1. Actual Ethics and Hyper-Morality.
Without belabouring culture war phrases which are invariably over-used, it's worth considering the expression “virtue signal.” Though it's usage has been dated back to 2004, it's generally thought that a 2015 Spectator article by James Bartholomew brought the expression into popular usage. It means basically a very public expression of virtuous sentiment which is largely self-serving or self-congratulatory – a show of moral commitment which lacks real conviction or investment. “Virtue signalling” was generally a conservative or right wing taunt aimed at establishment liberals, and yet rather than dying a death as the Guardian hoped it would in 2016, it has slowly crept into general usage.
Beginning to become a pejorative term roughly around 2011, “social justice warrior” had essentially the same meaning as “virtue signalling.” “Social justice warrior” is used infrequently today, having largely been replaced by “Woke” as a catch-all term of opprobrium for performative moralism. Like “virtue signalling”, “Woke” started out as exclusively right-wing insult, but gradually evolved into more general usage. “Recreational outrage” is another term which emerged in this period to designate the performative, hyper-moralizing attitude.
The point in high-lighting these well-worn additions to the lexicon, and their gradual movement across the political spectrum, is to suggest they point to a real and very pervasive tendency in contemporary culture and society. Very few people today, with the exception of those thoroughly ensconced in the ideology of establishment liberalism, would argue the point that ours is a culture fatally disposed to performative displays of morality. Why precisely this is so is a study for sociology. Two factors probably play a prominent role: the behavioural effects of social media, particularly in their implementation of instant audience response gratification as a Pavlovian reward system, and the peculiarly puritan and curtain twitching turn liberalism has taken in the past decade or so.
The purpose of this essay, however, is not to trace the origins of contemporary performative morality, but rather to query what impact it has on actual morality. A few points should be made regarding performative morality. Virtue signalling is not, I suspect, moral hypocrisy in any conventional sense of the term. A moral hypocrite is a conscious dissembler. Virtue signalling has far more in common with self-righteousness, which is a peculiar vice whereby the impulse towards selflessness becomes unconsciously a vehicle of self-aggrandisement; the self-righteous person is a moralizing narcissist. As such, something far worse than mere selfishness can emerge; as C.S. Lewis observed, “a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.”
Other characteristics of performative hyper-morality worth noting are selectivity and malleability. A defining quality of actual ethics is that they are predicated on underlying principles which are largely non-negotiable. A legitimate ethical stance must be maintained whether it is easy to do so or not, whether it is fashionable or otherwise. Ethics pertain to the community, but in a vital sense, the exercise of conscience is a deeply individual matter. Only in this way can we assert that slavery and segregation were still morally wrong, even when they were socially normative. Performative hyper-morality, on the other hand, has almost no truly individual dimension. It is so closely aligned with social response reward systems that might be said that these alone are its underlying principles – which means that hyper-morality will concern itself with whatever the collective are concerned, and may cleave to any moral position, however inconsistent or illogical, as long as it has the sanction of the collective.
This also makes performative hyper-morality highly malleable. Insofar as the perspective of the collective can be conditioned or controlled (by media saturation, expansively funded state propaganda, etc.), then the moral perspective of the collective can be similarly conditioned and controlled, because there are no underlying ethical principles to critically examine moral prepositions, and apply the brakes when necessary.
Actual ethics, then, have an intensely private dimension: they must be followed as duty to one's individual conscience, even in the event of having no other reward; hyper-morality exists so much in the domain of social reward that it has virtually no underlying individual component. Again, this is not a form of moral hypocrisy; it is more accurate to say that a societal level, we now see no distinction between the social reward-driven virtue signal, and the exercise of actual ethics. The performance has consumed the actor, and it is not clear that any real personality exists beneath it.
2. Hyper-Morality and Covid.
One the most frustrating puzzles of the Covid era has been the tenacity with which supporters of lockdown ideology have shut their eyes to the consequences of these policies. No objective observer could realistically deny that these issues constitute a grave moral crisis. In western countries, we have witnessed economic devastation (bourne entirely by small independent business and workers), mental health devastation (rising overdoses, alcohol-related deaths, addiction, increasing consumption of anti-depressants, etc.), a crisis of the mental health and general well-being of an entire generation of children, a public health crisis related to delayed cancer screenings and almost all non-Covid illnesses, and so forth. In poorer countries, treatment of serious diseases such as TB and AIDS has been disrupted, and the economic consequences of lockdowns has lead to massive increases in child labour and child starvation.
