Mainstream, normal, modern Western people are atheist materialists, who believe (assume) that there is neither purpose nor meaning in the universe - and that death mean annihilation.
This strongly implies that nothing really matters.
Yet they behave much, much better than would be implied by their assumptions would entail. Indeed, some of the best behaved and most virtuous people are atheist/ materialist/ nihilists.
In other words, they are reverse hypocrites!
That is: they fail to live down to their beliefs!
While this is, of course, overall A Good Thing - it is in tendency a bad thing.
Because over time this reverse-hypocritical atheist materialism has no principled grounds on which to oppose the continual erosion of morals and values.
And therefore morals and values have not just become corrupted, but in many instances inverted: such that evil is advocated as good, and good demonized as evil.
Furthermore; reverse hypocrites see no need to revise their beliefs; because at any moment in time they can plausibly deny the implications of their own assumptions.
They can argue (to themselves) that (for instance) although they have no reason to refrain from lying and exploiting 24/7; they often tell the truth and genuinely try to help people.
They always behave much better than they need to ("need" according to their beliefs) - from which they infer that it doesn't matter that their own asserted values permit, or even encourage, short-term selfishness, and justify living for personal gratification here-and-now.
Probably it is this reverse-hypocrisy of the Godless majority that has helped make ordinary hypocrisy into something regarded as an extreme form of wickedness...
Such that mainstream modern media stories have a common narrative trope; that excoriates "respectable" religious people for failing to live up to their public spirited high ideals; while heaping praise upon selfishly hedonistic people when they - very occasionally - behave altruistically.
Thus: an habitually altruistic and hard-working individual who preaches idealistic honesty but lapses from it into a selfish lie is a common villain of hypocrisy; while an habitual con-trickster or thief can become the reverse-hypocritical anti-hero by a single courageous act of truth-telling at the climax of the tale!
In other words, reverse hypocrisy has become a cardinal virtue, while the hypocrisy of having higher ideals than can be reached in practice is treated as a cardinal sin.
What is needed is for the reverse-hypocrites to do a bit of hard-thinking about why they behave so much better than their beliefs; and whether this is a good thing, or not.
Because if we really do regard our good behaviour as really a good thing; then surely we ought not to embrace fundamental beliefs and assumptions that actively contradict our good behaviour?
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