Accusing someone of hypocrisy, people often use the name of the ancient Roman god Janus, who, as everyone knows, had two faces, which means two mouths and four eyes. Those who are not familiar with ancient mythology may have the impression that this celestial personified deceit and deceit, but this is not so. Janus was a good god, he symbolized the beginning and the end, and also helped to find exits and entrances. Even in his "zone of responsibility" was chaos, and he is the source material for any order. Why? Yes, because there’s nothing more to do from it.
Pagan polytheism, which was the state religion in the Roman Empire, implied that there are many gods, they form a certain governing body with a strict separation of functions and a certain hierarchy. In this structure, Janus did not take the last place. Therefore, not every two-faced person deserves such a flattering definition.
Generally speaking, any member of society plays certain roles at certain points in his life, and Shakespeare was right in calling the whole world a theater, and people as actors in it. If you go back to ancient times, then the traditions of the theater in Ancient Greece ordered the performing artists to wear masks, according to which their role was guessed. This is the case today, only representatives of the creative profession use their own faces, expressing their facial expressions the whole gamut of emotions dictated by the character of the character being performed. But can it be argued that each actor is a two-faced person?
Our life is full of rituals, each of which provides a wide variety of elements that are required to be performed. Even if one of the participants in the ceremony, whether joyful or sad, does not share the feelings prescribed by the situation, he is forced to obey the general order and give his own physiognomy an expression appropriate to the moment. He “puts on a mask, ” and everything goes its own way. And if someone tries to remove it, he will be immediately accused of callousness, cynicism and non-observance of decency. Moreover, they will say that he is a two-faced person: for so many years he has been pretending to be decent and now …
If there are only two behaviors, then there is no need to talk about sophisticated tricks. A two-faced person is not a hypocrite yet: the real insidiousness lies in a much larger number of looks, and they can change depending on the situation like the colors of a chameleon when moving through the jungle. The ability to such mimicry is partly innate, but for the most part increases with mastery, and we have to talk about the many faces.
But to simplify, we can accept the hypothesis that the personification of deceit is a two-faced person. Determining that a vis-a-vis can show a certain deceit in a relationship is, in general, a simple procedure, but this will take a little time. So, the first sign of duplicity is failure to fulfill promises. The second criterion is the ability to lie. And the third is the inability to justify the trust placed. At least, these outstanding symptoms were recommended by the outstanding Bashkir writer and scientist Rizaitdin Fakhretdinov. However, people who are wise by life experience can quickly determine that they are faced with a two-faced person, for this sometimes it is enough for them to look into their eyes. For those who want to learn to understand the nature of deceit and the signs of lying from a young age, Alan Pisa's book “Body Language” will be useful.
