In Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life, Nassim Nicholas Taleb comes down heavily on virtue signalling. Terms like keyboard warriors (or their equivalents, Facebook or Twitter warriors) might suggest that it’s a social media phenomenon. But moral grandstanding is neither restricted to social media nor is it particularly a new trend.
Taleb writes: “In about every hotel chain, from Argentina to Kazakhstan, the bathroom will have a sign meant to get your attention: PROTECT THE ENVIRONMENT. They want you to hold off from sending the towels to the laundry and reuse them for a while, because avoiding excess laundry saves them tens of thousands of dollars a year. This is similar to the salesperson telling you what is good for you when it is mostly (and centrally) good for him. Hotels, of course, love the environment, but you can bet that they wouldn’t advertise it so loudly if it weren’t good for their bottom line.
“So these global causes—poverty (particularly children’s), the environment, justice for some minority trampled upon by colonial powers, or some as-yet-unknown gender that will be persecuted—are now the last refuge of the scoundrel advertising virtue.
“Virtue is not something you advertise. It is not an investment strategy. It is not a cost-cutting scheme. It is not a bookselling (or, worse, concert-ticket-selling) strategy.
“Now I have wondered why… there is so little mention of what is called virtue signalling in the ancient texts. How could it be new?
“Well, it is not new, but was not seen as prevalent enough in the past to warrant much complaining and get named a vice. But mention there is; let’s check Matthew 6: 1–4, where the highest mitzvah is the one done secretly:
Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honoured by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”
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This article first appeared on Founding Fuel
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