Virtue Signaling Quotes

Finally, when young people who “want to help mankind” come to me asking, “What should I do? I want to reduce poverty, save the world,” and similar noble aspirations at the macro-level, my suggestion is: 1) Never engage in virtue signaling; 2) Never engage in rent-seeking; 3) You must start a business. Put yourself on the line, start a business.

When it comes to anti-fascism in most of Western Europe, there would appear for now to be a supply-and-demand problem: the demand for fascists vastly outstrips the actual supply.

Tolerance! The virtue that makes one bite his tongue so that he can tear out his hair.

Virtue signaling can best be explained as the devotion of a person’s entire existence to explaining how wonderful they (and their friends) are, and how terribly wrong everyone else is. The point of virtue signaling is to demonstrate superiority, for the purpose of consolidating power, prestige and financial reward. The culture of social justice is set up to reward the loudest and best complainers and to punish anyone that stands against them.

Virtue signaling' is a phrase the dim and bigoted use when they want to discount other people expressing the idea that it would be nice if we could all be essentially and fundamentally decent to each other.

telling people you’re virtuous isn’t a virtue, it’s self-promotion. Virtue signalling is not virtue. Virtue signalling is, quite possibly, our commonest vice.)

The introduction of the word ‘intuition’ by a moral philosopher is always a signal that something has gone badly wrong with an argument.

The experiment of multiculturalism was thought up in the minds of tenured intellectuals, put on paper by virtue signaling politicians, and then enjoyed by big business globalists.

..and certain that life consisted of a few simple signals and decisions; that death took root at the moment of birth and man’s only recourse thereafter was to water and tend it; that propagation was a fiction; consequently, society was a fiction too; that fathers and teachers, by virtue of being fathers and teachers, were guilty of a grievous sin.

Some virtues, when they become fashions, also become exaggerated. Just because nobody likes a judgmental attitude does not mean that there isn't a sort of spoiled, self-righteous hypocrisy when one man obsessively commands other men not to judge without knowing the circumstances without himself, too, knowing their circumstances behind their judgments.

The greatest tyrannies are always perpetuated in the name of the noblest causes.

Which parts of the Bill of Rights are you willing to surrender just so you can virtue signal your willingness to compromise... to find a middle ground... to be middle of the road?

When sadness surrounds you, Take a pause to think, Life is an echo, What you give is what you get. - From the poem "Happiness Unlocked

I predict that there will be many more like him in the future,” she sighed. “People of privilege speaking heroically on behalf of those with whom they have no intention of mixing.

But virtues should be signaled, and the signalers should act to make their virtues manifest. It is the latter, not the former, that is the problem.

In situations where there are no real feasible solutions to a problem, the gathering and publication of performance data serves as a form of virtue signaling. There is no real progress to show, but the effort demonstrated in gathering and publicizing the data satisfies a sense of moral earnestness. In lieu of real progress, the progress of measurement becomes a simulacrum of success.

Online reward mechanisms beg to substitute for offline ones, and then overtake them. This is why everyone tries to look so hot and well-traveled on Instagram; this is why everyone seems so smug and triumphant on Facebook; this is why, on Twitter, making a righteous political statement has come to seem, for many people, like a political good in itself. This practice is often called “virtue signaling,

In my experience, white people are the only ones who purport to advance equality through the erasure or rejection of marginalized people’s identities, which signals to me that they have fooled themselves into believing that they are “unraced.” This belief is false, because it is based on the idea that whiteness is the human standard and that furthermore, by virtue of them being white, they are the arbiters of humanity.

This is because being “busy” is not a virtue; it only signals to others that you do not know how to manage your time or your tasks.

I ask myself and I ask my children, To ask themselves every day, “What did I learn today?” - From Poem " Everyday Learning

Imagine a young Isaac Newton time-travelling from 1670s England to teach Harvard undergrads in 2017. After the time-jump, Newton still has an obsessive, paranoid personality, with Asperger’s syndrome, a bad stutter, unstable moods, and episodes of psychotic mania and depression. But now he’s subject to Harvard’s speech codes that prohibit any “disrespect for the dignity of others”; any violations will get him in trouble with Harvard’s Inquisition (the ‘Office for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion’). Newton also wants to publish Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, to explain the laws of motion governing the universe. But his literary agent explains that he can’t get a decent book deal until Newton builds his ‘author platform’ to include at least 20k Twitter followers – without provoking any backlash for airing his eccentric views on ancient Greek alchemy, Biblical cryptography, fiat currency, Jewish mysticism, or how to predict the exact date of the Apocalypse. Newton wouldn’t last long as a ‘public intellectual’ in modern American culture. Sooner or later, he would say ‘offensive’ things that get reported to Harvard and that get picked up by mainstream media as moral-outrage clickbait. His eccentric, ornery awkwardness would lead to swift expulsion from academia, social media, and publishing. Result? On the upside, he’d drive some traffic through Huffpost, Buzzfeed, and Jezebel, and people would have a fresh controversy to virtue-signal about on Facebook. On the downside, we wouldn’t have Newton’s Laws of Motion.

