Hypocrisy and Culpability: Considering Karen’s Conflict

Part 1
The etymology of the word “hypocrite” is instructive. Its Greek origins point to an actor on a stage, a pretender who interprets the playwright’s script and director’s instructions in order to evoke a convincing performance. Another reading, one more closely aligned with our modern understanding of the word as a contradiction or lack of correlation between professed belief and enacted behavior, derives from the conjunction of the prefix hypo, meaning under, and the verb krinein, meaning to sift, separate, judge or decide. Thus, a hypocrite is one in which there exists some deficiency (not necessarily intellectual or moral) or compromise of the integrity in one’s ability to sift, decide, or weigh objectively and impartially, especially in critical matters. It is this latter sense in which the circumstances of duty and opportunity afforded Finance Minister Karen Nunez-Tesheira by virtue of her office, bring into sharp relief a contrast, if not an alarming discontinuity, between her professional and personal identities and the associated loci of her concomitant responsibilities. Just as the two aspects of hypocrisy are difficult to tease apart from one another in discourse and practice, so too is it difficult to disentangle any of one’s substantive identities from any other, except perhaps as a consequence of some underlying psychopathology or singularity of narcissistic self-deception. These might appropriately be termed hubris by some and do not magically absolve one of culpability and responsibility for one’s actions.

One of the central philosophical issues that the current situation raises, and one which has not yet been adequately addressed in the discussion around conflict of interest is the nature of the self and the ability to partition identity and thus action and responsibility. The model of the self that seems to be dominating the discussion thus far is one in which an individual’s identity is seen as being not more than the sum of his/her independent parts/roles. In this framing, Karen the Minister of Finance is independent and acts independently and mutually exclusively of any interests held by Karen the shareholder and thus partial owner of CL, Karen the lawyer, Karen the widow and heiress, Karen the daughter, Karen the PNM representative and Karen the woman. Only within such a framing is it possible for Karen the Minister of Finance to be able to claim no hypocrisy in her participation in the decision making process regarding CL.

Unfortunately for all of these Karens, our selves, the different roles we play that go into making up our (seemingly) coherent identity are neither independent nor mutually exclusive, they are not discrete or separable, indeed, they are networked and nested. That is to say that all of our roles and relationships are implicated relationally in our identity, we do not cease to be or have interest in one of our other selves when we are performing actions within the discursive boundaries that define another self nor is it only Karen the Minister of Finance who may suffer the consequences of having charges brought against her. While at times we may often foreground or privilege one role over others, this is only temporary, and it does not mean that any other roles and identities that we have in the background do not exert effects on the foreground, only that the likelihood that we will be aware, conscious of these effects, is reduced. Indeed, we are not aware of the causes or consequences of the majority of our embodied neurological and physiological activities that produce behavior, only that tiny fraction that bubbles up to the surface of our conscious awareness and only that to which we deliberately orient our self, or are called to attend to. Even then our consciousness is limited by the extent to which we are able to locate or create suitable concepts upon which to frame and articulate our experience of our consciousness, much of which is shaped by our prior personal experiences, collective knowledge and personal values, viz. our conscience. If the idea of individual and independent selves appear separate in Law and legal theory at present, it is only because the Law and public policy have not yet caught up and dealt with the full implications of the findings and advances in the theory, Science, and Philosophy of mind, self, action and identity. Indeed, one of the central findings of this research is that we are always already responsible for more than we intended and that all of our actions have unanticipated and unintended consequences. Such research suggests that we need to demonstrate a greater level of care, caution, compassion and personal and collective responsibility (ethics) in all of our actions that greatly surpass the minima that are codified in laws and public policy at present. Those who seek to lead and govern must perhaps exceed even this.