Ransoms, hypocrisy, and bourgeois virtues
I saw a provocative article, “The Case for Paying Ransoms”, that argued that noted that European hostages of terrorist groups, unlike American and British hostages, tend to be returned alive, thanks to European governments paying ransoms. The US and UK governments, however, have a public policy of not negotiating with terrorists.
It appears that “governments like the Spanish, the French, and the Italian, have simply found other, more clandestine and covert ways of making such payments, through sudden increases in aid budgets and the like. The next move these governments make is simply to deny that such payments have been made.”
So this brings up a dilemma (which of course comes up in action films all the time):
Is it better to (a) remain morally consistent, refuse negotiation and ransom payment to an allegedly evil organization, but watch your citizens get beheaded? Or (b) sign up to a principled agreement not to negotiate with "terrorists," but then negotiate nonetheless, pay a large amount of money to release the citizens of your country, and simply deny the fact publicly?
In praise of hypocrisy?
The article argued for the second choice, which is to be hypocritical and deny negotiation while actually engaging it: “The effectiveness of the strategy depends on the fact that it is not openly acknowledged, and indeed that it is repeatedly repudiated in official statements and in international agreements by the governments in question.”
When reading this, I was not particularly shocked, because hypocrisy is everywhere and is quite official. In fact, almost all American news and political discourse revolves around hypocrisy. This is apparent when it comes to sex scandals, corporate payola, NSA domestic surveillance, complaints about government spending, railing against privatization of education while sending one’s own children to private schools, and so on. I get the impression that Americans give much more priority to the appearance of “moral outrage” than other people in the world. Nobody wants to be pointed out as a hypocrite, it seems.
The trouble is that hypocrisy is arguably the single most important bourgeois “virtue”, the collective decision to look the other way when confronted with something disturbing, to make a euphemism of it if it is seen at all. The “liberal”, tolerant society depends to a great deal on hypocrisy. This is how “tolerance” works: claiming to believe one thing while not acting entirely consistently with that claim. For example, religious tolerance was hard won: remember when Catholicism were considered anti-American by many? Was the solution really that Protestants decided Catholicism was OK after all? In part, perhaps, but also in part a result of hypocrisy. Remember when Mel Gibson said his (then) wife was doomed to go to hell?
A certain level of hypocrisy seems necessary for a liberal society. Many people who claim to believe abortion is baby murder tend to still be OK eating at a restaurant owned by someone who believes otherwise. Many “progressive” programmers seem to have no problem with buying Apple products despite suspect sweatshop labor practices at Foxconn. And so forth: in fact, capitalism itself is reliant on hypocrisy to stay alive. If people bought and sold mostly with their supposed moral conscience rather than with their wallets, markets would fall apart. Overall, nobody cares whether the gas station owner is doing drugs, beating his wife, or hates their ethnicity.
Is there an alternative to hypocrisy that doesn’t just lead back to all-out wars among every possible faction believing in their principles so strongly that they are willing to die and kill for them? I don’t know. I just know that on some uncomfortable level, complaining about hypocrisy is the essence of hypocrisy itself. This may just be how human beings have to operate. But we’re not supposed to openly admit that, are we? It would be like going to your dear friend’s parents’ home for dinner and then screaming at them for being animal killers for serving meat if you’re an ethical vegetarian. That would be such bad manners.
How do you feel about hypocrisy? Do you acknowledge its social value? Do you admit to it yourself? Do you call out those you consider hypocrites?
(Update of 2014-11-19)
Here is a critique of the original article.
(Update of 2014-12-05)
On a related topic, here is an interesting critique of “human rights” by Eric Posner.
I think you're conflating two meanings of hypocrisy. You're being a hypocrite when you're acting exceedingly nice with someone you hate. That's one aspect of hypocrisy, and I can see what you mean when you say that a tolerant society needs it, even though I don't agree : being tolerant is being able to respect differing opinions, i.e., being polite even with people you disagree with. Politeness is not hypocrisy, exaggerated politeness is. (I'm taking “politeness” in a broad sense here, as in “not criticize all the time” or even “not kill one another”.)
