OK, so that really isn’t a word—but it should be.
Ad hominem attacks are the weapon of choice for those who lack a strong counterargument. Among the simplest of ad hominem approaches is the appeal to hypocrisy. And when it comes to promoting primitivism and the re-inhabiting of authentically human forms of life, when it comes to refusing to worship at the sacred altar of institutional dependency, when it comes to technological heresy, when it comes to blaspheming the false orthodoxy of progress, the charge of hypocrisy is an easy one to make: to criticize civilization while simultaneously enjoying its many accoutrement benefits seems clearly hypocritical.
But there are no logical teeth to such a charge. First, even if I am a hypocrite, that doesn’t mean I’m wrong. That’s the problem with ad hominem arguments in general: the validity of what is said is independent of the character of the person speaking. I might in fact be a raging lunatic (and there is no shortage of evidence for this!). Even so, I categorically deny the charge of hypocrisy. Merely acting in ways that appear to be inconsistent with what I say is not sufficient. In order to be a hypocrite, consistency needs to be an actual option.
As an analogy, suppose a person is convicted and imprisoned for a crime she didn’t commit; does obeying the prison guards and eating prison food qualify as an admission of guilt? Of course not. And neither do I need to live a cellphone-free existence in a cave in the mountains to be able to point out the dehumanizing effects of civilization. The fact of the matter is that it is nearly impossible for me (or any of the civilized) to step outside of the civilized order in any truly meaningful way. I really have no choice but to play along, at least minimally. To do otherwise would mean unbearable social isolation if not an immediate violent death. The charge of hypocrisy simply has no traction.
The charge of heresy, however, cannot be so easily dismissed.
