Right and wrong

The older I get the more I see hypocrisy in how we judge others. This isn’t because we are all horrible people. Rather, it is due to the complex systems in life and the human brain’s inability to process full systems.

Instead, we rely on linear thinking. We break the complex system down into something understandable. But we do it in a way that evaporates the many aspects of the system in our mind. We ignore them. It isn’t that they no longer exist, it is that they no longer exist in our comprehension.

Once we have removed them our thinking, we pretend they don’t exist. We go about pushing our opinions and judgments as if we are aware. But we aren’t aware of these other aspects.

It ends with us being only able to see our point of view. We don’t see the full system. We eliminate the system in favor of our preferred perspective. This, then, makes it easy to sit back and judge others who do not see the world in this way.

It could be that we judge our friends and neighbors. It could be the opposing political party. It could be that we judge those we work with.

The common theme is that we cannot comprehend why they are so stupid. Or so evil. Or so brainwashed. Yet this is all of us. This is a human condition.

Why does this occur? There is a great book called The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt. In the book he spends hundreds of pages explaining our flawed ability to reason. I can’t begin to outline everything in this article, but what stuck with me was that it all stems from our emotions.

The ability to choose comes from our ability to feel. If someone suffers a brain injury and cannot feel the same emotions as the rest of us, they struggle to make simple decisions. They don’t have the ability to reason.

Yet, Haidt outlines very clearly that the reason we form such strong opinions is also due to our emotions. He says it is like a person riding on an elephant. The elephant, with all of its power, represents our emotions. The person on top, is our brain.

His argument is that the person on top is looking for ways to appease the elephant. The elephant runs the show. The person on top assumes they are in control. They can reason and explain their actions and beliefs. But they are blind to the giant elephant and its power and influence.

This makes it easy to start to see why we get so hypocritical. If it is our emotions first, then our justifications, we change our thinking based on feelings.

For example, if someone you dislike gets thrown in jail for stealing, you would likely say they got what they deserved. If someone you like gets thrown in jail for stealing, you might claim the system is corrupt and unfair. Yet the same system and the same rules applied (in this example at least).

Yet you form a different opinion. How you feel about the person and the situation controls your thoughts. Your mind follows and creates justification. Then it pretends that is the reason why it formed the opinion. But this couldn’t be further from the truth.

In the Tao Te Ching one passage says that the wise sage avoids extremes. If we know that we have flawed thinking because we are human, how can we jump so far to the extremes? That means we have a larger elephant. Therefore, the sage avoids those extremes knowing that the more extreme one’s views the more blind they are to the full system.

Being overly judgmental is one thing. Being hypocritical goes along with it. But to break free from pushing blame on everyone else, we need to stop letting the elephant push us around.

We will still feel those emotions. We will still feel the elephant. But we can stop ourselves and say that we know what we are thinking, and feeling is flawed. Suddenly, the extreme viewpoints seem ridiculous. That is how you take the wisdom from the Tao and apply it. We can still feel the emotions, but we stop ourselves from jumping to extremes from those feelings.