When you get a group of teenage boys to “manage”/lead/discipline a group of other teenage boys – with little to distinguish one from another except for the notion of authority or leadership, it’s not surprising that things don’t turn out perfectly all the time.
Other times, it turns out like this.
Some call it hypocrisy, and sometimes rightly so. I’ve seen it more times than is probably healthy – that preaching discipline or values, leaders turn around and do the same; hopefully, when no one’s looking. A general rule of thumb is: the more time spent telling others to do something, the less time spent doing it yourself. It’s not about breaking a rule or committing a wrong – we’re young and we don’t expect angels of ourselves – but it’s about telling others not to do it, and going further, actually punishing others as “part of your duty”. All the while knowing you’ve done it yourself.
Luckily, we might be getting ahead of ourselves here – sometimes it’s not so much outright evil hypocrisy, but a more insidious doublethink.
The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and acce
pting both of them….To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just as long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies — all this is indispensably necessary.
Yes, I'm on a bit of a Lit roll here.
Simply put, it’s hypocrisy without the conscious knowledge of the difference between two actions – you simply forget the difference.
It’s a word that’s caught on, perhaps not so much because it catches the truth of the matter neatly enough, but because we still need something to salvage the person in question, or ourselves.
It’s a bit more dangerous because even while saying and doing completely contradictory things, the person does not acknowledge the difference, believing himself to be in the right both times. But it’s a bit more salvageable because it’s not outright deliberate lying, only a sort of cognitive dissonance.
It’s just one step away.
So why is it important to make the distinction, anyway? There’s not much of a difference. But it’s the difference between too-far-gone and salvageable (for a person at least) and it’s the difference between whether we can do something about it or not.
When you see “leaders” scolding their juniors about discipline and then playing cards in the backroom, you need to have that thought in mind. You hold on to it, because you can change them and you don’t have to give up on them. Giving up, like doublethink, is just one step away from joining in too.
It’s a question of morals and values, and maybe that’s why it’s easy to ignore the difference, or to care. Raffles can have things like the Raffles Leadership Portal, Raffles Leadership Programme, and another RLP acronym, but one thing that no institution can claim monopoly on is values. They can test for your Myers-Briggs Personality Indicator, they can test for results but how those results came about, what your true personality is like, it’s not tested that easily.
And so it’s easy to forget, while we’re being taught to work with different MBTIs or working towards that gold. To forget what’s more important.
It’s a really tough topic and I don’t think I’ve covered it properly here, but that’s the gist of what I think about the hypocrisy problem behind student leadership. I’m still learning but I hope to pin it down correctly soon.
http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/08/21/the-illusion-of-asymmetric-insight/
There you go.
I think most people are guilty of doublethink, in one way or another – just that (by definition) we wouldn’t have realised the discrepancy yet.
As for the hypocrisy problem – do they really believe in what they say (and hence the doublethink), or are they actually conscious that they say it because they have to, or they’re expected to; and saying it despite believing otherwise?
I think the most common case would be having their own beliefs or stands in the first place – as students its easier to go with the flow and just do what’s expected, so I doubt there’s much conscious choice to do things contrary to what we say. Just acting on impulse leading to contradictions. So hopefully its not full blown hypocrisy!
Plenty of Rafflesians have enough self-awareness to know that they’re being hypocrites when such a case happens; it’s not really a case of them not knowing that they’re going back on their word. If people preach their values to others, yet subconsciously violate said values when no one’s looking or when not paying attention, then evidently those values aren’t ingrained into their heads deeply enough, not enough for them to justify preaching to others about it at least.
And what’s wrong with that? We’re all teenage students after all. Being student leaders isn’t their full-time job, and definitely not their entire life. People in big-shot companies and corporations have to watch over their actions like a hawk because enormous consequences will occur with the slightest of missteps. Asking people with half the maturity and with double the load (school + commitments) to garner the energy to practice what they preach 24/7 is plain unreasonable. The leadership programmes that are being carried out may imply that being able to do so is a prerequisite to every leadership position, but given how improbable it is for every student leader to live up to that standard consistently, I prefer to think of it more as the frequent overglorification of the Rafflesian™ branding.
I agree with you absolutely on the Rafflesian™ branding and the problem with student leadership in general; it’s also a doublethink on “their” part when we are told to be a Thinker, Leader, Pioneer (TLP) with Fortitude, Integrity, Respect and Enterprise (FIRE) even as we deal with Os and As and life as a teenager in general. We are told we should be able to deal with it better as “Rafflesians” but there is no magic bullet behind being “Rafflesian” in the first place – we’re drawn from so many different parts of society (though obviously, now more from the middle-higher income group) that to say we are able to deal with it better because of the intangible quality of being “Rafflesian” ignores the fact that we are teenagers first and foremost. Being in a school, no matter how many unique programmes or classes we go through, can only do so much in directing our person and actions.
On Doublethink versus hypocrisy, I guess it might be too forgiving to call it a lack of knowledge of violating one’s own words – as you said it might be a more subconscious violation. There’s a discomfort at the discrepancy, but it’s quickly brushed away or ignored.
Student Leadership and Rafflesian™ branding: both big topics I want to write on soon!
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