Thinking is a Serious Problem: Values, Words, and Hypocrisy

Thinking well requires the careful use of words, including a clear understanding of the meaning and intent of a word, and a consistent use of that word. Words often have multiple meanings, which is entirely workable. But in certain cases such variability can cause thinking as well as action problems, most obviously when one person uses the same word differently depending on the situation.

Among the most important words we have are those representing our personal values. Our values are principles we hold very dear and which are not compromised at all or very rarely. Typical values we might hold are integrity, fairness, openness, personal responsibility, truth, tolerance, respect, loyalty, family, honor, care for others, objectivity, or hard work. The list is nearly endless.

Over the last 40 years or so I have observed a change in how people talk about their values and how, if at all, they implement them. As I grew up people generally stood by their values, meaning they acted those values out to the best of their ability.

After the 60’s and the cultural tumult that accompanied it, things began to change in unhealthy ways. It wasn’t that folks had no values, but that their implementation was suspect. We can argue forever about the benefit or fitness of one value over another. We can even argue about the methods of implementing a particular value. But one thing that is very bad for a society happens when people espouse good values and then fail to implement them, or implement them differently depending on how they feel at the time.

Whether one really holds a value highly cannot be determined by how vocal a person is at proclaiming the value. It can determined only by seeing the person apply the value when it is not only inconvenient to do so, but very difficult if not nearly impossible. Applying the value when it is easy is not the best test. Today the action commitment to one’s values seems lacking in the extreme and I will give two personal examples of this.

I was talking with a colleague at the local community college where I teach part-time. In the conversation I asked him about values important to him, and he said a prime one is respect for others. The conversation moved on and we ended up talking about college unions. At one point in response to something I said he made a dismissive comment accompanied by a bit of sarcasm. I mentioned that I thought respect was a prime value for him, and in my view sarcasm was not respectful. He assured me that respect was a hugely important value to him, but I irritated him with my view and that explains (read: justified) his behavior.

In another circumstance I was talking with a person at a party whose political views differed from mine considerably. Before we knew this, he told me that he saw himself as very tolerant. When it became clear that we differed politically, his whole demeanor changed. He did not attack me personally, but lit into my party, its views, candidates and office holders, castigating them for what he termed idiot thinking and a mean-spirited attitude. I mentioned to him that he did not seem particularly tolerant of my thinking, and he agreed totally and said, “Because your thinking is wrong.”

Certainly these anecdotes do not define all folks with espoused high values. But I have seen far more than just these two, as have friends of mine. Watch TV or movies and you will see that generally values, when espoused at all, are mainly for show, not for action. But the worst offenders of the “I-get-to-do-and-say-what-I-want-no-matter-what-my-values-are” crowd are politicians. Take the simple word “disclosure,” at the moment a “big” deal in the media. Each side defines the word differently and quite favorably for themselves. They then define it very unfavorably for opponents, not at all attentive in their righteousness to the hypocrisy.

In both my examples a person with a self-proclaimed important value failed to implement it, and was not at all bothered by the hypocrisy. Espoused values such as respect and tolerance are important and socially valuable, but only if they are implemented. These individuals can tell themselves (and me) that they have fine values, feel good about that, and then ignore situations in which those values should be implemented. I suggest that what is going on is a classic case of self-deception, and all-too-common psychological event these days.

What is important to such individuals is that they have an important value, and that everyone knows it, hence the sense of righteousness. When it becomes uncomfortable to implement such a value, it will be ignored, and then justified with ex-post-facto reasoning (Your thinking is wrong). This is one of the huge dangers of situational ethics: the game is played so that I get to do what I want to do, even if that includes ignoring one of my own prime values. In fact, if I am in the presence of others who “think” as I do, they will not only accept the deviation from the value, but positively applaud it as the right thing to do, adding more ex-post-facto justifications to my already rich repertoire.

Social divisiveness, of which we surely have enough, is increased when folks espouse and then fail to implement values when the going gets tough. The important trust structures that enable the members of a society to co-exist are destroyed by people hailing their own values and then ignoring those values when they have become inconvenient. The meaning and use of a person’s value word is now subject, not to some reasonable standard of consistency, but to a whim, particular agenda, or emotional need, clearly evidenced in my two examples.

Not only does social coherence suffer, but thinking does as well. When a person fails to uphold his/her own espoused value, and then argues that such behavior is just fine, it is impossible to have a legitimate and open conversation with that individual. That person is not thinking but, as I have mentioned in prior posts, emoting. Essentially, it means he/she will change the meaning of an important word to get the outcome desired (usually a diminished opponent). A truly thoughtful person with even a modicum of intellectual honesty would be embarrassed by such hypocrisy.

I don’t want to sound too Orwellian here, but it is difficult not to see the damage such hypocrisy does to our society. As such “tricks” make their way into the political arena, that danger increases exponentially, and is visible today.