The ethics of hypocrisy

Suppose you commit a bad deed, the severity of which depends on your upbringing, culture, environment, and philosophy. What then?

Just because there are beggars everywhere asking for money, am I supposed to simply give them some? Of course not! They need to earn it somehow.

We humans are highly adaptive, and it takes only a few repetitions to get used to something. The same applies to our own actions: you might feel guilty the first time and less guilty the second. That fading guilt comes from our internal justifications, which always seem perfectly reasonable. They have to—after all, is it acceptable to feel bad every time it happens?

Killing animals is wrong, and eating them almost always entails their slaughter. But I’ve already done it many times; am I supposed to drown in guilt too?

Such a justification is perverse. It isn’t built to make sense; only to reduce discomfort. Its largest impact is on logical empathy: the reasoning that moves us to do good for our fellow human beings through understanding our part in a strong community of peers. We can still perform good deeds under such justifications, but mostly out of visceral compassion rooted in personal experience rather than a will to live in a harmonious society. It undermines every “good” act we attempt, because it clashes with our patchwork logic.

It’s depressing to live with a broken personal philosophy. Your internal arguments stop making sense; it feels like arguing with someone who keeps forgetting the premises. Sometimes it’s better to hand over a few coins, or to acknowledge the guilt and sit with it for a few minutes, than to drive your mind into an early grave.

I know I should give money to beggars, but I don’t want to. I’m not a bad person, am I?

You are, and you should feel bad.