Anyway, in your examples (boycotting restaurants and gas stations or buying Apple products), you're using a different meaning of hypocrisy, the one that is about double standards. You're being a hypocrite when you engage in behaviors you criticize in others, or when you acknowledge problems only when it is not inconvenient for you. Progressive programmers who have no problem buying Apple products despite the conditions in which they have been built are hypocrites in this regard; but progressive programmers who do have a problem, but buy anyway because they feel they have a good reason to do so, are not (necessarily) hypocrites.
Finally, I'm surprised that you think “nobody cares whether the gas station owner is doing drugs, beating his wife, or hates their ethnicity”. I sure care (well not about them doing drugs, but I'm talking about the general picture), and I know a lot of others who do, that's the whole point of boycott. And I don't see how capitalism relies on hypocrisy : if enough people stop buying some unethical product, the market adapts itself and ethical substitutes are made available.
Actually I'm disagreeing so much, I think I probably have missed the whole point of your article, so I'll just stop here!
Yes, there are many forms of hypocrisy (public/private, political/moral, as the article discussed), but I didn't go into detail on all the different aspects of it. It's a big topic I didn't mean to do justice to in this little post, which didn't have a particular message other than that it's easy to dismiss hypocrisy even though it's actually fundamental to a liberal tolerant society. What that means about liberalism is another topic in itself.
Boycotts do sometimes work, but often they themselves are a form of hypocrisy too, in the sense that why boycott one thing when not another, assuming that the other is more disagreeable.
I don't pretend to have easy answers or the high moral ground on anything here. I do think it is useful to examine incentives and consistency and the game-theoretic aspect of what we say vs. what we do.
Well I still don't understand/agree. Tolerance is about respect. You can respect something without faking enthusiasm. Hypocrisy (in the first meaning I mentioned) is faking enthusiasm. Therefore hypocrisy has nothing to do with how a liberal tolerant society works.
About boycotts: you boycott one thing at a time because you cannot change everything at the same time; you still need to eat, work, sleep, etc. The choice of what to boycott depends on a lot of parameters (easiness, perceived efficiency, how much you disagree with the company/product, whether it is a personal choice or you just decide to follow an organized boycott that happens to exist, etc.), and boycotting one thing rather than another is not intrinsically inconsistent or hypocritical. Unless you're (consciously) pretending that the thing you choose not to boycott is not problematic, of course. But I highly doubt it is “often” the case.
Basically I'm under the impression that following your reasoning, there are only two ways of being consistent: not caring about anything, or removing oneself entirely from society. That's very wrong, and dangerous too, because it implies that one should not care about consistency if one wants a progressive, liberal, tolerant society. Yet, as you said, it is important/useful to examine one's own incentives and consistency.
I may revisit this topic later with a more specific analysis of each point, but for now I'll say that the whole point of my rambling is my personal doubt about the possibility of ultimate consistency. And as you note, that does leave the disturbing conclusion of nihilism. My favorite novelist of all time, Dostoyevsky, wrestled with these issues. His personal journey from idealism to hardcore conservatism was an interesting one. I don't think any philosopher has definitively solved these problems, and that includes the father of modern liberalism, John Rawls (or his rival Robert Nozick in his revival of classical liberalism as libertarianism).
I used to have a problem with one particular store chain. I despised their , in my opinion, exaggerated political correctness. One very wise man gave me a good piece of advice about it: when in doubt -, use your common sense. So I did, and I continue to buy their products. Is it hypocrisy? Maybe it is. But their products are better and less epensive then others on the market, and the company workers and CEOs don't go around killing innocent people, so...
Is ultimate consistency possible? In my field of expertise ( I'm a mom of 4 children) it is not.