Much has been said about virtue signaling, which has also been attributed to a single political spectrum. If we see someone condemning the signaling of other people’s virtue, we can bet that this someone is neither left-wing nor progressive. He has a good chance of being classical liberal or conservative. Despite being political, now, in March 2022, the virtue-signaling accusations have a good chance of referring to someone who brags about wearing masks even though they are allowed to go without. . In fact, during this pandemic, propaganda inculcated the idea that taking vaccines ( any vaccine, without being an abominable “sommelier”) and wearing masks was an act of love for one’s neighbor, of a sense of collectivity. Thus, bragging about continuing to wear masks is indeed a propagandistic act of goodness itself. And it is clear that this divisive act puts the place not only of the good, but also of the bad. Knowing that the place of evil belongs to them, the conservative and the liberal accuse the progressive, the devotee of Science, of being a signpost of virtues. A frivolous, a hypocrite. In that, they often don’t even notice that what was called the left until yesterday has disappeared. Skeptics of capitalism are gone; now, they team up with the Lavajatists in defense of Science and their bishops, the executives of Pfizer.
Another thing that conservatives and liberals miss are motives. What makes someone strive so hard to exhibit virtues? Everyone has their experience, and some people have good reason to think it’s all about cynicism, or opportunism. But I propose to go back in time: was it in the pandemic that the mania for ostentation of virtues began? Again, everyone has their experience, so there will be those who review their past and conclude that they do. But those who have been in an environment of literate people will say a resounding, resounding NO to this question. The compulsion to signal virtues was already heavy in the past decade, with political correctness and the so-called identity guidelines. You could say it’s a leftist majority environment, and it’s true. But we can also consider that there is a literate profile of the middle and upper classes more prone to signposting virtue, and that this profile is much broader than the niches on the left. The pandemic arrived, political narratives changed, and the signs of virtue, which were previously lodged in the hearts of Lula’s widows, spread to anti-PT circles.
Question of guilt
I’m talking about the Brazilian scenario because it’s the one we know best. But since identitarianism (or progressivism) emerged in the United States, it is worth looking there to see the big picture. Furthermore, since we import all sorts of progressive nonsense, looking at the US is like looking at the dark clouds on the horizon that are upwind.
In Black Rednecks and White Liberals, Thomas Sowell criticizes the myth imposed on his society, according to which slavery is a unique event in the history of humanity, practiced by them. It also shows that anyone who thinks that slavery is essentially linked to racism is completely wrong, as it was practiced by people of all colors against their neighbors. Blacks enslaved blacks; oriental, oriental; whites, whites etc. And he does what he always recommends against the view of the anointed: he likened slavery in the West and the United States to slavery in other cultures and countries. It is unreasonable to compare countries to utopias; to value them well, the correct thing is to compare them with other countries.
Well, based on this propaganda, “in the United States, and undoubtedly in other societies, one of the greatest psychological legacies of slavery was a feeling of shame and resentment in the black population, and a feeling of guilt in the white population. The repeated representation of slavery as a peculiar black experience makes it falsely appear to be a singular shameful fate to which a particular race has submitted, requiring some of its descendants to make rhetorical exaggerations to compensate, and, if possible, extract benefits. compensation from others. To whites, the misrepresentation of the history of slavery makes some feel singularly guilty and responsible for the current misfortunes of blacks. Such attitudes, as well as the many countercurrents they generate, are hardly a context for reasonable discussions or for solving today’s social issues.”
Here, middle-class Brazilians will recognize the blame. bourgeoisie, a very common phenomenon in Brazil even before the progressive wave, which was aimed at the poor. Concern for the poor, in the Catholic tradition, is closely linked to charity. Catholicism is a pre-modern religion, and in the Middle Ages – as Foucault explains in ‘ The History of Madness – charity was given for seeing the image of God in the beggar. God would come to Earth disguised as a beggar to observe how men act. Charity was a way of going to Heaven, not a way of compensating for the injustices of the world – even because the final settlement of injustices is up to God, and man, much more humble at the time, did not even dream of social engineering. This worldview ended by decree with the Sun King, who created state asylums and made the clergy, all bureaucratic, tell the people that God would never come to loiter like a beggar. Modernity begins, and misery, from a human condition, becomes a social problem to be managed by the State.