But people who fundamentally change are rare, in my experience, because it's bloody hard work compared to going on a march or waving a flag. Have we met a single person on this case who's radically different to the person they were forty years ago?" "I don't know . . . I think I've changed," said Robin, then felt embarrassed to have said it out loud. Strike looked at her without smiling for the space it took him to chew and swallow a chip, then said, "Yeah. But you're exceptional, aren't you?

Pepperleigh always read the foreign news -- the news of things that he couldn't alter -- as a form of wild and stimulating torment.

Finally, when young people who “want to help mankind” come to me asking, “What should I do? I want to reduce poverty, save the world,” and similar noble aspirations at the macro-level, my suggestion is: 1) Never engage in virtue signaling; 2) Never engage in rent-seeking; 3) You must start a business. Put yourself on the line, start a business. Yes, take risk, and if you get rich (which is optional), spend your money generously on others. We need people to take (bounded) risks. The entire idea is to move the descendants of Homo sapiens away from the macro, away from abstract universal aims, away from the kind of social engineering that brings tail risks to society. Doing business will always help (because it brings about economic activity without large-scale risky changes in the economy); institutions (like the aid industry) may help, but they are equally likely to harm (I am being optimistic; I am certain that except for a few most do end up harming). Courage (risk taking) is the highest virtue. We need entrepreneurs.

For present-day politicians there are only political points to be made from such statements, and the larger the sin the larger the outrage, the larger the apology and the larger the potential political gain for sorrow expressed. Through such statements political leaders can gain the benefits of magnanimity without the stain of involvement: the person making the apology had done nothing wrong and all the people who could have received the apology are dead.

At thirteen, Noboru was convinced of his own genius (each of the others in the gang felt the same way) and certain that life consisted of a few simple signals and decisions; that death took root at the moment of birth and man's only recourse thereafter was to water and tend it; that propagation was a fiction; consequently, society was a fiction too: that fathers and teachers, by virtue of being fathers and teachers, were guilty of a grievous sin. Therefore, his own father's death, when he was eight, had been a happy incident, something to be proud of.

It can be extremely difficult to discern evil hearts because their intention is to look good, not be good.

The more you feel the need to signal your virtue, the more you expose your real lack of it

Americans seemed attracted to such politicians if they were exceptionally gifted at virtue signaling while they slandered their opponents.

Virtue signalling is not virtue. Virtue signalling is, quite possibly, our commonest vice.)

On Facebook and other forms of social media, therefore, you signal your so-called virtue, telling everyone how tolerant, open and compassionate you are, and wait for likes to accumulate. (Leave aside that telling people you’re virtuous isn’t a virtue, it’s self-promotion. Virtue signalling is not virtue. Virtue signalling is, quite possibly, our commonest vice.)

On Facebook and other forms of social media, therefore, you signal your so-called virtue, telling everyone how tolerant, open and compassionate you are, and wait for likes to accumulate.

People who are in wu-wei has de, typically translated as "virtue," "power," or "charismatic power." De is radiance that others can detect, and it serves as an outward signal that one is in wu-wei.

This is because outward virtue signaling is separate from being a considerate, moral person. Whereas the latter is central for common decency (and is something we should all strive for), the former is just a display of faux morality. One that’s designed to offer protection from the mob ever turning on them. It’s a protection racket—a form of insurance. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.

he struck Megan as oleaginous, not trustworthy. These days, Americans seemed attracted to such politicians if they were exceptionally gifted at virtue signaling while they slandered their opponents.

Politeness as filtered through fragility and supremacy isn’t about manners; it’s about a methodology of controlling the conversation. Polite white people who respond to calls for respect, for getting boots off necks with demand for decorum, aren’t interested in resistance or disruption. They are interested in control. They replicate the manners of Jim Crow America, demanding deference and obedience; they want the polite facade instead of disruption. They insist that they know best what should be done when attempting to battle and defeat bias, but in actuality they’re just happy to be useless. They are obstacles to freedom who feel no remorse, who provide no valuable insight, because ultimately, they are content to get in the way. They’re oppression tourists, virtue-signaling volunteers who are really just here to get what they can and block the way, so no others can pass without meeting whatever arbitrary standards they create. And if you get enough of them in one place, they can prevent any real progress from occurring while they reap the benefits of straddling white supremacy and being woke. They have less power than they think, than anyone realizes, but like any small predator, they manage to be flashy enough to be seen.

