The episode on Hypocrisy

[trenton]

I finished watching the episode and I think there is one major flaw and one major point Leo hit perfectly on the head.

I think the main flaw is that the list of double standards was too long and it distracted from the deeper points he attempted to point to. This deeper point would be the lack of bias and other methods for avoiding hypocrisy.

I would like to use this thread to include other methods for addressing hypocrisy aside from the homework assignments.

One observation I have is that when you judge someone in the heat of the moment, there is commonly a temptation to mimic this behavior. It's like "if you do this to me then I'm gonna do it to you." We could say that criticizing people for a certain action creates an image in your subconscious mind. This image in your subconscious mind can still influence your behavior. It is not just that for example, I am a secret homosexual, therefore I criticize homosexuals so that I can appear straight. An alternative form of hypocrisy can be I criticize homosexuals so much that my mind is therefore conditioned to think of gay sex, and I therefore develop stronger homosexual tendencies as a consequence of focusing on and criticizing homosexuals.

I think a lot of people miss the reverse application of hypocrisy and how it can be created through judgement. A second example would be a woman who criticized police officers for over playing the situation like it was worse than it was. She ended up doing the same thing. This subconscious image can come up in a variety of ways in all kinds of fields.

I remember in radical honesty it talked about how people think self criticism is a virtue. I am guilty of this. It is the reverse extreme of hypocrisy And I call it hypercritical rather hypocritical with hypo meaning little and hyper meaning a lot. In one's effort to avoid hypocrisy, you could paralyze yourself. This is part of what stops me from talking. In essence, I should be able to clear all of these standards, but I don't care if others can. It is about me trying to be the best and thinking self criticism is the way to do it while not worrying about criticizing others, reasoning that it helps avoid hypocrisy.

The deeper point about a lack of bias is dead on.

First of all, the reason I am drawn to politics is because of objectivity. When I see people fighting and arguing, I see that people think with so many biases and ideologies that they can't think straight. They are unable to view the situation impartially. What I begin to wonder is, what would politics look like without bias? How different would it be? Who would I have to become in order to be a politician who thinks impartially, has no double standards, and really looks at the situation from many angles with an open mind? In order to be good at politics you would have to be very selfless. You would need to be willing to let every assumption, every value you hold, and every ideology come into question. You would have to be very humble and self reflective rather than defending yourself with so many rationalizations. This is the beauty that attracts me to politics. It is not about justice. It is not about fighting the oil companies, corrupt politicians, or terrorists per say. It is about using politics to grow yourself into the best person you can be. As a consequence justice can happen and you will still do your best to ensure these things happen. But just imagine how profoundly different politics would be if the main goal was the greater jihad, and it were very conscious of creating lesser jihads. I still fail sometimes because I see it as practical to urge action and I see very limited ways to move society forward in politics otherwise.

But I hope you are the beauty in objectivity and a lack of bias that I see, and why I want to become such a thing so much. It is almost like the Buddhist desires desirelessness, and I am biased toward biaslessness. I still fail though, but it would be cool if it could be done somehow. Swinging the pendulum to hyper criticism of oneself still doesn't do it. This is the reason why I didn't white wash my memories when I was ashamed of myself as a child. A common lie is "it was just a bad dream." Self honesty is pivotal for developing biaslessness. The homework assignments and the book list will touch on these points.

One of the themes I noticed in chess coaches is that chess is intended to reach us objectivity. Many chess players make mistakes because of their emotions. They make one mistake so they make another and another and another until they lose. When people are attached to winning and being the best, they cannot think straight. Objectively, chess is a draw if both sides play well and there will be no winning brilliant queen sacrifice. When we want to win so badly, we over press and end up losing. This happens even to grandmasters and world champions. I did this in chess club and in my family. Eventually, the people in chess club were too afraid to play me and I had a hard time finding people who really want to study and challenge me. Most of them were casual players making moves that were obviously mistakes from my point of view. This is how you lose the meta game when you destroy people so badly they leave chess club because they feel stupid. 

Perhaps this is the beauty that science aspires to be. It tries to take emotions and philosophy out of the equation to stick with mathematical proofs. What science is trying to do is remove bias and attachment to spiritual teachings commonly found in religion. Science fails in this task for many reasons, but the theme is the same. Science is an attempt to get at truth, but easily corrupted by pragmatism like religion. Religion is also infatuated ideals like God, love, truth, and so forth so goes about it in deeply corrupt ways. We could say that becoming unbiased is the seeking of love, but the process is still very biased because of survival.

I have yielded results with begin even handed. A good example is when my sisters are arguing. When I point out that one side is making more rational arguments, they accuse me of favoritism and picking sides. When my sister started accusing me of this, I pointed out the times that I sided with her rational arguments and sided against her irrational arguments. She smiled at me silently As if she saw that I was making a genuine effort to be intellectually honest regardless of who wins the argument. This What we say people are supposed to do In arguments all the time. We are supposed to weigh the evidence and have an open minded impartial discussion, but almost nobody ever does it. This why arguing and debating seems so futile sometimes when the goal is to distract from your own bullshit And win the debate rather than being the best person you can be while seeking truth for truths sake. As a result I usually stay out arguing, but I can't always avoid it. My sisters treat arguments like I treat chess games and it isn't fun to argue with them.

