Why on Earth do People Virtue Signal?

Writing in The Spectator, James Bartholomew coined the phrase, ‘Virtue Signalling, to denote the practice whereby people, on the surface of it, engaged in activity which they suspected might be considered generous, brave, solicitous or unselfish, held as their real priority the being seen in public to be carrying out that activity. In the New Testament Christ had enjoined those individuals who gave charitable alms not to let their left hand know what their right hand was doing. The modern dispensation is completely different. Whole swathes of society seem to be engaged in the noisy proclamation of their own virtue although, were they to be challenged that this was the case, they’d deny it vehemently. Why has this situation come about, as this is, undoubtedly, a modern phenomenon?

I’d suggest that this is the result of a shift in the moral landscape due to shifts in our cultural landscape which have taken place in the latter part of the Twentieth century and the early Twenty-First. In this period, and this process can, perhaps, be traced back as far as the nineteenth century as Darwin and Freud came to the forefront, it has become more and more popular to see the old recourse of religion as something primitive that has been replaced by a smarter and more realistic scientific outlook.

In times when religion, notably, in Western societies, the Christian religion, prevailed the moral sphere was located largely in the ‘hearts’ of individuals. The ‘heart’ as the term is used in the Bible, was a private place known solely to the possessor of that heart and to his maker who had unhindered access to it. The Bible also enjoined people not to judge others lest they too be judged because no man can really look into the heart of his brother and know what motivated him.

In the hearts of individuals took place the moral drama of redemption. To be one of the saved a transaction between a man and his maker had to take place. As the reliance on religion has been superseded this private location has lost its seniority. The fact that few now believe in such interiority or its importance means that all that remains is the public domain. The goodness that once resided secretly in people’s hearts now resides only in public. The currency of private virtue known only to God is now a public currency to be flashed whenever possible. For if it is not seen and known by fellow creatures what is the point of having it? Such boasting, once, in times when doctrines such as that of original sin were assumed, would have been seen as anathema. How times have changed!

This being the case what remains is a competition to accumulate the currency of virtue which is seen to be in short supply and which exists to be flaunted. If you don’t acquire and show public virtue points the sure and only alternative is that you will be viewed as irredeemably vicious. All that matters is public perception regardless of any interior moral truth, a commodity whose very existence is doubted. Suddenly we are in a jungle where the rule of the survival of the fittest obtains and the weak go to the wall. The battle is not for food but for the appearance of virtuousness and there is only a finite amount to go round. Nature is red in tooth and claw. This is why, in discussion on sensitive subjects, one often feels as though one is hovering near to a spiked mantrap into which, glimpsing the slightest sign of vulnerability, your opponent will pitch you. Be seen to put a moral foot wrong, fail to sympathise ostentatiously enough with a downtrodden group, be seen to give the tiniest hint of racism or sexism and in you go! It’s them or you. The only real disaster that can happen to modern people and the one they will seek to avoid at all costs is this one. And this is all because the moral drama, albeit a comprehensively false one, is now enacted in the public arena instead of in the cockpit of the heart.  Salvation, and a sham salvation at that, now depends entirely upon the individual and his or her success or failure to get their moral credentials out there in public.