Many people in this room have an Etsy store where they create unique, unreplicable artifacts or useful items to be sold on a small scale, in a common marketplace where their friends meet and barter. I and many of my friends own more than one spinning wheel. We grow our food again. We make pickles and jams on private, individual scales, when many of our mothers forgot those skills if they ever knew them. We come to conventions, we create small communities of support and distributed skills--when one of us needs help, our village steps in. It’s only that our village is no longer physical, but connected by DSL instead of roads. But look at how we organize our tribes--bloggers preside over large estates, kings and queens whose spouses’ virtues are oft-lauded but whose faces are rarely seen. They have moderators to protect them, to be their knights, a nobility of active commenters and big name fans, a peasantry of regular readers, and vandals starting the occasional flame war just to watch the fields burn. Other villages are more commune-like, sharing out resources on forums or aggregate sites, providing wise women to be consulted, rabbis or priests to explain the world, makers and smiths to fashion magical objects. Groups of performers, acrobats and actors and singers of songs are traveling the roads once more, entertaining for a brief evening in a living room or a wheatfield, known by word of mouth and secret signal. Separate from official government, we create our own hierarchies, laws, and mores, as well as our own folklore and secret history. Even my own guilt about having failed as an academic is quite the crisis of filial piety--you see, my mother is a professor. I have not carried on the family trade. We dwell within a system so large and widespread, so disorganized and unconcerned for anyone but its most privileged and luxurious members, that our powerlessness, when we can summon up the courage to actually face it, is staggering. So we do not face it. We tell ourselves we are Achilles when we have much more in common with the cathedral-worker, laboring anonymously so that the next generation can see some incremental progress. We lack, of course, a Great Work to point to and say: my grandmother made that window; I worked upon the door. Though, I would submit that perhaps the Internet, as an object, as an aggregate entity, is the cathedral we build word by word and image by image, window by window and portal by portal, to stand taller for our children, if only by a little, than it does for us. For most of us are Lancelots, not Galahads. We may see the Grail of a good Classical life, but never touch it. That is for our sons, or their daughters, or further off. And if our villages are online, the real world becomes that dark wood on the edge of civilization, a place of danger and experience, of magic and blood, a place to make one’s name or find death by bear. And here, there be monsters.

The most fact-oriented people are those willing to check self-proclaimed "fact-checkers", the most scientifically-minded people are those willing to question every so-called "scientific consensus", and the most virtue-driven people are those willing to expose "virtue signallers".

The fact that someone would get a panic attack in the grocery store while our ancestors stormed the beaches of Normandy? That’s heroism. Whatever virtue-signaling people do on the internet nowadays isn’t heroism. It’s a narcissistic quest for collective validation, he convinced me.

The ones who raise my suspicions most are those who announce to the world just how nice and kind they are.

But virtues should be signaled, and the signalers should act to make their virtues manifest.

I really noticed it when she was talking about that hitchhiker in the RV. She was running her mouth like he was a victim or something. She just reminds me of all those virtue-signaling bastards on Twitter and Facebook. She always has something to say, but she never has any solutions.

This unintended consequence of performing unity exemplifies the ways in which people can mean well and still do absolutely wrong. Best-case scenario, the black square shows your network that you at least care about black people enough to post a photo, which I should note is free and easy. Unfortunately, worst-case scenario, this insignificant action can set forth a tidal wave of trouble for the grassroots activists on the ground doing the work. Performing solidarity is inherently selfish. Its very point is to virtue-signal that you are a good person, because it matters to you that people know you are a good person.

This may seem self-interested, a stance taken more to avoid a stigma than to break an arrangement of power. Given the kind of loud virtue signaling that followed 2020, I understand the question. But virtues should be signaled, and the signalers should act to make their virtues manifest. It is the latter, not the former, that is the problem. And I doubt that anyone ever parts with power in the name of charity. In this case, self-interest meant that here in the heart of Jim Crow and Redemption, ideas to the contrary could not be driven from the public square. And that is progress. It just isn’t inevitable that such progress continues.

On my analysis, misogyny’s primary function and constitutive manifestation is the punishment of “bad” women, and policing of women’s behavior. But systems of punishment and reward—and conviction and exoneration—tend to work together, holistically. So, the overall structural features of the account predict that misogyny as I’ve analyzed it is likely to work alongside other systems and mechanisms to enforce gender conformity. 7 And a little reflection on current social realities encourages pursuing this line of thinking, which would take the hostility women face to be the pointy, protruding tip of a larger patriarchal iceberg. We should also be concerned with the rewarding and valorizing of women who conform to gendered norms and expectations, enforce the “good” behavior of others, and engage in certain common forms of patriarchal virtue-signaling—by, for example, participating in slut-shaming, victim-blaming, or the Internet analog of witch-burning practices.

The Ignavi were damned because they couldn’t choose any side other than their own. Even worse, perhaps, is the person who chooses a side that isn’t his own just to please someone he likes, just to generally 'signal his virtue'. Nietzsche despised virtue signalers and humble braggers. He thought they had no virtue at all and were actually self-serving narcissists trying to get their own way. He provocatively referred to himself as the first immoralist, but, really, he believed that all moralists were the true immoralists since their morality was never anything other than disguised and highly polished self-interest. There was nothing moral about it.

While many people are afraid to talk about race, just as many use talk to hide from what they really fear: action. The more that I write about race, the more I’ve been surrounded by this talk disguised as action. From the white men using my Facebook and Twitter feeds as their own virtue signaling playground, to the white women sending me five-paragraph-long emails letting me know how the racial oppression of people of color makes them feel personally—I’ve seen how addicted people can get to the satisfaction of knowing they are saying all the right things, that they are having “deep conversations”—so addicted that it becomes the end-all and be-all of their racial justice goals.

