Let us start bluntly, because this is a serious matter. Hypocrisy is an appalling trait.
Definition: hypocrisy is the belief that a problematic trait or behaviour is legitimate — fine — when it exists in me, but manifestly illegitimate when it appears in somebody else.
As simple as that, and as dangerous.
Because hypocrisy blocks your ability to notice other people and to take them into account. That is true in the short term and enormously true in the long one.
Hypocrisy is lethal to our relationships. Because the moment you are operating under the internal mantra what I may do, she may not — because I earn, because I am cleverer, because of something — you are imposing rigid ranks and a contemptible hierarchy in your own living room.
And there is no better way of turning your partner into somebody who is hostile to you.
When that hostility turns into contempt and dismissal — perhaps the most lethal feelings there are — you are already breathing distance from the end.
But leave relationships aside. Let us talk about a modern, well-meaning form of it.
When we encourage the younger generation to realise themselves, we are promoting hypocrisy.
We preach to a young person to focus on her own wishes and her own dreams, and we direct her attention exclusively towards herself. The other becomes irrelevant. There is nothing to consider in a mother, a father, teachers, friends.
Woe to the twenty-year-old — or the twenty-five-year-old — who concludes that they may turn their back on everybody around them and focus on themselves because they are special.
That is the same structure as the crude version, and it is harder to see, because it does not present itself as a double standard. It presents itself as growth. But it produces exactly the same arrangement: a person for whom their own needs are self-evidently legitimate and everybody else's are an imposition.