Discover more from Overcoming Bias
Apparently some philosophers have developed philosophies of hypocrisy, to justify their not following the moral rules they advocate for others. They tried to keep quiet about it:
[Famous philosopher of ethics Henry] Sidgwick was the son of an Anglican clergeyman. Along with many eminent Victorians he could not accept revealed religion. Unlike most of them Sidgwick acted on this doubts and in 1869 resigned from his Fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge, which required Fellows to subscribe to the Thirty-nine Articles of Anglican doctrine. … Later Sidgwick became a professor and resumed his Fellowship. …
All of Sidgwick’s close friends were male, most of them gay or bisexual for much of their live. … Commenting on the friends he had made already, ‘Some are women to me, and to some I am a woman.’ … Sidgwick was celebrated in his lifetime for his integrity, but that did not prevent him engaging in Victorian hypocrisy where sexual desire – in himself or his friends – was concerned. Instead his reputation for honesty made the practice of deception easier for him. …
He had long argued the necessity for an ‘esoteric morality’ – a code of conduct that would sacntion the practice of secrecy and deception for strictly ethical reasons. When, towards the end of The Methods of Ethics, he discusses the rules of ordinary morality, he is clear that these rules must be adhered to faithfully by ordinary people. But Utilitarian morality might give a special freedom from ordinary rules to special kinds of people:
on Utilitarian principles, it may be right to do, and privately to recommend, under certain circumstances, what it would not be right to advocate openly; it may be right to teach openly to one set of persons what it would be wrong to teach to others; it may be conceivably right to do, if it can be done with comparative secrecy, what it would be wrong to do in the face of the world; and even, if perfect secrecy can be reasonably expected, what it would be wrong to recommend by private advice or example. … Thus the Utilitarian conclusion, carefully stated, would seem to be this; that the opinion that secrecy may render an action right which would not otherwise be so should itself be kept comparatively secret; and similarly it seems expedient that the doctrine that esoteric morality is expedient should itself be kept esoteric.
(pp.22,57,58, John Gray, The Immortalization Commission, 2011)
The homo hypocritus hypothesis suggests that people will often find themselves having strong intuitions that it is moral for them to quietly evade the usual rules, while still advocating such rules for others. When could such intuitions offer strong support for the claim that such hypocrisy is in fact moral?
Added 2a: The issue here isn’t whether lies might ever be moral, such as with the proverbial lie to save Jews from the Nazis. The issue here is examples such that of Sidgwick’s socially-convenient lies on sex and religion, which gained him social support and prestige. What fraction of moral philosophers privately support that type of hypocrisy? How could we know?
Philosophy of Hypocrisy
Hypocritical society thrives on secrecy. Here's an example of suppressed knowledge. Spread the most classic secret, the supreme grand secret of the “lodge”, which, thanks to modern medicine, can be printed on a bumper sticker: VAGAL STIMULATION IS AS EFFECTIVE AS LSD. Behind the old “Iron Curtain” there was a disease recognized that isdeceitfully diagnosed to be schizophrenia in the West. It was called “shamans’disease” and is caused by scar tissue in the parasympathetic (muscarinic)nervous system. This nervous system is called “muscarinic” after the hallucinogenic drugmuscarine, found in the fly aminita mushroom; and, muscarine doesn’t cross theblood brain barrier. It works by exciting the whole muscarinic nervous systemand thereby overriding the inhibitory neurons in the brain. But, it is unpopularin the West due to the way it excites the digestive system.This has been kept secret by those who cash in on this secrecy, occultsecrecy. In yoga, the plexuses of the muscarinic nervous system are calledchakras, presented to the common people as “spiritual wheels of light along thespine”, but they are not in the spine, they are the major plexuses of theparasympathetic nervous system in the body.This muscarinic nervous system stimulation is called “kundalini” in yoga,and when yoga students reach the degree where they are allowed to know the truthabout their own bodies they must sign contracts of secrecy.So, your children may have only acquired scar tissue in theirparasympathetic nervous systems, which can be treated medically other ways, but,there are dopamine blockers to be sold, and, special interests want to keeptheir profitable secrets.Of course one international organization is behind this, a well knownsecret society, whose “temple” represents the human body, and whose “holy ofholies” represents where the largest muscarinic nerve, the vagus nerve, emergesfrom the brain into the body in the nasopharynx.LSD used to be used to carry out a horrible treatment called the“Clockwork Orange” treatment. Here the victim has over 50% of the brain awakenedconsciously for use. It is called by “Grof Transpersonal”, “perinatal matrix three”, andhere the victim experiences all the sufferings of people shown in a film bygoing backward and forward in time to inhabit each and every body shown,experiencing their torments as real as life.Today this is being done by exciting the parasympathetic nervous system by“waterboarding”. It was mentioned in an article about this, in a popular news magazine, that “efforts were made to have the water irritate the nasopharynx”, where the main trunk of thevagus nerve emerges from the brain, proceeding down into the body.Crucifixion also causes so much muscarinic nervous system stimulation thatthe victim will body switch into everyone he knows. God knows everyone, so it isknown that Jesus Christ is in you and I and everyone this way.When a “schizophrenic” patient has more that 50% of the brain consciously awakened (it shows on an MRI) they are catatonic, but they are out body switching into everyone and every character they have seen, even in every movie they ever saw. Less severeschizophrenic symptoms occur with brain use percentages less than 50%.The solution, to establish better treatment for our children, and fellow man, is to spreadthis knowledge to common public knowledge.
Reply, Reply All or Forward | More
One of my hobbie horses - is that i think hypocrisy is underrated.
1) i think that it is very hard not to be hypocritical, or to act in such a way that others cant paint you as hypocritical, often being intentionally hypocritical is just picking where you will do so rather than becoming more so. (ie the actual choice you are faced with is not the wholistic one).
2) I think the sort of problem where you lie to the nazi is pretty common, as is the sort of internal conflict case where you are addicted to a drug but say that it is bad.
and most importnatly
3) Often the hypocricy is solved by going with the immoral instinct - so a anti-hypocricy fetish can be a push for worse moral behaviour.