Our society may be rid of every ill except one — hypocrisy. Our incoherent weights have almost become that part of society’s fabric we can’t let go. What we crucify others for in public, we lustfully enjoy in our closets.
The irony of today’s society is that what we are living a whole cycle of hypocrisy. We scream during the day, “Close down the brothels!” yet keep that same brothel running at night. We condemn prostitution yet make sex a “term and condition” to our job vacancies.
We shout, “Our politicians are corrupt!!!” yet go queuing at their doorsteps for our daily bread when we know they are not human bakeries. We whine when they don’t give fat offerings in church. How else can they satisfy our selfish needs if they don’t top up their salaries by stealing!? We can’t create monsters and scream when they act as one. It’s all a hypocrisy thing!
We yell, “These politicians think only about their families!” yet shame our politician kin who honestly serves his nation without falling for our selfish baits. We ridicule them when they leave office poor. Hypocrisy fuels corruption and decadence!
Ponder. You think there’s everything wrong with a commissioner’s pronouncement that some Ghanaians are more Ghanaian than others. However, you seem to see nothing wrong with your perception that your tribe is better than everyone else’s.
You hate racism with every fiber of your being. When you’re discriminated against because of your skin color, you feel treated like a non-existent being. However, you serve an equal measure of treatment to your fellow neighbor because they don’t belong to your tribe. You regard another as less human because they belong to a different gender.
Discrimination of any sort is wrong. If you don’t deserve it, no one deserves it either!
You assume it’s pretty petty and unfair to be denied an opportunity because you don’t have a party card but you’re gloriously denying another’s right to marry because they don’t have your tribal card. You hoot at petty partisanship at one time… yet embrace petty tribalism at another time. That’s double standards right here!
Wait! If partisanship is not good for one, tribalism is not good for another. Check your weights!
You wish another dead because they declared themselves homosexuals. You hate them to bits… literally! However, you love yourself for fornicating. You brag for having multiple affairs even after marriage. You are a don when it comes to having extramarital affairs… and want the world to accept you for who you are… because you assume your sins are less grave.
What did you use to weigh sins!? Gallons or buckets!? Imbalanced weights! We don’t assume some sins are graver than ours just because we are not doing them. Sin, in God’s eyes, is not in grades. Hell has no compartments. It has neither chamber nor hall. Wrong is immeasurably wrong!
So… when we tend to assume that we are any better than others because our sins are of less gravity, that’s double standards right there!
You can’t see any beyond your partisan politics. When your party is in power, everything is alright— everything is for the good of the people. When your party loses power, every single thing done by the government is wrong— even the same things you previously endorsed as right.
Right here is an imbalanced standard— triple standards— perhaps. Right here is an inconsistent soul whose objectivity is relative; a being whose objectivity is subjective.
Your thinking capacity doesn’t go beyond your religious figures. When your pastor does it, it’s very right but when another “man of God” does it, you go looking for when he was supposedly called by God. When others criticize your religious figure, you confidently retort, “Touch not my anointed!” but when it’s due for you to lash out at another, you do so with the speed of light… as though they were anointed with dilute coconut oil instead.
What is good for the goose is definitely good for the gander. What is bad for the gander should obviously not be too good for the goose either. You see… when you apply inconsistent yardsticks to different people, what you’ve inside of you is inconsistent. Check your weights!
Right should be applauded no matter who does it…and wrong condemned regardless of the perpetrator. If you need to recalibrate your weights to measure right or wrong for different people or instance, you need to check your weights. What is good for your favorites is as well good for every other person.
Society will drown when we use imbalanced judgments for the same situations. Hypocrisy is when we recalibrate our standards every time we have to weigh different people on the same life scale. We ought to be consistent in our measurement.
Our yardsticks should favor no one— not even us. Check your weights!
By Kobina Ansah
The writer is a playwright and Chief Scribe of Scribe Communications (www.scribecommltd.com).