Hypocrisy in the American Society
Hypocrisy in the American Society
By Olya Prohorova
“Hypocrisy is the essence of snobbery, but all snobbery is about the problem of belonging.” Alexander Theroux This paper is based on my own experience while living in the United States, and it is not intended to offend anyone. I come from a former Soviet Union country called Republic of Moldova (which maybe only 0,001% of Americans know about), located in eastern Europe. My family is quite conservative – but we may think about conservatism in two completely contrasting ways because we come from two extremely different backgrounds and different cultural values, which I will try to explain as clearly as possible in my essay.
Why am I interested to write about this topic? I do so because I face hypocrisy every single day in this country, much more than anywhere I have visited in past. I meet it on the streets, I see it all around on the internet and TV, and, finally, the place I see it the most of my time is my school. To illustrate, I would like to tell you about a couple of my classmates who were gossiping about something random in the student lounge (gossiping, by the way, doesn’t bother me less than hypocrisy; I consider it equally nasty) when a teacher was passing by.
Upon seeing the teacher, the students showed their widest smile to the teacher, greeting her in a most friendly way, as if she were their friend. They had a nice, brief conversation, but as soon as the teacher turned and made ONE STEP around the corner, I could not believe my eyes what a drastic change occurred in my classmates’ facial expression and intonation of the voice. They all became so conspicuously negative that it almost made me sick. I really cannot get one thing – if you don’t like someone, why make them think you do? Why do Americans teach their children to smile no matter what? Whether American parents shove the Constitution in their children’s face or not, they teach them that hard work
By Olya Prohorova
“Hypocrisy is the essence of snobbery, but all snobbery is about the problem of belonging.” Alexander Theroux This paper is based on my own experience while living in the United States, and it is not intended to offend anyone. I come from a former Soviet Union country called Republic of Moldova (which maybe only 0,001% of Americans know about), located in eastern Europe. My family is quite conservative – but we may think about conservatism in two completely contrasting ways because we come from two extremely different backgrounds and different cultural values, which I will try to explain as clearly as possible in my essay.
Why am I interested to write about this topic? I do so because I face hypocrisy every single day in this country, much more than anywhere I have visited in past. I meet it on the streets, I see it all around on the internet and TV, and, finally, the place I see it the most of my time is my school. To illustrate, I would like to tell you about a couple of my classmates who were gossiping about something random in the student lounge (gossiping, by the way, doesn’t bother me less than hypocrisy; I consider it equally nasty) when a teacher was passing by.
Upon seeing the teacher, the students showed their widest smile to the teacher, greeting her in a most friendly way, as if she were their friend. They had a nice, brief conversation, but as soon as the teacher turned and made ONE STEP around the corner, I could not believe my eyes what a drastic change occurred in my classmates’ facial expression and intonation of the voice. They all became so conspicuously negative that it almost made me sick. I really cannot get one thing – if you don’t like someone, why make them think you do? Why do Americans teach their children to smile no matter what? Whether American parents shove the Constitution in their children’s face or not, they teach them that hard work