From: Kevin Freels (megaquark@hotmail.com)
Date: Mon Jul 14 2003 - 10:48:40 MDT
One of the problems that I see is that people tend to place themselves into
groups to which they do not belong. For example, people join churches based
on social status rather than a set of congruous beliefs. The fact that we
are social animals leads us to join groups simply because we feel the need
to be part of a group.
The internet may be changing that already. The fact that we can locate
groups that more accurately reflect our thoughts and beliefs allows people
like me to find a group such as this one.
Hypocrisy is being reduced generation by generation. The pictures in our
heads of the glorious goodness of the 50s persists only because the people
practiced hypocrisy so well. All the talk was of goodness while the dirty
businesses of sex and drugs amongst other vices, was going on behind closed
doors.
Much of this is in the open now. It is not difficult to find someone in
today's society that will stand up and say "I'm a perverted S&M freak" or
"I'm gay", or "I'm an atheist". Mixed race couples were very, very rare; and
usually secretive. 50 years ago these same people would have said "I'm a
good Christian", or "I'm straight".
Society for the most part seems to have accepted much of this; with a bit of
a grudge of course. With the advent of the internet, as long as it does not
become censored, I expect this trend to continue. Maybe one day, we will
have the ability to read each other's thoughts. This may help as well.
Hypocracy will never end as long as the social animals continue to care
about what other's think, but maybe it will be reduced to the meager day to
day aspects of life rather than showing its ugly head in public policy
decisions.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Robin Hanson" <rhanson@gmu.edu>
To: <extropians@extropy.org>
Sent: Monday, July 14, 2003 5:00 AM
Subject: The End of Hypocrisy? (was: Why Does Self-Discovery Require a
Journey?)
> This thread seems to have bogged down into a largely fruitless discussion
> of what the word "want" should mean, and a potentially fruitful but slow
> discussion of whether it is good (or right) to give people what they want
> or what they say they want. Let me try a different approach and ask: what
> are the prospects for ending, or at least greatly reducing, hypocrisy?
>
> Humans seem to have evolved so that most people espouse "high" ideals
while
> their inclination to actually follow those ideals is primarily driven by
> social pressure. People self-deceive enough so that they usually do no
see
> the conflicts between their ideals and their actions. Others are better
> able to see through such deception, and may or may not use that as a basis
> of social pressure. Some people have less hypocrisy, either by raising
> their actions to their ideals, or lowering their ideals to their actions,
> but these are a clear minority. And the ideals of some are not the ideals
> of others; for example, some hold ideals of racial or cultural purity,
> uncompromising revenge against longtime enemies, or the restoration of a
> human-free nature. (Ideals seem to be less consistent than, and to vary
> more than, actions.)
>
> Three questions come to mind:
> 1) To what extent might we expect humans or their descendants to reduce
> their hypocrisy?
> 2) If they do, in which direction will the resolution be, toward current
> ideals or actions?
> 3) Will such a reduction in hypocrisy be a good thing?
>
> One approach to reducing hypocrisy is preaching, i.e., pointing out to
> people how their actions fall short of their ideals. This seems to have
> mostly played itself out; preaching has been long tried and our ability to
> self-deceive seems robust against it. Perhaps such preaching will be more
> effective when aided by more detailed descriptions of how evolution helps
> us to self-deceive, but I see little evidence of this in the behavior of
> those who best understand evolutionary psychology and self-deception. The
> jury is still out here though.
>
> Another approach to reducing hypocrisy is social pressure enhanced by more
> transparency. Our tendency to hypocrisy evolved in small tribes where
> transparency is far higher than in our modern society. But perhaps a
> future society will be even more transparent, for example letting us see
> each other's thoughts. However, it is not clear that social pressure
> always reduces self-deception and hypocrisy; on some issues it may well
> increase hypocrisy.
>
> A third approach to reducing hypocrisy is a more totalitarian
> democracy. Democracy seems to induce people to vote their ideals, since
> there are almost no other personal consequences of your vote besides how
> that vote modifies your self-image. So the more kinds of behavior are
> dictated by a totalitarian democracy, the more such behavior might be
> dictated by shared ideals. This tendency might be restrained by
> international competition, if some ideals make nations lose such
> competition, but democratic world government might be less restrained.
>
>
> Robin Hanson rhanson@gmu.edu http://hanson.gmu.edu
> Assistant Professor of Economics, George Mason University
> MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444
> 703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323
>
>
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