How Hypocrisy Works

By Leo Gura - November 3, 2026

Hypocrisy is largely unconscious. The hypocrite’s mind is not self-aware enough to see its own hypocrisy. When the hypocrisy is pointed out to it by outsiders, the mind is caught by surprise because it saw no hypocrisy there. So the mind gets defensive and tries to rationalize away the hypocrisy rather than owning up to it. Mind is so vast, subtle, and hairy that its hypocrisy goes unseen, because it is hard for the mind to keep track of all of its positions and beliefs. It is easy to see hypocrisy from outside, it is very difficult to see it from inside. The mind does not have conscious access to all its positions, utterances, and beliefs at once. Thanks to this, hypocrisy has plenty of room to hide in the shadows of the mind. Being a hypocrite is automatic, by default, unconscious. Not being a hypocrite requires lots of self-reflection, which is tedious, boring, and threatening.

The more conscious I become, the more hypocrisy I see in myself. It is unpleasant to catch one’s own hypocrisy because one doesn’t think of oneself as a hypocrite. Seeing one’s own hypocrisy is ugly, but it is healthy because you can’t fix what you can’t see.

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