Volume 7 · The Long Afternoon · Essay 171

Moral Hypocrisy

Moral Hypocrisy is a small handle on a large fact. Grip it, and the fact becomes easier to carry.

The idea is simple, and like most simple ideas it is easy to nod at and hard to use. The nod is free. The use costs attention, every day, in small change.

Strip it to the floor and you find an old instruction: look carefully, judge slowly, act decently. The new name exists because the old instruction keeps being forgotten.

Consider the railway porter who has carried ten thousand suitcases. He knows what nobody packs: a plan for what happens after arrival.

In the end, life asks only whether we were awake while it happened. You will meet this idea again this week, wearing different clothes. Now you will recognise it.