I knew it was my duty to my own legend to survive this trial. But I was still crippled by my own devices. Imagine me as a great fully-rigged man-of-war. Four masts, great bulwarks of oak and five score cannon. All my life I have sailed smooth seas and waters that parted for me by virtue of my own splendor. Never tested. Never riled. A tragic existence, if ever there was one. “But at long last: a storm! And when I met it I found my hull . . . rotten. My planks leaking brine, my cannon brittle, powder wet. I foundered upon the storm. Upon you, Darrow of Lykos.” He sighs. “And it was my own fault.” I war between wanting to punch him in the mouth and surrendering into my curiosity by letting him continue. He’s a strange man with a seductive presence. Even as an enemy, his flamboyance fascinated me. Purple capes in battle. A horned Minotaur helmet. Trumpets blaring to signal his advance, as if welcoming all challengers. He even broadcast opera as his men bombarded cities. After so much isolation, he’s delighting in imposing his narrative upon us. “My peril is thus: I am, and always have been, a man of great tastes. In a world replete with temptation, I found my spirit wayward and easy to distract. The idea of prison, that naked, metal world, crushed me. The first year, I was tormented. But then I remembered the voice of a fallen angel. ‘The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, or a hell of heaven.’ I sought to make the deep not just my heaven, but my womb of rebirth. “I dissected the underlying mistakes which led to my incarceration and set upon an internal odyssey to remake myself. But—and you would know this, Reaper—long is the road up out of hell! I made arrangements for supplies. I toiled twenty hours a day. I reread the books of youth with the gravity of age. I perfected my body. My mind. Planks were replaced; new banks of cannon wrought in the fires of solitude. All for the next storm. “Now I see it is upon me and I sail before you the paragon of Apollonius au Valii-Rath. And I ask one question: for what purpose have you pulled me from the deep?” “Bloodyhell, did you memorize that?” Sevro mutters.

The lesson we learn from Nightingale's experience is that, as painful as it may sound, we humans are barely able to reason on our own or when surrounded by like-minded people. When we try to reason this way, we end up rationalizing because we use arguments as self-reinforcing virtue signals. And the worst news is that the more intelligent we are and the more information we have access to, the more successful our rationalizations are. This is in part because we're more aware of what the members of the groups -- political parties, churches, and others -- that we belong to think, and we try to align with them. On the other hand, if you are exposed to an opinion and don't know where the opinion comes from, you're more likely to think about it on its merits.

These days, virtue is constantly and loudly signaled but seldom practiced. Freedom is called oppression, mindless violence is called justice, and science bends to the demands of culture. The world has changed so fast, shaped by the powerful with reckless indifference to the lessons of history, and the momentum of change promises that in twenty years, the new world that follows this one will be crueler.

Neutrality always swallows all things mighty. The path of least resistance ensures all forks in the road are made comfortable descents into a mediocre valley of oblivion, an oblivion where nothing of note happens, where the audacity of uncomfortable choice is checked by the rank vanilla stank of stagnant stasis. In God's heaven, taking a hard stance is the heinous act of a heretic. Abandon all autonomy ye who enter here. Days of remembrance are reserved only for those who take a stand.

Everyone is a troll now. If you’ve ever liked or shared a meme that wished violence on someone you’d never met, if you’ve ever decided it was okay to snarl and snark with venom because the target was “powerful,” if you’ve ever tried to signal your virtue by piling on in an outrage mob, if you’ve ever wrung your hands and expressed concern that perhaps the money raised for some victim should have gone to some other less “privileged” victim—then I hate to break it to you, you’ve also been trolling.

After all, this world isn’t the one in which she grew up; it’s changed radically. There’s a disquieting otherness about it. These days, virtue is constantly and loudly signaled but seldom practiced. Freedom is called oppression, mindless violence is called justice, and science bends to the demands of culture. The world has changed so fast, shaped by the powerful with reckless indifference to the lessons of history, and the momentum of change promises that in twenty years, the new world that follows this one will be crueler.

By virtue of this filling of the causal gap, the most important demand of intuition – namely that one's conscious efforts have the capacity to affect one's own bodily actions – is beautifully met by the quantum ontology. And in this age of computers, and information, and flashing pixels there is nothing counterintuitive about the ontological idea that nature is built – not out of ponderous classically conceived matter but – out of events, and out of informational waves and signals that create tendencies for these events to occur.

She does not believe that any political ideology can shape society into a utopia. She knows that, instead, even the most earnest utopians always and everywhere create horrific dystopias. She does not believe that scientists are always honest, that rapidly advancing technology will inevitably save us, that everything that is called “progress” is in fact progress. She knows that “experts” are often frauds, that “intellectuals” can be as ignorant as anyone, and that those who most strenuously signal their virtue and are celebrated for it will always prove to be among the most corrupt.

To make meaning is to go beyond the information given. A fast-beating heart has a physical function, such as getting enough oxygen to your limbs so you can run, but categorization allows it to become an emotional experience such as happiness or fear, giving it additional meaning and functions understood within your culture. When you experience affect with unpleasant valence and high arousal, you make meaning from it depending on how you categorize: Is it an emotional instance of fear? A physical instance of too much caffeine? A perception that the guy talking to you is a jerk? Categorization bestows new functions on biological signals, not by virtue of their physical nature but by virtue of your knowledge and the context

Even though comfort based on an illusion is itself illusory, it is for a while a deliverance from the anxiety and existential dread that the world today can generate in abundance. She does not believe that any political ideology can shape society into a utopia. She knows that, instead, even the most earnest utopians always and everywhere create horrific dystopias. She does not believe that scientists are always honest, that rapidly advancing technology will inevitably save us, that everything that is called “progress” is in fact progress. She knows that “experts” are often frauds, that “intellectuals” can be as ignorant as anyone, and that those who most strenuously signal their virtue and are celebrated for it will always prove to be among the most corrupt. Such innate clearheadedness ensures that comforting illusions will elude her, though there are times, as now, when she might welcome the comfort of them. When a majority of people in any society share the same array of illusions and cling passionately to them, they will encourage one another until illusion becomes delusion, until delusion becomes mass insanity. Whole societies do go mad. History is filled with chilling examples.