If before, man expected to earn a few more points with God through charity, if the world was a chaotic antechamber of Eternal Life (the latter, yes, ordered), we can conclude that charity was not driven by guilt. Therefore, doing good to others out of guilt in conscience is a modern problem.
Egolatric catharsis
For decades , Sowell has struggled to show that progressive (or liberal) policies for blacks have been disastrous. In this particular book, he focuses on black schools and the education of the poor in general. According to the data it brings, what gets in the way the most is the bureaucratic imposition of the literacy method that does not teach how to spell and treats words as if they were ideograms (another problem that we care about), the racist culture of blacks themselves, according to which being a scholar is “acting white” (a culture that is celebrated and fostered by white progressives), and the fact that there are no centers of excellence for dedicated students (if you put CDFs with troublemakers, the CDFs will be sacrificed to no benefit to the troublemakers). Sowell brings a number of examples of excellent black and ethnic minority schools; to reinforce the importance of culture, he points out that the Orientals arrived in the US very poor, they had no “representativeness” in the teaching staff and their parents did not even know how to speak English properly – nevertheless, they prospered. In particular, Sowell is fond of citing the Dunbar School, an elite black-only school whose socioeconomic profile was quite low. Nevertheless, CDFs learned Greek and Latin. The school emerged in 1870 and was dismantled when the desegregation policy made it become more of a public school and receive students from the neighborhood, ceasing to be a school of CDFs.
Sowell is very pragmatic, very down to earth, and black. He should be the ideal person for anyone who wanted to assuage the guilt of the color white, no? So why does society as a whole listen to progressives? He thinks it’s because failure attracts money. Whoever points out the educational disgrace of blacks can pass the hat asking for more money to the poor people. Successful Negroes are not good for guilt atonement or guilty charity; therefore, they are not good for taking money.
The answer is true, but not enough. If people do feel guilty about the miseries of black people and want to do something about it, the natural consequence is to find out about the problem. To understand the problem, no one better than Sowell.
Hence it is reasonable to think that economic reasons are not enough to explain everything. Perhaps the general public is just looking for victims to have their little catharsis with, saying “Oh my God! Poor blacks! I support the allocation of more money to black education!”. Woe to blacks if they fail to serve the role! How will the culprits make themselves feel good?
Megalomaniac guilt
No normal person feels guilt for having rained too much (I added the word “normal” after remembering seeing stories about “climate anxiety” in young Europeans). This is due to the mere fact that no one normal feels capable of managing rain; so, it remains to be regretted that it rained too much. If someone feels guilty about the miseries of black people, then we infer that the person thinks he is capable of solving black people’s problems. It is only through the omission of Joe the Mighty that the Negroes are as they are. If Joe put more pressure on politicians, society, the state, everything would be resolved. It’s like Almighty by proxy: his good will can do everything through the collective.
Why then not reform the conscience and accept that the world is not under his control ? Such a change should throw the person into a crisis of anxiety, which is precisely the feeling we get when we become very insecure. Anxiety is a frequent problem in the contemporary world. But beyond that there is the comfortable position in the moral universe that is gained. Joe wins the black one, to feel more powerful than him; the black militant gains a guilty white, to feel morally superior to him. Both, white and black, gain a villain, for both to feel morally superior: it is the dissident. All this without doing anything, just in the throat.
All the supporters of this mentality win. Virtue signaling serves to ensure that the moral universe is unshaken. I am good as opposed to you, for I wear a mask, you villain. I’m good because I advocate distributing fashions to poor girls. How dare you be against it, you evil one? And so lives the signpost of virtues: by opposition. If you, the bad guy, suddenly start wearing a mask and defending the distribution of modests, then they won’t know what to do. How do they feel when Bolsonaro says something they agree with.
Loss of the notion of kindness
In the end, the very notion of what goodness is is compromised. All they are capable of apprehending is a certain training with vague reference to the common good. As training does not require thought, the reference to the common good may become increasingly weak. The man absorbed in this moral world opens Twitter, or a site of his favorite ideology, and sees the order of the day. Now he needs to have a strong opinion of the president of Ukraine whose name he didn’t know a month ago, lest he be an abominable Putinist. Tomorrow it could be a minister from East Timor or a fancier from the United Kingdom: it doesn’t matter. No sacrifice is demanded, no price is paid, no results are evaluated, nothing too complex needs to be thought through. Just repeat the words.
All this can only be a reflection of a very empty life, devoid of individual purposes. If we take away this conviction from these people, what will they be left with?
