Denying My Hypocrisy

 The good doctor again . . . 

"Authenticity is a prized ideal.  We would like to see ourselves as having a relatively stable identity that expresses our core values over time.  There are few human attributes that excite more contempt than hypocrisy.  People whose actions do not accord with their professed beliefs become objects of derision.

Worse than the concealment of embarrassing moral lapses are the interpretations that allow us to continue doing things that erode our sense of ourselves.  We routinely invoke theories of accident, coincidence, and forgetfulness to explain behaviors that we do not wish to examine closely.

Denial is another way people lie to themselves.  Those indulging addictions commonly assert that they do not have a problem and can quit at any time, assertions that fly in the face of a catastrophic decline in their lives.  While no one can deny  the role of chance in human affairs, it is an act of laziness to ascribe to l uck most of what happens to us.  Once again, (Ed. Note: Once Again!!) people are reluctant to take responsibility for themselves, preferring easy excuses to difficult self-examination.

Hypocrisy:  The practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one's behavior does not conform.

Denial:  The action of declaring something to be untrue.  (Ed. Note: Notice how the definition stresses not that something is untrue but that an individual is claiming it to be untrue.  Crucial difference.)

This book that Dr. Livingston has written strikes the shit out of me in two ways: 1 - He pulls no punches, calling bullshit bullshit and 2 - He leans on a few simple concepts and then repeats them over and over again, using slightly different words.  It's like the Big Book that way, a book that would be a lot shorter if the people who read it paid attention to what they were reading.  I mean . . . how many times can we say that You Are The Problem before it sinks in?  

A lot, apparently.