Conversely, if she has learned one thing about herself that is the most discouraging, it is that she is immune to the illusions in which so many people take comfort. Even though comfort based on an illusion is itself illusory, it is for a while a deliverance from the anxiety and existential dread that the world today can generate in abundance. She does not believe that any political ideology can shape society into a utopia. She knows that, instead, even the most earnest utopians always and everywhere create horrific dystopias. She does not believe that scientists are always honest, that rapidly advancing technology will inevitably save us, that everything that is called “progress” is in fact progress. She knows that “experts” are often frauds, that “intellectuals” can be as ignorant as anyone, and that those who most strenuously signal their virtue and are celebrated for it will always prove to be among the most corrupt. Such innate clearheadedness ensures that comforting illusions will elude her, though there are times, as now, when she might welcome the comfort of them. When a majority of people in any society share the same array of illusions and cling passionately to them, they will encourage one another until illusion becomes delusion, until delusion becomes mass insanity. Whole societies do go mad. History is filled with chilling examples. Joe Smith knew it when he built this house.

It went downhill into naked genocidal Europhobia from there. People of European descent were now a despised racial minority and the Euro-hating racists and self-loathing useful idiots were out in force. To call for the destruction of your own kind was the ultimate signaling of virtue and a badge of fealty to The Cause.

In the chamber, [Frances Hamling] sat close to her husband [William Hamling, about to go before the US Supreme Court on 4/15/74], trying to repress the anxiety she felt about his future. Four years in prison and $87,000 in fines was hardly a matter of casual contemplation. Since nobody was supposed to speak or even whisper in the chamber, she diverted herself by glancing around at the room's opulent interior, the impressive bone-white china columns and red velvet draperies that formed the background behind the polished judicial bench and high black leather chairs. A gold clock hung down from between two pillars, signaling that it was 9:57 a.m. -- a few minutes before the justices' scheduled arrival. Along the upper edge of the front of the room, close to the top of the forty-four-foot ceiling, Frances noticed an interesting, voluptuous section of Classical art: It was a golden beige marble frieze that extended across the width of the room and showed about twenty nude and seminude men, women, and children gathered in various poses. The figures symbolized the embodiment of human wisdom and truth, righteousness, and virtue; but the bodies to her could as easily have represented an assemblage of Roman hedonists or orgiasts, and it struck her as ironic that such a scene should be hovering over the heads of the jurists who would be questioning her husband's use of illustrations in the Presidential Report on Obscenity and Pornography.

One of the signal virtues of Halbrook’s scholarship is his willingness to let historical sources speak for themselves. Many professional historians who write about the Second Amendment expect the reader to take on trust that the author knows what people were thinking when the Bill of Rights was adopted.

We could add privilege theory to Žižek’s long list of fake left ist “radicals” who bombard the existing system. As with “ Médecins sans frontières , Greenpeace, feminist and anti-racist campaigns,” privilege theory runs the risk of falling prey to what Žižek names “interpassivity”: the risk of “doing things not in order to achieve something, but to prevent something from really happening, really changing. All this frenetic humanitarian, Politically Correct, etc. activity fi ts the formula of ‘Let’s go on changing something all the time so that, globally, things will remain the same!’ ” The problem with privilege theory—especially as vulgarized in liberal universities—is that it ends up becoming “an empty gesture which obliges no one to do anything definite.” White liberal multiculturalists put on display their “progressive” leanings by calling for inclusivity and tolerance, parading their own self-critique—in a pleasure-ridden act of virtue signaling—as a model for others to follow. Whiteness or white privilege is treated as a reified thing that could be singled out and denounced, and not as “a set of power relations,” as Charles W. Mills insightfully puts it. Privilege-checking does not necessarily translate into campus radicalism. It remains utopian and impotent when it fails to confront capitalism itself: “The true utopia is the belief that the existing global system can reproduce itself indefinitely; the only way to be truly ‘realistic’ is to think what, within the coordinates of this system, cannot but appear as impossible.” The advocates of privilege theory are today’s “true utopians.” They muzzle ideology critique, believing that gradualist reform is the key to social transformation. But privilege theory’s antiracist insights are diluted, never really touching the reality of domination and exploitation, never “demanding ‘impossible’ changes of the system itself.

Self-criticism can sometimes motivate our performance when we criticize ourselves for particular actions rather than for deep-seated tendencies. But unless carefully managed and contained, self-criticism can become a form of inner-directed virtue signaling. It projects toughness and ambition, but often leads to rumination and hopelessness instead of productive action.

Turnaround times are there to prevent people from making poor decisions to keep going when they’re in the shadow of the summit, building into a climbing plan three crucial concepts. The first is that persistence is not always a virtue. Whether it is prudent to continue up the mountain depends both on the climbing conditions and the condition of the climbers. When those conditions warrant quitting, it is a good decision to heed those signals.

People who raise my suspicions most are those who must let everyone know just how nice and kind they are.

