“One should examine oneself for a very long time before thinking of condemning others”
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (AKA Moliere)
VIENNA, Va—Many negative phenomena and serious social plagues are rampant in the Moroccan society, and exacerbate its structures, values, principles and civilization. Among these phenomena and plagues is Social Hypocrisy, which has a tremendous effect on destroying whatever is left of its morals and ethics.
For those who do not yet know it, hypocrisy can be defined as: “an unconscious self-contradiction: a state of incongruence between one’s professed beliefs and feelings and one’s actual beliefs and feelings, or an application of a criticism to others that one does not apply to oneself”.
Personally, I sometimes do not think it is really that unconscious. We live in a world wherein everything we do, and how we do it, is defined by laws, rules, regulations and procedures, a world where what is “perceived” as right or wrong is based on pre-established decisions, opinions and stereotypes.
We live in a world where we are constantly judged, measured and criticized.
What made me tackle this phenomenon of social hypocrisy is the general conduct of ordinary citizens as well as the paraxial approach of the authorities and how they pick and choose the laws, and the manner in which they pick certain categories in the society by subject to the rule of those laws. The Moroccan society represents the perfect example of social hypocrisy, and how citizens along with authorities carefully choose what would make headlines and what can be kept a hush-hush from the public and media; all depends on momentums and circumstances.
Social hypocrisy has become everything in our lives in hypocritical, hypocrisy in trade, in relationships, in practice, in morals, in love, in friendships, and even in artificial exchanged hugs and kisses. We began to believe in appearances and neglect the core, we fight honesty and we treasure lies, and the latter is reigning these days under different names and titles, and ends justify the means, in other words.
The vast majority of us become masters in hypocrisy and flattery, and I can even go a bit further and say that the most hypocritical people are those attending mosques and holy sites, and we usually find them at the front rows in prayers and regular pilgrims.
What is tragic in the modern Moroccan society is that we are mired in hypocrisy, superstition, pharisaism, deception, false patriotism and loyalty, and, above all, we gave up our noble humanitarian and religious morals and values.
We live in a world where we are constantly judged, measured and criticized. A place where we try to fit in continually; be it at work, home or any social event. Where what looks good and what is appropriate to wear has nothing to do with what makes you comfortable and what feels good; but more with what other people find acceptable and what the news and media find “chic” and “trendy”. Where we care more about every detail of the life of a celebrity than how our kids are doing in school, how our friends are dealing with rough times and how we ourselves are lacking an interesting social life.
Depression, low self-esteem, sadness, boredom, insecurity … all derived by an hypocrite judgment provided by others.
The social hypocrisy embodied in the Moroccan society in many forms, through constant and meaningless compliments, through hailing all those who possess power and are influential, all those extravagance weddings and social events… The value of the Moroccan these days become more material related than anything else!
What is happening in our society is something really painful, sad and disturbing. We are deceived by appearances, attracted by any gleaming artificial material. People have become overwhelmed by selfishness, and the spirit of “togetherness” and unity have vanished. Love and compassion have evaporated and become a thing from the past. Honesty and integrity have become a rare value to encounter out there. Hypocrisy is now number 1 social trademark! Anyone nowadays who chooses to live by the old-known human codes like honesty, integrity, principles, moral and virtues will be considered an odd person, a rogue person, a rebellion and not up-to-date with the “modern world”. This is how we turned out to be.. This is us!
Isn’t it about time that we wake up from this nightmare? Isn’t it time that we ditch this social disease, which has done more damage than any other phenomena in our society? Social hypocrisy has divided us, has set us apart, it widened the gap between the layers of the society.. We become intolerant, short fused type of creatures. Social hypocrisy is destroying our social layers from within and bringing us to our lowest level or all time. We no longer value others for who they are, we materialize everything and everyone.. We became so hollow and shallow, and the only tie we have with fellow humans is the DNA.
I wonder what is stopping us from moving forward and build a modern society based on new foundations, ditching old bad habits and instead promote reasoning, rational thinking, honesty, purity of souls, and promoting civilized and moral values. We are far better than the way we are now, we can do better, so why we are holding ourselves back?! I cannot understand why we prefer to remain slaves to old and needless customs and bad habits, we can hold tight to certain customs that mark our identity, but not all what our forefathers came up with are divine laws; they are subject to change and modification, and it is about time that we act upon this vicious disease which can only drag us back while other nations are miles ahead of us..
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Mr. Beni-ich holds a BA in Law, a BA in Political Sciences, a MA in Security and Intelligence Analyses, a MA in Global Terrorism and a PhD in International Politics. His studies were pursued in England and the U.S.
Mr. Beni-ich began his career as a lawyer working for the British Home Office (The Ministry of Interior) as well as The British Foreign Office. Mr.Beni-ich gave many lectures in the United States regarding the current affairs in the MENA region, both in universities and organizations. Mr. Beni-ich is currently based in Washington, DC where he lobbies for the Moroccan affairs and coordinates with many U.S. officials and Think-Tanks to promote Morocco’s interests, both in the United States and Morocco.
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