Under My Skin

Language is an ever-evolving negotiation of sounds and meanings. Words are the best tools we have at our disposal to understand each other. When we share a common agreement on the use and meaning of our words, communication happens. When the utterances and written symbols we employ fall on deaf ears or confounded eyes, we become nothing more than “noisy gongs and clanging cymbals,” as indecipherable as trying to read Paul’s Corinthian epistle in its original Greek. That may be why each generation is challenged in understanding its predecessors and successors. For our words are continually morphing into something unintelligible to those who don’t have “ears to hear and eyes to see.”

A case in point lies with the recent elevation of a number of prefixes to the status of stand-alone words. I doubt anyone in my youth would have ever used “dis” unless they were unable to pronounce “th” sounds or were speaking in dialects then associated with the less educated. Today “dis” is an oft-used verb—in both present and past tense forms—describing those who dismiss us or throw disparaging remarks our way. Other former prefixes have also joined the rank of nouns in everyday discourse, such as meta, trans, semi, super and hyper. Of these, I find hyper and its opposite, hypo, to be telling descriptors in conveying how we try to categorize and understand people—including ourselves. 

We’ve all had our share of encounters with individuals for whom the prefix hyper fits like a glove. Hyperactive people can’t sit still for long. Once their fidgeting was viewed as a condition people outgrew, sooner or later. Now it is a personality trait to which we must learn to adapt. Hypersensitive people get their feelings hurt by any look or comment they can own as derogatory. Folks like this used to be regarded as touchy or fragile—now they are just entitled. Hypercritical people can throw a wet blanket on most any occasion that doesn’t measure up to their own standard of perfection. How fortunate it is for them that social media provides them with a global audience to vent their cynicism—said with much sarcastic hyperbole!

But what has been your reaction to hypos? It is another very good prefix, even if it hasn’t yet found its way into noun status. Literally meaning “under,” we most often hear it in medical reference in terms like hypoglycemia, hypothalamus, hypochondriac, and hypothyroidism. It is our favorite triangulated shortcut, hypotenuse, and serves as the underlying foundation upon which we venture to make a hypothesis or imagine an “under these circumstances” hypothetical scenario. Its most telling and distinctive reference for me is when it is used to describe certain people that all of us are quick to recognize and denounce—except when we see them staring back at us in a mirror: hypocrite. Now those folks really get under my skin, much more irritating and dreadful than any hypodermic needle.

Whether used in adjectival form, as in hypocritical, or as a noun-—hypocrisy and hypocrite—it has had a long, deceptive history. Originating in the Greek theater it described an essential element of the actor’s tool kit: the ability to pretend to be what you aren’t. Hypocrisy has always been the powerful stratagem of those intent on dissembling and fooling others into believing what was not true. When presented by artists on stage and screen, we appreciate their talent for leading us on in the service of story telling. Since entertainment entails the tacit agreement between performers and audiences that this is all pretend, the hypocrisy behind acting is not only necessary—it is expected and accepted. But when it becomes the gambit of choice by those who lead our country, guard our freedoms, and uphold those standards of justice and morality upon which our collective lives depend, it renders their words untrustworthy and their actions counterfeit. 

Those observing Lent are quite familiar with hypocrisy and hypocrites. The gospels contain 18 passages where Jesus calls out those whose moralistic double standards invalidated their claims to authority. In fact his invective became so linked to one particular group, the sect of the Pharisees, that in modern parlance a pharisaic attitude has become synonymous with hypocrisy. Apparently Jesus was never far from the wagging tongues and contemptuous glances of those whose hypocritical judgments put him in their crosshairs. Scribes, Pharisees, priests, Herodians and Romans—each appear to have been threatened by his words and his integrity. By exposing their hypocrisies he called into question their legitimacy as either the servants or the overlords of the people they so professed to lead. Like Socrates before him, Jesus accepted their sentence of death rather than submit to the power they masqueraded as just and righteous.

Hypocrisy appears to be alive and well today, its veneer of strength and confidence disguising its underlying fragility and dishonesty. Politicians are masters of its deceptions in appealing to the best interests of their constituents while maneuvering policies and programs to their own best advantage. Celebrities understand the lucre of marketing their brand to their best advantage, whether or not it is honest or true. Religious folks continue to be fair game in the annals of the hypocritical whenever their “do as I say, not as I do” message is exposed. But the faithful have no corner on hypocrisy. It can also be found among the legions of those who replace the gods of age-old faiths with those of their own making, in whose images they worship with evangelical passion and dogmatic assurance.  

We would be hard pressed to find an institution, nation, or cause célèbre without the taint of hypocrisy adorning its champions and devotees. For when push comes to shove, what drives all of us is self-interest, and that alone provides both the justification for and the energy behind all of our hypocritical agendas and ambitions. Perhaps that is why Americans are so divided and conflicted in this era of 21st Century discontent. Drowning in a sea of hypocrisy, we have become as cynical of the truth as we are fed up with those trying to sell us their verities like commodities on the open market.

Ulterior motives and double standards seem to be lurking beneath—you know, in the hypo realm—almost every present-day movement and cause. Are Democrats any more or less pure in motive than Republicans? Do any news outlets really present the unadulterated truth without slant, spin or other forms of fakery? Does the corruption of privilege so stick to one race or gender that those who are neither white nor male are automatically immune from its seductions and abuses? Can anyone claim the moral high ground when it comes to children’s well-being while exploiting them through target marketing, the allure of social media and the legal and political wedges we are driving between them, their parents and their schools? Is it possible to advocate for the rights and protection of women while pushing agendas that permit biological males to pre-empt them as athletes? Can any of us demand for ourselves what we would deny others, or call others to account for indulgences we readily and willingly accept and enjoy?  

Jesus may well have substituted “hypocrite” for “the poor” when he observed that they would always be with us. For hypocrisy is a human condition, one to which any of us, and indeed all of us, can fall prey. It is neither owned by nor respected by any particular race, nationality, religion, economic class or culture.  And as evidenced by the geopolitical drama playing out before our eyes in Europe, it is an essential element of the policies and practices, rhetoric and reality in which each nation participates, whether in cooperative or belligerent relationship. Hence the great challenge for any of us in discerning the truth, whatever flag we salute or leader we choose to follow.

All of us have moments in which our words are contradicted by our deeds. Sometimes we’re able to pull this off with the skill worthy of an Oscar.  And we may find the ruse so advantageous that we embrace it as our modus operandi, fooling most of the people most of the time. The more we have to lose, the more we have to protect and defend, the more we are likely to accept the terms of the deceptive bargain known as hypocrisy. And the more we invest ourselves in its perpetuation, the more we become its victim. For the truth will out, and it will ultimately set free those who are duped by its misguided pretense to power and moral rectitude.  And those who fall under the spell of its arrogance and deception, they too, sometimes later rather than sooner, will have their reward.

The best, last words on the subject should be those of the teacher who gave us the most telling indictment of, and remedy for, this all-too-human of our attitudes: 

“Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, “Let me take the speck out of your eye,” while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s  eye.”  Jesus of Nazareth as remembered in the Gospel of Matthew 7:1-5 (NRSV)

Christ Reproving The Pharisees, by James Tissot (1836-1902)