In a recent article that appeared in Harper’s Magazine entitled On Hypocrisy, the author Clancy Martin touches briefly on the evolutionary hard-wiring of hypocrisy. What he points out, interestingly, underscores the irrelevances of the ad hominem argument while simultaneously drawing attention to the fact that moral fabric is less of a continuous weave and more of a patchwork quilt. Human morality is compartmentalized and it is context specific. Clancy points out that “…the self, as Nietzsche once helpfully described it, is a kind of oligarchy wherein different sets of beliefs can be entertained (and even committed to, cherished, defended) depending on the needs of the self in different situations. A brutal tyrant can still be a loving father, because those roles require different and incompatible belief sets.” If we are to accept the truth of this argument (as Martin, and the evolutionary psychologist whom he quotes, Robert Kurzban, might urge us to) we can immediately see two things. The first is that it is futile to attack a person’s logic on the basis of perceived moral shortcomings. Clearly the cognitive mind that rationalized an argument could live in a space built upon an entirely contrary, or at least different, moral platform than the cognitive mind that rationalized a negative action. The second thing we can take from Nietzsche’s suggestion that the self may have many genuinely different moral expressions is an extension of the first. I do think it is still worth pointing out. “But he was such a loving husband and father, I don’t understand how he could have…” or “But all the other mothers looked up to her as an archetype of parenting skills…” are sentiments at which Kurzban and Nietzsche might smile knowingly. Gangsters and murderers can make great parents and chairpeople of medical ethics committees can be sadists. These are extreme examples, but I make them merely to point out the challenge of bucketing people into categories of “good” or “bad”. For me, the lesson within a lesson from this short article on hypocrisy is this: always be slow to judge, and never let your judgements be too rigid - allow them to change. People are extremely dynamic and apparently somewhat context-specific.
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