Did you know that smoking leads to lung cancer? That drinking in excess can damage your liver? That jumping off of a bridge can kill you? We all know all of these things, or at least the majority of us do. Yet every day there is someone smoking an entire pack of cigarettes, drinking an entire bottle of liquor, or also unfortunately, jumping off of a bridge. The human population is aware of all of the dangers around us. But we can't live without them. We consume unhealthy substances that we know are doing more damage than good, but they taste or feel good so we disregard the ugly truth. I call this phenomenon modern hypocrisy.
I define modern hypocrisy as the voluntary involvement in non-beneficial, maleficent activities. We know what is good and what is bad for us, yet we partake in those bad activities regardless of the consequences. But why? What drives people to behave in self-destroying ways?
A few of the possible reasons why we participate in unhealthy activities are: peer pressure, bad habit, conditioning, denial, misinformation or lack of education and I quote the indomitable Kanye West, "why everything that supposed to be bad, make me feel so good?"
These voluntary behaviors aren't only seen in the consumption of food and different substances but also in our usage of social media, which leads me to think that we are all just really screwed and it's far too late to do anything about it. Our cultures and society, instead of advising against these substances and distractions, rather advertises and promotes their usage. We are rapidly moving towards a society that promotes this ongoing hypocrisy and it's pretty sad. Are we all just going to keep making poor choices and damaging ourselves? Or are we going to remember that binge-watching netflix on a weekday is not a smart thing to do and that holding a cigarette in your mouth isn't actually cool?
We have the ability to make these choices and these choices can really make or break you. I just thought it was important to remember that.
Why is that hypocritical though? Like you said, "We know what is good and what is bad for us, yet we partake in those bad activities." Hypocrisy would be like pretending to believe that cigarettes are healthful in order to sell more but not actually smoking more to improve your health because of course you don't actually believe that. It's not hypocritical to do something that you know you shouldn't do.
ReplyDeleteI know I'm being pedantic but since you're defining a term and it's the title of this post it's probably worth mentioning.