Idealism and Hypocrisy

I pride myself an idealist. But lately I have realised it comes with a lot of hypocritical thinking and behaviour.

Osho says there are people who get angry, yet never accept that there is ‘anger’ in them. People who are greedy, but never see the greed in them.

We all have all the negatives and positives in us, yet we purposely only choose to see the positive. Especially the idealist.

Idealists also believe in enhancing the positive and suppressing the negative. They (or rather we) are not wrong. But it would be far easier to accept the negative as you aim to enhance the positive characteristics in you.

Another reason why idealists are complete hypocrites is that they see the negative characteristics as negative, not an outcome of something external. For example: Recently someone told me a story that their father’s online Amazon Pay account was hacked. It seems the thief was using the account for over 3 months to pay utilities.

In an ideal world, such an act would be properly criminal. But the guy/girl was using the stolen money to pay for bills. You automatically feel some sympathy, even though the act was ‘wrong’. You realise that all the negative actions are a consequence of helplessness and limitations.

Similarly positive actions are also a consequence of something negative. In the book, Osho says how sages in the past (and even today?) give humans bigger versions of greed. When someone tells a sage of his/her ambitions to become some form of success in the materialistic world, the sage turns their greed into a higher form of greed. Sage advises them to aim for ‘permanent’ success in form of Mukti/Moksh. And then tells them how to achieve this ‘permanent’ success.

So in reality, the businessmen like Ambanis or Tatas are far less greedy compared to the sage sitting in the Himalayas.

Idealism has its own limitations and has hypocrisy intertwined into it because it ignores the benefits of ‘negative’ characteristics. World cannot really be split into right and wrong, but there are definitely right actions and wrong actions.