People who virtue-signal are much more likely to have what they call the ‘dark triad’ of personality traits—Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy.

But unless carefully managed and contained, self-criticism can become a form of inner-directed virtue signaling. It projects toughness and ambition, but often leads to rumination and hopelessness instead of productive action.[

Evil people want to look good to others. They also want to appear good in their own eyes, so the pangs of shame and self-reproach do not penetrate their hearts.

Those who seek the good have a permanent advantage in the ultimately inescapable human moral design. They have a greater advantage in the indestructibility of that part of the design called deep conscience, which, like a signal buoy, keeps rising. And they have an illimitable advantage in the Designer Himself, who is not a remote intelligence but a God who hears their prayers, cannot be defeated or caught by surprise, and acts beyond apparent defeats in ways they do not see. Perhaps their greatest permanent disadvantage is that through the sheer horror of devastation, their opponents can tempt them to despair. This is a burden. But they have a permanent advantage in the virtue Saint Paul calls hope, for their confidence, unlike the bravado of their opponents, is not presumption; it does not rest in their own small strength, but in the strength of the one whom they serve.

those who most strenuously signal their virtue and are celebrated for it will always prove to be among the most corrupt.

The purest of virtue signaling can be seen in the likes of what was found on actor James Franco’s now-deleted Instagram page. Franco’s brief bio included the caveat “if you’re racist, sexist, or homophobic, get the f*** out of here.” It takes courage to stand up to “racists,” but writing out the F-word is a bridge too far, apparently.

Indeed, calling others out for virtue signaling can be a mighty convenient way not only of dismissing any public utterance we don’t like but also of signaling our own superiority in the process.

How unfortunate, then, that as a rule, virtue signaling backfires. Not merely because the threshold of enough does not exist, but because the more aggressive our signals, the less convincing we render them. What comes across instead is the extent of our insecurity—otherwise we wouldn’t feel the need to preen in the first place.

We’re conditioned that our success (and our neighbor’s) is best measured by looking at our possessions. Those possessions influence perception, and because a certain perception earns us status, we chase the proof of wealth rather than wealth itself.

Homes, and other purchases like it, supposedly prove to our community that we have money, but many times these purchases are just signaling to others that we used to have money.

... it is not just that moral conclusions can not be justified in the way that they once were ; but the loss of the possibility of such justification signals a correlative change in the meaning of moral idioms

The brig Henrietta having made Sandy Hook a little before the dinner hour – and having passed the Narrows about three o’clock – and then crawling to and fro, in a series of tacks infinitesimal enough to rival the calculus, across the grey sheet of the harbour of New-York – until it seemed to Mr Smith, dancing from foot to foot upon deck, that the small mound of the city waiting there would hover ahead in the November gloom in perpetuity, never growing closer, to the smirk of Greek Zeno – and the day being advanced to dusk by the time Henrietta at last lay anchored off Tietjes Slip, with the veritable gables of the city’s veritable houses divided from him only by one hundred foot of water – and the dusk moreover being as cold and damp and dim as November can afford, as if all the world were a quarto of grey paper dampened by drizzle until in danger of crumbling imminently to pap: – all this being true, the master of the brig pressed upon him the virtue of sleeping this one further night aboard, and pursuing his shore business in the morning. (He meaning by the offer to signal his esteem, having found Mr Smith a pleasant companion during the slow weeks of the crossing.) But Smith would not have it. Smith,

But it isn’t the fun of DIY invention, urban exploration, physical danger, and civil disorder that the Z-Boys enjoyed in 1976. It is fun within serious limits, and for all of its thrills it is (by contrast) scripted. And rather obedient. The fact that there are public skateparks and high-performance skateboards signals progress: America has embraced this sport, as it did bicycles in the nineteenth century. Towns want to make skating safe and acceptable. The economy has more opportunity to grow. America is better off for all of this. Yet such government and commercial intervention in a sport that was born of radical liberty means that the fun itself has changed; it has become mediated. For the skaters who take pride in their flashy store-bought equipment have already missed the Z-Boys’ joke: Skating is a guerrilla activity. It’s the fun of beating, not supporting, the system. P. T. Barnum said it himself: all of business is humbug. How else could business turn a profit, if it didn’t trick you with advertising? If it didn’t hook you with its product? This particular brand of humbug was perfected in the late 1960s, when merchandise was developed and marketed and sold to make Americans feel like rebels. Now, as then, customers always pay for this privilege, and purveyors keep it safe (and generally clean) to curb their liability. They can’t afford customers taking real risks. Plus it’s bad for business to encourage real rebellion. And yet, marketers know Americans love fun—they have known this for centuries. And they know that Americans, especially kids, crave autonomy and participation, so they simulate the DIY experience at franchises like the Build-A-Bear “workshops,” where kids construct teddy bears from limited options, or “DIY” restaurants, where customers pay to grill their own steaks, fry their own pancakes, make their own Bloody Marys. These pay-to-play stores and restaurants are, in a sense, more active, more “fun,” than their traditional competition: that’s their big selling point. But in both cases (as Barnum knew) the joke is still on you: the personalized bear is a standardized mishmash, the personalized food is often inedible. As Las Vegas knows, the house always wins. In the history of radical American fun, pleasure comes from resistance, risk, and participation—the same virtues celebrated in the “Port Huron Statement” and the Digger Papers, in the flapper’s slang and the Pinkster Ode. In the history of commercial amusement, most pleasures for sale are by necessity passive. They curtail creativity and they limit participation (as they do, say, in a laser-tag arena) to a narrow range of calculated surprises, often amplified by dazzling technology. To this extent, TV and computer screens, from the tiny to the colossal, have become the scourge of American fun. The ubiquity of TV screens in public spaces (even in taxicabs and elevators) shows that such viewing isn’t amusement at all but rather an aggressive, ubiquitous distraction. Although a punky insurgency of heedless satire has stung the airwaves in recent decades—from equal-opportunity offenders like The Simpsons and South Park to Comedy Central’s rabble-rousing pundits, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert—the prevailing “fun” of commercial amusement puts minimal demands on citizens, besides their time and money. TV’s inherent ease seems to be its appeal, but it also sends a sobering, Jumbotron-sized message about the health of the public sphere.

