Ripped Jeans Redux
Alexander S. Peak

11 April 2006

Am I a hypocrite?

Well, probably.  Who isn’t?  In the words of a friend:  It’s okay for me to be a hypocrite, just nobody else.

Still, I try to avoid hypocrisy.  I try to remain consistent in both my beliefs and action.  For example, if I don’t believe the means is an ends is a justification for an otherwise bad means when I dislike the ends at hand, it would be totally hypocritical to flip sides and say the ends does justify the means when the ends is something that I like.  For a specific example, the WTO recently ruled that we have to remove or decrease our farm subsidies.  I love the ruling, I think farm subsidies are just a form of corporate welfare, and that the free market instead of the government should establish which farms stay in business and which do not.  However, despite my grand support for these ends, I don't believe the means, i.e. the WTO telling a sovereign nation like the United States what to do, is justified.  But I digress.

Back in November, I wrote a piece on why I wasn’t going to buy ripped jeans.  So have I sold out?

Perhaps I have.  We shan’t rule that possibility out.  My great-grandmother, for Christmas, bought me a pair of jeans that were pre-ripped.  I know, I know, how could she?  Yeah, well, she did.  Apparently, that was all that was available there at the time, and the saleslady insisted I’d like it (despite having never met me or read the piece I cited previously).

I’d suggested they take the jeans back, but they didn’t want to waste the gas.  I’d suggested we sue the saleslady, but I knew that wasn’t going to happen.  My choices where limited, so I ended up just accepting the jeans.

The jeans didn’t have complete holes in them, as there are fibers still covering each ripped area.  But, this doesn’t change the fact that I’m likely still a hypocrite.  Hopefully I’m not, hopefully given my conditions, I was justified in not being an asshole to my great-grandmother.  But this question isn’t really for me to decide.

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Ripped Jeans
23 November 2005