[Leo Gura]

Good. You are thinking properly.

Yes, being too self-critical can easily become a trap. The point is not so much to criticize yourself all the time but to observe how your mind cherrypicks with its logic and simply to be more fair with your own logic.

Whatever logic you subscribe to, apply it evenly, even when it doesn't suit you or your tribe.

Edited August 29, 2022 by Leo Gura

[LSD-Rumi]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

Yes, being too self-critical can easily become a trap

My OCD raped my mind using this very techinuqe for years now. Sometimes it makes me hate being an open-minded person. 

[Bobby_2021]

Please send the link to the video. I remember watching, from the points you liad out in the post, but can't remember the title. 

[LSD-Rumi]

@Bobby_2021 Dude it is  this week episode, lol. 

[Bobby_2021]

52 minutes ago, LSD-Rumi said:

@Bobby_2021 Dude it is  this week episode, lol. 

Ok. I missed it then. 

[trenton]

@Bobby_2021

Here it is.

 

[Bobby_2021]

10 minutes ago, trenton said:

@Bobby_2021

Here it is.

 

Thanks. ✌️

[Razard86]

Hypocrisy is just paradox, the only way to avoid it is to be in balance. Whenever you are out of alignment or balance you are being a hypocrite. Quite a tall order to embody that.

For example many people think judgment is a thought, heh its even more deeper than that. The MOMENT you get triggered by ANYTHING that is judgment. Judgment is rejection/denial of what it is, and you don't need me to tell you at this point what that means. 

When nothing can trigger you hypocrisy falls away as you are in an embrace of what is.

Edited August 29, 2022 by Razard86

[trenton]

I could add to this discussion a warning about this work.

By eliminating our double standards, we create a more logically consistent worldview. This can cause our worldview to become more convincing and appear to be true. An important warning is that just because our worldview is logically consistent, doesn't mean it is true. We can still reach out conclusions through false premises.

To give an example, my mother made a clear effort to maintain a logically consistent worldview while being a Catholic. She took it very far.

if she has faith in her religion, then she does not hold it to be more valid than other religions. You could have faith in any belief system and it would be as valid as her own. She took it so far to conclude that morality is relative. She will follow the moral compass of Catholicism, but if in your worldview homosexuality is acceptable, then she will not judge you for it. A Catholic can go so far as to judge you by your standards and themselves by their own standards. This would give you a religious person who does not believe in proselytizing and convincing others of their correctness. even so, they can still have the problem of false beliefs as in any worldview.

Noticing our double standards can help us eliminate our own internal contradictions, but we can still be honestly mistaken. These honest mistakes become more likely because our logically consistent worldview starts to seem very convincing, so we hold it as if it were reality. Perhaps this is common in science. After many studies, science can become so convincing that we underestimate it's fallibility.

Remember that even seemingly fair and consistent standards could be founded upon a false premise.

[Razard86]

19 hours ago, trenton said:

I could add to this discussion a warning about this work.

By eliminating our double standards, we create a more logically consistent worldview. This can cause our worldview to become more convincing and appear to be true. An important warning is that just because our worldview is logically consistent, doesn't mean it is true. We can still reach out conclusions through false premises.

To give an example, my mother made a clear effort to maintain a logically consistent worldview while being a Catholic. She took it very far.

if she has faith in her religion, then she does not hold it to be more valid than other religions. You could have faith in any belief system and it would be as valid as her own. She took it so far to conclude that morality is relative. She will follow the moral compass of Catholicism, but if in your worldview homosexuality is acceptable, then she will not judge you for it. A Catholic can go so far as to judge you by your standards and themselves by their own standards. This would give you a religious person who does not believe in proselytizing and convincing others of their correctness. even so, they can still have the problem of false beliefs as in any worldview.

Noticing our double standards can help us eliminate our own internal contradictions, but we can still be honestly mistaken. These honest mistakes become more likely because our logically consistent worldview starts to seem very convincing, so we hold it as if it were reality. Perhaps this is common in science. After many studies, science can become so convincing that we underestimate it's fallibility.

Remember that even seemingly fair and consistent standards could be founded upon a false premise.

Reality is not logical at all, its impermanent. Since reality is impermanent all logic will never be consistent because it constantly changes. For something to be consistent it would have to stay the same. The only thing that is consistent is change. Good luck trying to keep up with the change or predict it. There are an infinite number of changes that are happening this very moment in an infinite number of ways in an infinite number of forms in reality. Too many to count. We walk around with very finite maps and think we got reality figured out when the truth is...we don't know jack at all.

That is the point of spirituality to give up your belief that you have in knowledge and rest in being. I merely talk about things I experienced but my finite intelligence knows nothing, only the little it can gleam. In comparison to Universal Intelligence that intelligence is infinitesimal. 

[trenton]

@Razard86 very true.

In the end all worldviews are partial because we would be driven insane if all of the information in the universe were poured into us at once as if to know every memory of being that ever lived. Any logic we make will be based on our own biases that help us to make sense of an infinitely complex universe.