NOTE: This was a rant I made in response to a comment I saw by someone on a different forum, but thought it was applicable here as well. Not to anyone in particular, to everyone. The subject area is probably one that people here know about confronting.
Most people I know, and I know this may or may not be you so please don't say "BUT THAT'S NOT ME!", would probably lie unless they were "really" your friend when they are confronted with an awkward situation regarding the opinion of the askee in regards to something that the asker has. I know that sounds confusing, but in a more specific way: your friend asks you if you like his or her new jacket. Do you tell them the truth? Do you value honesty? Do you value the friendship of the person to whom you are referring?
in this rock-and-hard-place dilemma, you have two options: 1. to lie and to maintain the good graces of your friend or 2. tell the truth because you A) care about the person and are trying to help her or B) something else that I'm too lazy to think of right now. In either case, assuming you are empathetic in the slightest, care about the friend you imagined for this scenario and value honesty, you have been inconsistent with your thoughts about yourself. "I'm an honest person" and "I just lied", so I'm told, are conflicting thoughts in regards to cognitive dissonance theory. You can justify it to yourself however you want to, either by reducing the significance of the lie (it was a "little white lie") or you can try to justify the lie by saying you were helping your friend (or something else, obviously). All of this is only correlational with the real reason you did it, however. If you think you actually know the real reasons you do things, take an intro to social psychology class at a college or watch this one[1] on Youtube. It's free and is bound to change your perception on people as a whole if you are open to knowing such things. But what is learned can't be unlearned, that's my only ominous warning.
I'm a hypocrite because I don't actually think I care about telling people and I know it will all eventually all be for naught in the grand scheme of things. Hell, even in the small scheme of things. In two weeks, this will just be another rant I made, barely memorable in the slightest.
The only solution to this that I can think of, which doesn't actually resolve this, is a hierarchy of values that (in theory) you memorize and logically follow through to the end (or you'd be a hypocrite for that, too) in your day-to-day life. This, however, doesn't resolve the dilemma. It merely ignores the dilemma entirely, with the added bonus of giving you a reason for ignoring that dilemma.
The point of this post (or lack thereof) was to say that there really isn't any reason to call someone a hypocrite except to shame them for not doing something or doing something that you think they think they should be doing but aren't.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V17Ead_YAxc&list=PL3E423E294511D174
Interesting.
I will check out the link later.
Yea. I just got done shaming a hypocrite. The thing that pisses me off is how, actually, it's my fault to be playing the fool for them: like they're ever going to change.