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How Often Do We Justify Duplicity? What Are The Consequences?
Can we live without it?
Unknowing Pawns
Duplicity is something everyone despises and rejects. It is also something we fear. Our alarm is justified: when an element acts in two different ways regarding the same matter, we cannot predict the outcome. It is every logician’s worst nightmare. If we use a specific type of screw, we expect it to be the same type when we return to remove it. A flat screw that suddenly becomes a star screw is a problem. When it comes to people, duplicitous individuals offer us an account that differs from the one they gave or will give someone else. To them, we are unknowing pawns on a board only they can see.
Hypocritical V Duplicitous
We often use the terms hypocritical and duplicitous interchangeably, but the differences are worth exploring. While hypocrisy will lead us to judge an event differently depending on the audience, I find this is more an act of survival or cowardice than one of shrewd strategy. The hypocritical subject will publicly claim the virtue of something they secretly despise or defame a practice they carry out when everybody looks the other way for fear of the public’s reaction. Hypocrisy is irritating, deplorable and ultimately debilitating, but more pathetic than immediately harmful. In contrast…