Hypocrisy has the power to destroy everything, especially legitimacy. Many people believe that the two are actually unrelated or at least the correlation hasn't been that obvious, but as both are so interconnected, they reveal the impact of one over the other.
Two ways we can view these two in the same scenario is through Jane Eyre and the two World Wars. Although hypocrisy tends to bring down legitimacy, it also works to build up legitimacy or has the outer skin of legitimacy. As scary as that may sound, we have to look no further than Mr. Brocklehurst for an excellent example. His entire status and the "virtues" he preaches about when he arrives at Lowood is built entirely on hypocrisy. However, he is also a representation of legitimacy and his words were representative of the rules the girls had to follow. Rules that according to Mr. Brocklehurst, Jane had broken among other girls as well. Then his wife and daughter are introduced, and that added hypocrisy simply rips down the wall of legitimacy people had assumed about Mr. Brocklehurst prior to his wife's arrival. It's interesting, because this hypocrisy breaks his legitimacy in the form of Ms. Temple listening to Jane's side of the story and presenting Jane in front of the school as the complete opposite of what Mr. Brocklehurst had claimed.
A better example is the legitimacy the world powers (U.S., Britain, and France) had declared for themselves during the 1800s and 1900s. The powers talked of freedom and equality, for example Woodrow Wilson's claim of self-determination, however, realistically the powerful nations still held firmly onto the colonies they had staked out for themselves without backing down. Therefore there was a complete dissonance in their claims, since they were bragging of their "matured, sophisticated" tactics, while denying other people of the same ideals and rights. As a result, such deep hypocrisy led to anger and people like Hitler were born. Making sure at the end, that the fake legitimacy we had built up to come tumbling down. Perhaps if the big powers had not built themselves up on such hypocritical legitimacy, our world could have been spared a lot of bloodshed.
Hypocrisy seems almost inevitable. Therefore, I believe that by studying hypocrisy and legitimacy and the impact of both, we can further understand human nature and perhaps help us to better ourselves.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Thursday, March 10, 2011
What if: Women Switched Roles with Males?
What if women had not needed to fight for their equality and their rights because they already had them? What if the males rather had to fight for those rights as we did? I'm sure the world would be an extremely different place today.
What first sparked these thoughts was talking/imagining Jane Eyre's time as well as Charlotte Bronte's time and watching "Titanic." It's really upsetting and incredulous when we think about exactly how unfair it was to be a woman during the earlier times. For example, women were expected to stay at home and if they wanted to educate themselves, they were essentially laughed at and told to drop their dreams. On top of that, women did not have that many rights, as a result they were there just for moral support for the males. In "Titanic" as Rose talks with her mother about their financial situation (huge debts because of their father), Rose needs to marry the rich guy in order to save the family. One of the lines Rose says is, "It's unfair," and her mother responds with, "It's because we are women... we have to make difficult choices." So when we actually collect exactly how much suffering, pain, and loss women have gone through in order to become equal to men, I wonder what the men would've done.
Since males were the dominant ones, they also got to make most of the decisions that create our foundation, so they supplied many of their needs. I think with women in charge, the decisions might have been more pacifistic, perhaps less selfish decisions. On the other hand, I think the decisions women might have made could have been worse. In my opinion, I think behavior and decisions depend largely on status. So the women, had they been the dominant ones, could have been extremely domineering as well. I think in terms of the time it would've taken the men to get equality, it would be a lot shorter. For one thing, they have more force than women in some aspects. A lot of literature could have also been saved and brought into society (since women weren't really accepted as writers) that were lost due to the inferiority of the women.
However, with all these benefits I think that there are also losses if we lost the male talent. This, therefore proves that a society where both male and female are equal, the better the society will be. Although, living in a world dominated by women would be extremely interesting.
What first sparked these thoughts was talking/imagining Jane Eyre's time as well as Charlotte Bronte's time and watching "Titanic." It's really upsetting and incredulous when we think about exactly how unfair it was to be a woman during the earlier times. For example, women were expected to stay at home and if they wanted to educate themselves, they were essentially laughed at and told to drop their dreams. On top of that, women did not have that many rights, as a result they were there just for moral support for the males. In "Titanic" as Rose talks with her mother about their financial situation (huge debts because of their father), Rose needs to marry the rich guy in order to save the family. One of the lines Rose says is, "It's unfair," and her mother responds with, "It's because we are women... we have to make difficult choices." So when we actually collect exactly how much suffering, pain, and loss women have gone through in order to become equal to men, I wonder what the men would've done.
Since males were the dominant ones, they also got to make most of the decisions that create our foundation, so they supplied many of their needs. I think with women in charge, the decisions might have been more pacifistic, perhaps less selfish decisions. On the other hand, I think the decisions women might have made could have been worse. In my opinion, I think behavior and decisions depend largely on status. So the women, had they been the dominant ones, could have been extremely domineering as well. I think in terms of the time it would've taken the men to get equality, it would be a lot shorter. For one thing, they have more force than women in some aspects. A lot of literature could have also been saved and brought into society (since women weren't really accepted as writers) that were lost due to the inferiority of the women.
However, with all these benefits I think that there are also losses if we lost the male talent. This, therefore proves that a society where both male and female are equal, the better the society will be. Although, living in a world dominated by women would be extremely interesting.
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