Chapter 27. Hypocrisy Is a Symptom of Values
âWe take a somewhat different view of hypocrisy,â Equity Lord Alexander Chung-Sik Finkle-McGraw explains in Neal Stephensonâs seminal science fiction novel, The Diamond Age.
âIn the late-twentieth-century Weltanschauung, a hypocrite was someone who espoused high moral views as part of a planned campaign of deceptionâhe never held these beliefs sincerely and routinely violated them in privacy. Of course, most hypocrites are not like that. Most of the time, itâs a spirit-is-willing, flesh-is-weak sort of thing.â
âThat we occasionally violate our own stated moral code,â Major Napier said, working it through, âdoes not imply that we are insincere in espousing that code.â
âOf course not,â Finkle-McGraw said. âItâs perfectly obvious, really. No one ever said that it was easy to hew to a strict code of conduct.â
During Ontelaâs early days, we had a problem.
One of my cofounders overspent on some hardware. We had a budget, and he exceeded it. There wasnât a great reason for it, and he didnât check ahead of time.
I pointed it out to him. I donât remember the tone I used, which means I was probably snarky about it.
âWell, OK, Dan. How about if we save some money by not going over budget on travel, like you did last week? That should make up for it.â
He was right. I shut up.
This happened a few timesââYou did this.â âWell you did that.â After a while, we were blowing our budget in multiple ...
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