naked capitalism

doc holiday says:

It would be nice, to see people become even handed and balanced, versus inconsistent, unpredictable and unfair, but all too often, I see people that are critical and willing to be judgemental — while ignoring the fact that criticism should include compassion and perspective. People tend to blow things out of proportion and then fall into the familiarity of hypocrisy. Instead of offering help, people often just point fingers and cease to offer productive solutions to problems.

Be that as it may be, I love to bitch and whine and twist things into knots… maybe this is off topic?

fuguez says:

Insufficient socialization.

I think I suffer from that too. )

cougian says:

The problem with morality is lack of education. We rely on parents to teach morality, when obviously most parents can’t. I am not advocating teaching what is right or wrong, (think pro-life vs. right of choice) just how to decide (think universal truths vs. ends justify the means) How can we expect moral citizens when we never even introduce moral concepts to them. Basic ethics and basic citizenship should be required high school classes.

Lune says:

Allow me to play the devil’s advocate here…

There’s some fascinating research being done on the evolutionary basis of our moral and ethical reasoning. There is a marked uniformity in the moral precepts of almost all human societies, regardless of their religion, location, state of technological advancement, etc. For example, the golden rule, the encouragement of forgiveness and reconciliation, the innocence of children and other powerless individuals, etc. We in the West like to think that our moral precepts are based on a foundation of logic and philosophy, or perhaps on Judeo-Christian religious tenets. But these moral rules are shared by many societies who don’t have a strong tradition of a logic- and reason-based philosophy, and/or have religions not based on Judeo-Christian origins.

In evolutionary terms, that means that these moral “traits” were developed in a common ancestor that predates the development of philosophy or most of today’s religions. Furthermore, these traits must have been evolutionarily useful to be so well conserved throughout much of the world’s population despite the diversity of cultures and societies that later developed. Indeed, one could argue that philosophy and religion developed later as a means to rationalize and justify our innate moral traits, rather than the other way around.

Now one of the biggest moral traits we’ve developed is the primacy of one’s own group (be it defined as family, local community, nation-state, etc.). And it was conserved because those that had such a moral trait were willing to sacrifice much more to preserve their group (e.g. sharing resources, protecting the powerless, forgiving people within your group, etc.), which gave their group a survival advantage over ones who didn’t possess such loyalty to their group.

Philosophy and logic, OTOH, place emphasis on the universality of their laws, and makes no distinction between one person or another, or one group or another. What’s good for one person is good for another, regardless of which group each one belongs to.

I think what we’re seeing isn’t so much hypocrisy as the tension between our innate moral traits and what logic (which is a much more recent addition to our thought processes) tells us to do. And what this experiment is telling us is that while we’re willing to engage in logic as an almost leisurely diversion, when push comes to shove, our innate moral traits — which have been with us for much longer and have contributed much more to our survival success than logic — take over.

I wouldn’t label such actions hypocrisy though. I guess strictly speaking, it is, but the negative connotations of the word hypocrisy, with its implications that doing one thing in one situation but something different in another situation is bad, automatically imply that you accept the fundamental premise of logic that all rules must apply universally and at all times.

But our moral traits have guided us quite successfully for millions of years, whereas logic has only been around (in the West, at least), for several thousand years. And logic has led to its own disasters in human history.

So in the end, should these test subjects’ hypocrisy be condemned or celebrated? Food for thought…

Peripheral Visionary says:

The problem, as I see it, is priorities. The desire to win a political race, ostensibly to advance causes one cares about, is not a bad priority; but there should be higher priorities, like keeping one’s word.

I’m not sure loyalty to a group factors directly into that, although it’s a consideration. If anything, loyalty to groups has become very thin; we live in a very selfish world, where the individual is consistently prioritized higher than the group. I actually see political flip-flopping as being more consistent with pure selfishness (a desire to be in power for personal reasons) than as part of any bias regarding any particular group.

I don’t necessarily see any hypocrisy here. Sens. Obama and McCain have never actually come out and said that there are things that are more important to them than winning.