Aug 6, 2009

Matters of Hypocrisy

The other day I was talking with a friend about some common acquintances we have. There's this woman, not much different from many other ones, that always presents herself strong and righteous. She claims firmly to talk her mind, tell the truth and hating gossip. It turns out she's a sucker for spreading malicious gossip about just about anybody. A woman were I work pretend to be serious and not minding other people's business. She makes angry comments about those who watch who comes in when, but then she's the first checking with the guards who came in after the entry-time, and at what time. Another coworker pretends to be very cautious and the epiphany of diplomacy, but she's coarse and extremely vulgar when she expresses herself. There are people often who present themselves as great scholars and bring down those who are not, when truth is they just throw around a few concepts they've memorized, but they don't really understand, and outside that narrow cup of data they ignore everything.

A woman pretended to study a lot of work-related stuff, but she just read it. Reading and studying are not the same, maybe it helps before a test, but not for life. Studying is about taking the knowledge with you forever.

A man pretends to know things better than others, and he goes all day meddling in other people's business and never taking care of his own job. Another pretends to be careful with money and an excellent manager when in fact he throws all his money in large chunks at some formless, hopeless project of his, too big for his head, and way to useless while saving on food, which he day after day scores by begging it out of the colleagues. He's pest-like, raiding office after office preying on coffee, coockies, crackers, chocolate bars, bread, cheese and just about anything he can squeeze out of the people he puts in hard spots with his shameless requestings.

Hypocrisy has an important part in our society. Diplomacy sometimes becomes a way of hypocrisy, because you don't say things as they are, but you embellish them or hide them according to your needs. You resource to hypocrisy often with your job, when you put a good face before someone you don't like, or pretend to dislike what others dislike to be part of the pack, or simply to avoid standing out as odd. But then there's the people who tells stuff that they were not asked to tell. People going around saying just how much they love sex, or this or that kind of sex, when nobody asked them in the first place, or people throwing excuses or justifications for this or that action, when no reasons were requested. This might not be hypocrisy per se, though it might be if the excuses are lies or blown up facts, but I believe those are worse than hypocrisy. And it's not about the things they say being truth or lies, because as long as they hurt nobody there's no problem with either they are one thing or the other. The problem is the imposition. That's stepping over the boundaries between people.

Lady, I don't care whether you like it up the ass or not: it's not my business. Dude, I ain't interested in knowing the reasons you have to pick the job you have now: it's not my business. Yo, I'm sure you've a pretty messed up life, and your significant other is a drag, and people don't get you and all you want and it might be material for a novel, but you know what it ain't? My business. (Took that from an episode of Supernatural ^_^)

I know that the absolute truth doesn't exists, that the truth lives individually, but decency does exist, respect does exist, only not in everybody.

1 comment:

Storm Bunny said...

Ah sí! Montones de conocidos comunes, por desgracia. A esos hay que regalarles un letrerito que diga: "Calladito Más Bonito".