An utterly mundane observation about hypocrisy

We condemn moral hypocrisy harshly but ineffectively. Compare with the case of smoking where a barrage of condemnation has actually produced a reduction in smoking rates. There is no way to measure hypocrisy, of course, but I don't think anyone imagines there has been a reduction in hypocrisy rates.

The thing that strikes us about hypocrisy is not that it exists but that it is expressed publicly. It would be one thing to condemn others for what we do ourselves. You could do that silently. What we actually see is very public condemnation of others. This can be very overt but it can also exist in the form of a very quiet deference for moral standards we don't follow ourselves. If anything, the latter case is worse.

A long time ago, Raymond Chandler condemned a kind of moral defeatism that isn't hypocrisy in his novel The Long Goodbye,

You were a nice guy because you had a nice nature. But you were just as happy with mugs or hoodlums as with honest men. Provided the hoodlums spoke fairly good English and had fairly acceptable table manners.

As I say, that's not hypocrisy. Terry Lennox lives up to his standards. The relevant part is the line about being just as happy with mugs or hoodlums so long as the behaved well publicly. Our morality tends to be public and civilized. It exists where we can be civilized. Where we can't, we're private about it. That's why we're hypocrites who don't stand up for others whose failings are no worse than our own, because that would be to go public.