To profess to value something, but not live accordingly, is not hypocrisy if one admits weakness. That is just weakness and incapacity. Hypocrisy is professing to value something, and not living accordingly, and pretending that one is, while knowing this is a lie. All it takes to be an hypocrite is knowingly to omit to tell things as they are.
I will just recall to mind that this essay aims to show attachment and unconsciousness go hand-in-hand. Attachment is the mindstate of worship. Unconsciousness is a changeable, spontaneous state of mind that reacts immediately to environment, sensation or emotion, and lacks any persistent, internalised values grounded in thinking. So the important thing to explore here, is that atheism is the profession of being god-free, yet the average atheist in actuality practises the opposite, in desiring friends and affection. It wouldn't be an overstatement to say the atheist is a worshipper of unconsciousness.
It may seem harsh to accuse atheists of hypocrisy, when most people are either Christians or Muslims or the like, and are the worst cases of worshipping unconsciousness. Yes, this does seem unfair. But the seriously insane cannot be reasoned with. Only those who value reason to some degree, such as the 'free-thinkers', can be helped. This isn't to say the situation with atheists isn't serious. We can't be complacent.
I am calling 99.999999% of atheists hypocrites. The psychology that creates gods and imaginary super-friends to worship, is the same psychology that creates beauty, love, happiness, and friends. It is not hard to intuit that worshipping a God, and worshipping one's wife or partner, is essentially the same. So, because I think atheists have some inkling they're living a lie, I say that virtually every atheist is an hypocrite, because the usual atheist believes in a personal creator God, just like the average theist. For is not a loved-one a creative force, that makes things, and seeks and maintains personal relationships? And by being loved, are they not being worshipped?
I am just asking atheists to pull up their socks, and stop being hypocrites. Live up to your values if you can, but don't pretend you are if you're not. Just admit it if you're not yet capable of living without your gods, as some brave thinkers do. This keeps you in the mindset of striving.
Worship is sanctifying something. The mentality of worship idealises something so highly, that the thing takes on supremely attractive values. It becomes a psychological support. Are not loved-ones treated like this? Why else do people feel jealousy, when a loved-one prefers someone else? Is it not because the psychological support might be lost, and the loved-one no longer provide the blank canvas for the dreaming worshipper's fantasies to rest upon?
The reality is that emotional bonding is a religion no less than Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and the like. So why do atheists fail to recognise their hypocrisy? It's because everyone else does it. If you stop bonding with others, then you stop bonding altogether, including - here's the killer! - with yourself.
Someone may point out that Truth can be an attachment as well. This is true for those striving to understand and value Truth. But for them it is an attachment that increases consciousness, because Truth itself is present in all things. One doesn't shut down a part of the mind to understand Truth, like in any other case. Truth is everywhere, so it increases awareness to value Truth.
The nature of attachment is this: believing that things inherently exist, such that an attachment is possible. To abandon attachment requires a highly logical mind. Such a mind reasons perfectly that all things are causally created, and, being causally dependent, each thing does not exist intrinsically. Such a mind values Truth first above all things. So, a person who compromises their reasoning with other values, will automatically be worshipping things that do not really exist. That is what it means to be unconscious.
In the next chapter, we'll examine the psychology of attachment. The point is to get to know the enemy, so it can be dealt with properly. To do this, I'm going to use the most obvious example of worshipping and unconsciousness in human society. This person is female.