But over the past fifty years, accomplishment in our poetry has been signaled most often by manner—as if it were the job of artists not to engage the most potent aspects of Dickinson or Eliot but to sequester themselves in one or another schoolroom, buoyed by the camaraderie with other students sitting obediently, if stylishly, in rows. Schoolroom for formalists, schoolroom for experimentalists—the degeneration of these terms, hijacked by the renegade engines of taste, would portend the degeneration of the medium, except that while fifty years is a long time in the life of an artist, it is in the history of art nothing, the blink of an eye.

Now Post Office employees were engaging in public virtue-signalling about their organisation’s supposed commitment to mental health, whilst simultaneously trying to prevent justice for hundreds of people who had suffered the most appalling treatment at their hands.

Even though comfort based on an illusion is itself illusory, it is for a while a deliverance from the anxiety and existential dread that the world today can generate in abundance. She does not believe that any political ideology can shape society into a utopia. She knows that, instead, even the most earnest utopians always and everywhere create horrific dystopias. She does not believe that scientists are always honest, that rapidly advancing technology will inevitably save us, that everything that is called “progress” is in fact progress. She knows that “experts” are often frauds, that “intellectuals” can be as ignorant as anyone, and that those who most strenuously signal their virtue and are celebrated for it will always prove to be among the most corrupt

In this comment, we can begin to see the way that social media amplifies the cruelty and “virtue signaling” that are recurrent features of call-out culture. (Virtue signaling refers to the things people say and do to advertise that they are virtuous. This helps them stay within the good graces of their team.) Mobs can rob good people of their conscience, particularly when participants wear masks (in a real mob) or are hiding behind an alias or avatar (in an online mob). Anonymity fosters deindividuation—the loss of an individual sense of self—which lessens self-restraint and increases one’s willingness to go along with the mob.73

Another very common way that people sabotage is by distracting themselves to the point of being completely phased out of their lives.   People who are constantly “busy” are running from themselves.   Nobody is “busy” unless they want to be busy, and you will know that because so many people with extremely hectic schedules would never describe themselves that way. This is because being “busy” is not a virtue; it only signals to others that you do not know how to manage your time or your tasks.   Being busy communicates importance; it often makes you seem a little untouchable to others. It also overwhelms the body so that it can only focus on the tasks at hand. Being busy is the ultimate way to distract ourselves from what’s really wrong.

signal their virtue and are celebrated for it will always prove to be among the most corrupt.

In "A Stolen Life," Dugard’s ability to think through questions of suffering, love, hope, and justice is indistinguishable from that of people her age who have lived "normally,” immersed in the world of blockbuster films, disposable fashion, popular music, easy virtue, virtue signaling, screen addiction, trendy political causes, and banal propaganda. The further I got into "A Stolen Life," the more I realized Dugard sounded just like the young women (and men) whose work I read in college writing workshops. My conclusion is both horrifying and offensive: for all the good our freedom is doing us we might as well have been locked up in a dungeon with demoniacs. The effects of living freely in the Modern world are not easily distinguishable from the effects of living in captivity with a psychopath.

