And just like that, January has come and gone.
Named for the Roman god Janus, the two-faced deity of dawns, births, weddings, and new ventures, it’s a month can feel both energising and chaotic. Fitting, given the poet Ovid claimed Janus was fashioned out of primordial disorder at the dawn of existence; anyone stumbling through those murky post-holiday weeks can relate. Days blur. Invitations go unanswered. We hardly know which deadline is next. Small wonder, then, that Janus also governed transitions and endings, boundaries, gates, thresholds, and bridges. The Latin root for door, ianua, gives us his name; Janus was literally the ‘doorman’ (ianitor), granting or denying access to celestial realms.
Yet Janus, with his two faces, also represents that most egregious of contemporary sins: hypocrisy. The charge flashes across our screens daily: politicians who preach austerity while basking in largesse, celebrities championing green causes while hopping private jets, policymakers waltzing around regulations. The list is endless. Try it. Open your web browser and do a news search for ‘hypocrisy.’ You’ll find endless exposés: the Left for Biden’s family pardons, the Right for the GOP’s betrayal of values in US Senate nominations, Congress members trading stocks. No corner is exempt.
And that doesn’t even touch on that prized artifact in our modern news cycle, the ‘gotcha’ moment, landing with special force when a public figure’s actions clash with their carefully curated persona. Such cries have surrounded recent allegations against author Neil Gaiman, leaving many fans reeling: How could someone we admired behave in ways at odds with what we assumed they stood for?
The etymology of hypocrite, coming from the ancient Greek hypokrites meaning an actor pretending to be someone else on stage, reminds us we’re all prone to role-playing. This is especially true in an era of 24/7 news cycles, our social media-monitored existence and reduced privacy (remember privacy?), where the vast archive of everything we’ve ever said or posted is there for the finding, leading to frequent revelations of our own contradictions.
And when we are sprung, as we all are at some point, caught in tangled inconsistencies of human complexity, we run the risk of being gleefully exposed and damaged in terms of reputation and standing; possibly cancelled. As a species, we are ever-ready to be outraged at the brazen and not-so-brazen human-ness of our peers and neighbours. We are quick, way too quick perhaps, to judge, and we judge by standards that we ourselves may not meet. Strange how easy is it to pillory someone for a lack of compassion.
Our collective outrage toward hypocrisy can be swift, reflecting an impulse likely rooted in our earliest ancestors’ fear of banishment. They realised that losing the tribe’s trust, getting shown the cave door as it were, was a fatal risk. It was in our best interests to be seen to be a team player, maintaining the social contract and abiding by the tribe’s moral code and expectations.
A 2017 paper from the Australian National University, Hypocrisy and Moral Authority, puts this impulse in context: ‘Charges of hypocrisy are a significant and widespread feature of our moral lives,’ the authors write, because ‘hypocrites invite moral opprobrium [as] persons who have undermined their claim to moral authority … a kind of standing that they occupy within a particular moral community.’ Once you forfeit that standing, you may be cast out, professionally, socially, or literally. Our survival instincts bristle at that prospect, which may explain our hair-trigger sensitivity to signs of insincerity. We are hardwired to maintain good standing in our social groups.
The question of what to let go, and what to hold to the fire, is at the heart of moral life. Accountability is vital in both private and public spheres, but maintaining perspective matters too. Not every double standard merits the same level of public shaming.
'We rage against others' faults, blissfully unaware that we may simply be yelling at our own reflection. Sometimes we would do well to first remove the plank from our own eye.'
A politician manipulating laws for personal gain is a far cry from a distracted neighbour cutting corners on a community project. Conflating every imperfection with grand betrayal reduces us to perpetual scolds, losing sight of the more serious transgressions that corrode trust. And yet, day to day, we must decide: Should we call out hypocrisy or let it slide, recognising that we, also, are consistently inconsistent in our own lives?
Needless to say, many of us are obliged ethically and legislatively to confront certain situations. That is as it should be. But there are also instances when, in the grand scheme of things, petty hypocrisies can be privately addressed and yet publicly and corporately ignored?
And how deeply should we explore our reasons for choosing either option? Settling for peaceful acceptance of ‘each to their own’ and minding our own business may suggest seasoned wisdom, or perhaps apathy. And when we do confront it, are we seeking justice, vindication, or simply the thrill at exposing someone else’s failings? Raging against inconsistencies may be attributable to a more refined ethical stance, or it may just be the impatient energy of youth coupled with the juicy thrill of hoisting someone on their own petard.
These aren’t trivial questions, especially since pointing a finger at someone else’s double standards can boomerang onto our own. Holding up a mirror to hypocrisy, we will always run the risk of glimpsing our own reflection.
This is where Janus, with one face looking forward and the other looking back, feels so apt for a season of new beginnings and re-evaluations. January might have given us all a brief lull in the frantic work cycle, and with that, a chance to recognise our own contradictions. Do we decide that enough is enough, that certain inconsistencies demand accountability, even outrage? Or do we move on, identifying the transgression as small stuff in a world crowded with bigger problems? It’s no wonder we needed those weeks spent at the beach or in our favourite café, bracing for the next calendar year of drama, mindful of how often it involves discussing ‘two-faced’ behaviour in our midst.
The question of what to let go, and what to hold to the fire, is at the heart of moral life. Accountability is vital in both private and public spheres, but so it discernment and maintaining perspective.
We are, most of us, world-class experts when it comes to identifying the shortcomings of others. A mate’s spinelessness, a colleague’s arrogance, a partner’s maddening insecurity, each flaw sticks out like a sore thumb, and we are tireless in cataloguing them. And while no single group corners the market on moral failings, we sometimes act as though our opponents are uniquely afflicted. The same trick of perception plays out in the office, at the pub, around the dinner table.
But if we were to take a hard look in the mirror, we might glimpse an unsettling truth: the faults that drive us spare in others are often, in some inconvenient form, alive and well in ourselves. We rage against others' faults, blissfully unaware that we may simply be yelling at our own reflection. Sometimes we would do well to first remove the plank from our own eye.
We cannot afford to treat every misstep as evidence of deep betrayal, nor can we ignore serious violations. The lesson of the equivocal, mysterious Janus might be that genuine moral clarity lies in balancing justifiable outrage with humility about our own shortcomings. This isn’t to say that human failings don’t exist, or that we should let serious wrongdoing slide. But maybe, instead of leaping to righteous fury, if we entertain the radical notion that we, too, are riddled with flaws, we might respond with a little compassion, not just to others, but to ourselves.
Holding others accountable is vital, but so is meeting them and ourselves with empathy.
So next time someone’s behaviour sends your blood pressure soaring, take a breath. Instead of doubling down on condemnation, ask: what if this thing I despise… also exists in me? The flaw won’t disappear, but maybe the rage will. And in its place, a little grace might grow.
Barry Gittins is a Melbourne writer.