This is sooooo true! Heck, in ancient times, if you read books from Plato's to the Mahabharata, the really virtuous people go out of their way to do good without anybody noticing. Krishna goes to the point of using his magic powers to help people without them ever knowing he was helping them. But here we are in the 21st Century, when we've seemingly devolved to the point where virtue and virtue signaling have become synonyms in most people's minds. When I get into arguments with my friends on the left, it always boils down to that they can't believe that people CAN be virtuous unless someone is watching. They seem to think that for a society to be virtuous, it is NECESSARY to have a SYSTEM of vigilantes; a "vigilante culture". The left today is the exact opposite of Humanism; they seem to assume that a human being is garbage at the core, and that only the judging eyes and shaming action of others can achieve virtue and order. What a sad model of reality that is!
Woke-ism, in particular, is an entire culture that understands nothing except interventionist mechanics of shaming or worse, as valid means of social control. When I tell woke-ists that I agree with concerns about discrimination, but that I want to implement solutions to such concerns in my life privately, through the exercise of self-analysis, judgement and self-control; and not by having to externally seek their approval, ... they explode with non-sense verbal diarrhea attacks, as approval seeking is their entire point; the very key to their power structure. They would like to equate not seeking their approval to being FOR discrimination, as otherwise their power structure crumbles like the house of cards that it is.
Rarely, I'm asked what do I think we need to do, as a society, to transcend racism, etc. I tell them, just talk about it; that's all. How does a non-racist becomes a racist? How does a racist become a non-racist? Both result from people being persuaded by talking. So, just talk, and persuade people that racism is unjust. That's all. Putting external incentives and counter-incentives is the opposite of talking; and it is likely to produce resentment, and eventually the opposite result from what it seeks to produce. Psychology 101...
Great insights, Dan. Your point about how not seeking the approval of the woke is taken as opposition is right on the mark. The people who get really ugly about such things don't seem to understand that we'd likely be more concerned if they were in violent agreement with us.
Exactly. It all stems from a deeply entrenched distrust of the human spirit. It manifests in other ways too: Objective Testing came about as a solution against teachers arbitrarily discriminating against students when marking them. And the result today is that students often graduate without almost any intuitive understanding of their subjects; all they can do is solve specific problems and pick the right answer out of the 3 or 4 given. When I was in high school, the teacher would call a student and say "explain Ohm's Law to the class", and reciting formulas was not enough. Today it is. The more we distrust our own subjectivity, the more we become objects. Is it any surprise we are trying to endow objects with subjectivity through AI? Same problem in Politics, where the question has become "what is the right/better/perfect SYSTEM?", which in other words means, "what SYSTEM of objective rules can remove any (BAD) human subjectivity?" We trust rules, but NOT people. Quite different from Plato's Republic, where he often says, "we can OBSERVE and see the qualities of people as they grow up, and take note of who are the most virtuous, and therefore suitable for public responsibilities", paraphrasing.
What makes it attractive is that it's easy. Very little personal investment required. Anyone with a social media account and a (politically correct) opinion can play.
But it doesn't change a person and it sure doesn't change the world.
Virtue signaling is simply another form of priestcraft, as far as I am concerned.
This is sooooo true! Heck, in ancient times, if you read books from Plato's to the Mahabharata, the really virtuous people go out of their way to do good without anybody noticing. Krishna goes to the point of using his magic powers to help people without them ever knowing he was helping them. But here we are in the 21st Century, when we've seemingly devolved to the point where virtue and virtue signaling have become synonyms in most people's minds. When I get into arguments with my friends on the left, it always boils down to that they can't believe that people CAN be virtuous unless someone is watching. They seem to think that for a society to be virtuous, it is NECESSARY to have a SYSTEM of vigilantes; a "vigilante culture". The left today is the exact opposite of Humanism; they seem to assume that a human being is garbage at the core, and that only the judging eyes and shaming action of others can achieve virtue and order. What a sad model of reality that is!
Woke-ism, in particular, is an entire culture that understands nothing except interventionist mechanics of shaming or worse, as valid means of social control. When I tell woke-ists that I agree with concerns about discrimination, but that I want to implement solutions to such concerns in my life privately, through the exercise of self-analysis, judgement and self-control; and not by having to externally seek their approval, ... they explode with non-sense verbal diarrhea attacks, as approval seeking is their entire point; the very key to their power structure. They would like to equate not seeking their approval to being FOR discrimination, as otherwise their power structure crumbles like the house of cards that it is.
Rarely, I'm asked what do I think we need to do, as a society, to transcend racism, etc. I tell them, just talk about it; that's all. How does a non-racist becomes a racist? How does a racist become a non-racist? Both result from people being persuaded by talking. So, just talk, and persuade people that racism is unjust. That's all. Putting external incentives and counter-incentives is the opposite of talking; and it is likely to produce resentment, and eventually the opposite result from what it seeks to produce. Psychology 101...
Great insights, Dan. Your point about how not seeking the approval of the woke is taken as opposition is right on the mark. The people who get really ugly about such things don't seem to understand that we'd likely be more concerned if they were in violent agreement with us.
Exactly. It all stems from a deeply entrenched distrust of the human spirit. It manifests in other ways too: Objective Testing came about as a solution against teachers arbitrarily discriminating against students when marking them. And the result today is that students often graduate without almost any intuitive understanding of their subjects; all they can do is solve specific problems and pick the right answer out of the 3 or 4 given. When I was in high school, the teacher would call a student and say "explain Ohm's Law to the class", and reciting formulas was not enough. Today it is. The more we distrust our own subjectivity, the more we become objects. Is it any surprise we are trying to endow objects with subjectivity through AI? Same problem in Politics, where the question has become "what is the right/better/perfect SYSTEM?", which in other words means, "what SYSTEM of objective rules can remove any (BAD) human subjectivity?" We trust rules, but NOT people. Quite different from Plato's Republic, where he often says, "we can OBSERVE and see the qualities of people as they grow up, and take note of who are the most virtuous, and therefore suitable for public responsibilities", paraphrasing.
Signaling is primarily seeking external validation. Signaling isn't authentically virtuous.
What makes it attractive is that it's easy. Very little personal investment required. Anyone with a social media account and a (politically correct) opinion can play.
But it doesn't change a person and it sure doesn't change the world.
So so true.