A hypocrite without knowing it...

Self justification requires willful ignorance

If you desire to justify yourself in any matter, the satisfaction of this desire requires you to be willfully ignorant. Why? Because in reality, every man at his best state is altogether vanity, which is less than nothing. But if you want to be something, it follows that you desire an appearance that is contrary to reality. And to justify yourself in this appearance, you need to convince yourself in spite of the truth. Hence, your willful ignorance.

This willful ignorance ensues from your selective gathering of supporting evidence, by accepting all favorable facts while rejecting the ones that are less favorable or even contrary ("cherry picking"). This selection is not based on reality, but rather on your desired appearance.

From this subjective perspective, you can control your "evidence threshold". This "threshold" is the amount of evidence that you need to convince yourself about something. The adjustment of this threshold, either by lowering the bar or raising the bar, allows you to justify yourself in your decision to either accept or reject something in spite of reality. 

Willful ignorance
allows you to be a hypocrite without knowing it

By seeking to justify yourself in your desired appearance rather than conforming your view to reality, you are feigning to be true what in reality is not true. This is hypocrisy. And this hypocrisy makes you a hypocrite.

But because of the willful ignorance that is required to justify yourself, it follows that while you are becoming an established hypocrite, you are not aware of your hypocrisy. And any initial awareness will eventually dissipate. And because your desire to justify yourself doesn't allow you to recognize your hypocrisy, you will never admit to it. Instead, when confronted with such allegation, you will simply "raise the bar" and conclude the allegation to be unfounded, because there was no evidence sufficient to prove it to you.

But if a hypocrite would recognize his hypocrisy, he would no longer be feigning to be true what in reality is not true. In that case, he would no longer be a hypocrite.

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"Self justification requires willful ignorance. And this willful ignorance allows a person to be a hypocrite without knowing it."

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