Hypocrisy

So, today I had a very interesting discussion about hypocrisy. It was a discussion about a character in a novel, but it turned into so much more than that. It turned into personal attacks, and large disagreements between all the people that were involved in this discussion.

However, I would like to point out one thing. Everyone on this Earth is a hypocrite in some way, shape or form. Everyone has done something in their life that could be considered hypocritical. If I were to judge someone for being a hypocrite, that makes me a bigger hypocrite that judges herself.  People have all made mistakes in their life. People do things that they know are wrong, just because they want to. It doesn't mean that they don't know what they do is wrong. It doesn't mean that they don't want to do things differently. But sometimes things happen differently than what a person wants.

It's different to actually say something than it is to do it. It takes a lot more strength to do something than it does to say it. And sometimes, a person doesn't have that strength.

In the novel A Catcher in the Rye (which the discussion was about), the main character, Holden finds himself saying that he doesn't want to have sex with girls if he doesn't like them, but he breaks that rule the same night. He realizes that it is so much harder to actually say no than it is to want to say no. And he can't do it. However, that doesn't make him a terrible person. It doesn't even mean he wants to do what he did. However, he couldn't find the strength to follow his rule. Just because his actions don't like up with his thoughts doesn't make him terrible. It doesn't mean that he doesn't treat women the way he's supposed to, as he shows that he actually does have a lot of respect for women throughout the novel. But he is a 16 year-old boy and he will make mistakes, and he will do things differently than he wants to. That's not because he has no respect for women. It's because he's human, just like everyone else.