In any normal state of affairs, these issues would be a source of grave concern to anybody purporting to advance a moral viewpoint. And yet the mystery is that all this has mattered the least to precisely those who purport to be the most moral. The serious moral consequences of the New Normal have not simply been downplayed by those who identify as liberal or left-leaning; they have been buried under the carpet. A deafening silence pervades, almost like a church closing ranks and covering up a myriad of sex scandals. How can such a thing happen?
In reality, it could only happen in a society with a style of moralizing such as our own. Hyper-morality is a vital component of how any of the this happened in the first place. The selectivity of hyper-morality allowed people to focus narrowly on one specific issue (Covid deaths) to the exclusion of all other considerations. Having made this one issue the entire centre of the universe, it then becomes possible not only to support policies which are deeply harmful in all other domains, but also to assert the self-decieving illusion that to do so is an act almost of moral heroism. Instead of sober, nuanced analysis of a complex situation, there is simply the emotive thrill of invoking Covid death stats in opposition to the bad people who simply don't care about them. Emotively shrill and always in the moment, hyper-morality has no consistency in its assertions: police brutality is more important than the pandemic one moment, and yet it doesn't exist the next when it relates to lockdown protests; an intense commitment to bodily autonomy and the right to choice evaporates into the thin air when it encounters corporate vaccines that don't even provide sterilizing immunity; the generation that professed the loudest in history its opposition to discrimination becomes the first in modern history to implement legalized segregation.
Again, when ethics have no firm underlying principles, they become like putty. Control the reward systems, and you can create the convictions, from one moment to the next.
3. Moral Void.
We are the hollow men
We are the hollow men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw.
T.S. Elliot.
Ethical issues are usually far more complex and difficult than they appear at first glance. The most seemingly straightforward moral issue will frequently turn out to be far from intuitive or self-evident, when properly considered. And yet, when we ask a huge question – what is the fundamental moral obligation of a society – it seems that the answer allows for little real confusion or doubt. Whether one believes in God, or simply in the unguided operations of evolution, the answer is the same: the fundamental moral obligation of a society is to children and the future. The instinctive dictates of love and empathy, and the sheer logic of survival, both attest to this.
The most alarming and depressing phenomenon of the Covid era has been the degree to which this most basic of moral instincts has become attenuated, or even altogether extinguished. The attitude towards children which prevailed throughout this pandemic has been one either of a mere callous disregard, or a kind of wilful, perverse cruelty which has been deeply unnerving. Again, the question asserts itself: how is it that the society which proclaims its moral superiority the loudest in modern history, is precisely that which betrays the most foundational moral obligation of any society, i.e. to the well-being of its children? Or, perhaps, is it really so surprising that it should be so?
A sobering, even chilling notion occurred to me recently. I don't know if it has any claim to veracity, or was just a product of my own particular anxieties and biases. Considering the direction the world had taken since the advent of Covid, particularly in the light of our treatment of children and young people, a stark possibility suggested itself: our society and culture may have no underlying moral or ethical foundation. This was not the sense that it might have a weak or severely attenuated moral foundation, but rather the bleaker proposition that there is nothing there at all – a pure void, a vacuum. To contemplate such a thing is to experience the uncanny sensation of encountering something which appears entirely normal on the surface, and yet underneath some vital spark is absent.
Many people assume that a nihilistic society would be characterised by aimless hedonism and boredom. Yet this need not be the case. A truly nihilistic society, at least in its incipient stages, might be characterised by an excess of commitment, rather than its absence. In the absence of firm beliefs and convictions, the appetite for them would become intense and indiscriminate, and basically court a variety of fanaticisms. This may explain why so many aspects of our culture have acquired a febrile quality in recent years. Our politics have become religious and fanatical; our morality, too, expressing itself as performative hyper-morality, has become a fanaticism. The intensity is proportional to the lack of substance. The abundance of visible belief and commitment suggests the underlying absence of the real thing, and the indiscriminate longing for it.
At any rate, it feels as though the more the signal of virtue deafens, the more it is to mask a silent, absent source.
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