Ten best quotes of the book, “Miracles Through My Eyes” "Miracles Through My Eyes " by Dinesh Sahay Author- Mentor {This book was published on 23rd October in 2019) 1. “God is always there to fulfil each demand, prayer or wish provided you have intent; unshaken trust in Him, determination and action on the ground, and when this entire manifest in one’s life, then it becomes a miracle of life. Nothing moves without His grace. It comes when you are on the right path without selfish motives but will never happen when done for selfish and destructive motives”. 2. “All diseases are self-creation and they come due to some cause and it transforms into a disease by virtue of wrong thinking, wrong actions which are against nature, the universe and God. When you disobey the rules set by God. All misfortunes, accidents, deceases, and even death are the creation of negative, bad thoughts, spoken words and actions of man himself, at some stage of his life. All good events in life are also the creation of man through his good and positive thoughts at various stages of his life”. 3. “The biggest investments lie not in the savings and creation of wealth with selfish motives. Though you may find success this prosperity shall not be long lasting and at a later stage, the money and wealth may be lost slowly in many unfortunate ways”. 4. “If you want to have a successful life with ease and at the same time want abundance and wealth then my friend, you must care for others. You must start your all efforts to help by means of tithing, charity, service to mankind in any form, and help poor, helpless, needy and underprivileged.” 5. “The largest investment for a person (which is time tested by many rich personalities) shall be to give 10% of your monthly income for the charitable cause each month if you are a salaried class, and if you are a businessman or a company, then you must contribute 10% annually for charitable cause”. 6. “Nature is giving signals to the mankind that they are moving near to destruction of this earth as it’s a cause and effect of man-made destruction of earth and with all sins, hate, untruthfulness and violence it carried throughout the centuries and acted against the principals of the universe and nature. Those connected to the divine may escape from the clutches of death and destruction of the earth. We have witnessed many major catastrophes in the form of Tsunami’s, earthquakes, Tornado’s, Global warming and volcanic eruptions and the world is moving towards it further major happenings in times to come”. 7. “Let us pray for peace and harmony for all humanity and make this world a better place to live by our actions of love, compassion, truthfulness, non-violence, end of terrorism and peace on earth with no wars with any country. Let there will be single governance in the world, the governance of one religion, the religion of love, peace, prosperity and healthy living to all”. 8.” Forgive all the people who often unreasonable, self-centred or accuse you of selfish and forget the all that is said about you. It is your own inner reflection which you see in the outer world. 9. “Thought has a tremendous vibratory force which moves with limitless speed and, makes all creations in man’s life. Each thought vibrates to the frequency with which it was created by a person, whether that was good or bad, travels accordingly through the conscious and subconscious mind in space and the universe. It vibrates with time and energy to produces manifestation in the spiritual and materialistic world of man or woman or matter (thing), in form of events, happenings and creativity”.

Ubuntu signals a sense of personal responsibility. The community benefits from the virtues of responsible individuals. They also serve as inspiration to others, particularly the younger generation.

In a world of palm-greasing and PC virtue signalling, integrity ran through George Noakes like a stick of rock.

But at the same time, many of them deep down believe that they can’t make it. They don’t want any wealth creation to happen. So, they virtue signal by attacking the whole enterprise by saying, "Well, making money is evil. You shouldn’t do it.

People who virtue-signal are much more likely to have what they call the ‘dark triad’ of personality traits—Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy

Modern society doesn’t have a problem with treating the janitor the same as the CEO. We have a problem with our need to show the world that we treat the janitor the same as the CEO.

Social media amplifies the cruelty and "virtue signaling" that are recurrent features of call-out culture. (Virtue signaling refers to the things people say and do to advertise that they are virtuous...)

Sea como fuere, toda exhibición de virtud requiere exagerar los problemas, lo que a su vez hace que los problemas crezcan todavía más.

(Leave aside that telling people you’re virtuous isn’t a virtue, it’s self-promotion. Virtue signalling is not virtue. Virtue signalling is, quite possibly, our commonest vice.)

virtue-signalling is all about boasting,’ reported Phillips. ‘It flaunts the signaller’s credentials as a morally virtuous person. It screams, “Me! Me! Me!

For many actors their best performances are not in any movie or on any stage, but rather perfecting a public image of themselves having moral character and virtue, which is usually the opposite of what they are in in reality, behind closed doors.

When we don’t think of our institutions as formative but as performative—when the presidency and Congress are just stages for political performance art, when a university becomes a venue for vain virtue signaling, when journalism is indistinguishable from activism—they become harder to trust. They aren’t really asking for our confidence, just for our attention.

When you give your money to a restaurant or a retail store, the goods you get in return might show others something of your financial means, but it also depletes your wealth. You’re showing people that you used to have money and now you have something that costs more money.

During these two and a half hard years, the most encouraging thing Katie has learned about herself is that she’s more resilient than she ever imagined. Perhaps she can be broken, but it has not happened yet. She can be bent so severely that it doesn’t seem as though she can ever straighten herself out again, but she always does. She gets on with getting on. Conversely, if she has learned one thing about herself that is the most discouraging, it is that she is immune to the illusions in which so many people take comfort. Even though comfort based on an illusion is itself illusory, it is for a while a deliverance from the anxiety and existential dread that the world today can generate in abundance. She does not believe that any political ideology can shape society into a utopia. She knows that, instead, even the most earnest utopians always and everywhere create horrific dystopias. She does not believe that scientists are always honest, that rapidly advancing technology will inevitably save us, that everything that is called “progress” is in fact progress. She knows that “experts” are often frauds, that “intellectuals” can be as ignorant as anyone, and that those who most strenuously signal their virtue and are celebrated for it will always prove to be among the most corrupt. Such innate clearheadedness ensures that comforting illusions will elude her, though there are times, as now, when she might welcome the comfort of them.

The lights went back to the green of safety—but she stood trembling, unable to move. That’s how it works for the travel of one’s body, she thought, but what have they done to the traffic of the soul? They have set the signals in reverse—and the road is safe when the lights are the red of evil—but when the lights are the green of virtue, promising that yours is the right-of-way, you venture forth and are ground by the wheels. All over the world, she thought—those inverted lights go reaching into every land, they go on, encircling the earth. And the earth is littered with mangled cripples, who don’t know what has hit them or why, who crawl as best they can on their crushed limbs through their lightless days, with no answer save that pain is the core of existence—and the traffic cops of morality chortle and tell them that man, by his nature, is unable to walk.