Gandhiji says that since he himself was very fond of eating sweets, he needed to kick his own bad habit before he tried to preach to others. Gandhiji’s lesson about ‘practice what you preach’ has become equated with ‘hypocrisy’ in our minds. But there is a subtle yet very important difference between the two.
Yes it is good to practice what you preach. But it does not make you a bad person if you don’t. It does not mean that you have double standards. It does not make you a hypocrite.
Being a hypocrite is having double standards, it is about professing to be what you aren’t. It is not about practicing what you preach, it is about not being who you say you are.
Some might say ‘you take this too seriously’. But I think it is important to take these things seriously. Words are not just words and meanings; they come with connotations and with judgments. If I am not practicing what I preach I am just lazy or whatever, but if I you label me as a hypocrite, you are also labeling me as something ‘bad’.
A bigger problem arises here, since ‘not practicing what you preach’ has been labeled as ‘hypocrisy’ in the minds of a large number of people. The value judgments associated with ‘hypocrisy’ have somehow become associated with ‘not practicing what you preach’
If you google, you come across statements such as – A parent who smokes and advises his kid not to smoke is reekingof hypocrisy. An anti-smoker who can’t quit smoking is a hypocrite. Me telling women to stand for elected office when I don’t think I am going to do it myself. We are all of us then hypocrites.
To repeat Johnson
“Nothing is more unjust, however common, than to charge with hypocrisy him that expresses zeal for those virtues which he neglects to practice …a man may be confident of the advantages of a voyage, or a journey, without having courage or industry to undertake it, and may honestly recommend to others, those attempts which he neglects himself.”
Comments on: "Unjust Labels" (4)
I take Wikipedia as the ultimate source and since you quoted something from Wikipedia I think it is safe to quote Wikipedia again.
Wikipedia says “Hypocrisy is the act of persistently professing beliefs, opinions, virtues, feelings, qualities, or standards that are inconsistent with one’s actions.”
The logic is simple:
When a physician tells something to a patient it is his opinion. (remember we say doctor’s opinion/ second opinion with respect to a doctor). So when a physician is of the opinion that one should not do something and he does himself; it perfectly suits the Wikipedia definition of Hypocrisy.
Secondly for me practice that you preach should be one of the mottos of life. If a parent tells his child not to smoke and smokes himself then the child is bound to say “first practice it yourself and then you have the right to tell me anything”
Thirdly, if 99% of the people in the world believe that a word means something, then the meaning of the word is what people believe it is! That is how I look at it. You gave an example of Gandhiji, ask any non-indian person who is not aware of this story and he/she will probably tell you the same thing.
Finally, you need to do it yourself to have that effect. Tell me how many people will take a drug addict seriously if he in some alley tells other drug addicts not to do drugs?
Somebody was trying to push your buttons and they seem to have succeeded.
BTW next time somebody says that you, show them your degrees and say “I’ll preach whatever the f@#k I want, thank you very much” …. cheers
Thanks bro
Its Samuel Johnson and me against the world. :p
I was just happy to have something to blog about after a long time :=))
Hi,
I think it is a two-fold discussion embedded in blog scratched. ‘Hypocrisy’ and ‘Follow what you preach or vice-versa’. And if one agrees those are two different things, it is quite evident that the author is not a hypocrite to PREACH!!
Herd theory/mentality has most of the time if not always obstructed majority of us to achieve what we essentially should/could have. I feel here this is underlying for comments like……”if most of us think this way, it ought to be” or “thats the way it is”. This is where I feel that as an individual we should have our own opinion rather than what 99% of the population practices, only if one thinks education is the necessary criteria for it; I don’t!!!
The disheartening ‘phenomenon’ (an observable occurrence: Wikipedia) is after the conscious effort of the author to differentiate between the TWO things, 99% of the people would still continue to perceive both one and the same. This is where I find a lucrative opportunity to establish MBA college teaching marketing students to think out of the box(have their own opinion/face in a herd), make them feel ENLIGHTENED as well worth the mad amount of money spent on it.
I might have digressed from the topic, but it is so very subtly intermingled. Evolution is a slow process and Revolution happens once in an era because 99% of us are waiting for 99% of the population to feel the need of a change.
Back to topic and Bapuji’s Act to Preach policy.
Scene: A tobacco addict. An enthusiastic person curious about tobacco consumption. Two pictures, one of mouth affected with tobacco consumption and a healthy one. Curiosity dies and enthusiasm for tobacco consumption fades for the first picture, definitely not the second one. Many a times, unwillingness to be like a drug addict is a harder driving force for abstinence from drugs. HENCE it is extremely wonderful if one can follow what he preaches, it is not necessary to preach only things that you follow and definitely cant be termed as hypocrisy.