Reflecting on virtue signalling...??

 I learned a new phrase today: “virtue signalling” from a politician in response to a question about local council support for a nuclear weapons ban. His view was that anything a local council would do, presumably in support or not, would have no impact on the issue and thus, to do anything, like a municipal bylaw or even a letter to I-Can would be a waste of energy and time and amount to virtue signalling.

Where to start?

Why not start with a review of a two-decade-plus career in an English classroom, where poetry, novels, plays, short stories and news reporting language was the daily, hourly weekly, and annual menu. In the process of those discussions, theme papers, public speaking assignments, poetry-writing workshops, film reviews, the basic instrument was ‘words’….and their literal, metaphoric, contextual and even philosophic denotation and connotation. Every time a student proferred a opinion, about how a character in a novel responded to a predicament, s/he was using words, and those words were springing from what that student deemed to be his or her opinion, feeing, sentiment, and his/her relationship to that situation. Of course, those two or three sentences would invariably prompt successive responses from other who, too, had been listening, digesting both the words of the classmate and the situation presented by the novelist or playwright that prompted their response, again in words.

It is not only in political circles that words matter. In those classrooms, each person, whether s/he was consciously aware that his or her world view was developing, in a process of exchanging various views, attitudes, perceptions, even beliefs. When one hears one’s own voice among peers in a safe environment, one begins to take seriously the meaning and import of the words one chooses, as well as the words others choose. At the end of each class, or semester, or even high school graduation, there is no ‘bridge’ of a physical nature available for demonstration, evaluation, review and testing. Indeed, while most of the female students took those verbal exchanges fairly seriously, most of the males considered many of the subjects ‘too emotional’ and therefore, unsubstantial, ethereal and in general males classed them as ‘B.S.’….given that opinions are not really that important in an English class, (although they may be on Friday night’s date!)

Referencing details of the author’s text, as supporting evidence for the opinions offered, of course, inserted a degree of both preparation and concentration if one chose to engage. A situation in a play or novel will have as many interpretations as there might be students in a classroom of thirty. Sometimes, (an English teacher’s dream!) the students would depart continuing  the discussion and demonstrating their engagement with its resonance for them.  And who could have predicted the reaction of some of the parents of those classes, decades later, ‘The conversations went too far!’ Even after they had graduated, some of those students still suffered from parents who wanted to protect them retroactively.

Undoubtedly, some of the opinions expressed in those classes would qualify as ‘virtue signalling’ in that everyone, especially in public situations, wishes, almost as if by some instinct, to be on the side of virtue. Opinions expressed on that account could be dismissed as ‘virtue signalling.’

And, so after some thought about the phrase, I could, without fear of cynicism, ascribe the phrase to much of what comes out of the mouths of politicians, clergy, journalists, and even scholars. Theories abound in each academic discipline that either espouse or disdain some human ‘virtue’ or point to is absence. Virtues, in and of themselves, comprise much of the vernacular of the popular discourse. Indeed, signalling virtues just happens to be one of the more readily deployed worker appreciation and valuation phrases….Signally to another the virtue of his employment to an organization is not offered specifically as a carrot to prompt even more effort, concentration and performance, although it clearly may have that impact.

Let’s look at virtue signalling in the public square. Protesters around the world are demonstrating based on their perception and appreciation of the virtue of their position. Championing the Ukrainians against the Russians, demonstrates a high degree of commitment and conviction about the virtue of the Ukrainian position. Similarly, the thousands who protest the devastation of Gaza are pointing to the virtue of preserving and providing a homeland for Palestinians, especially  when the very future of a any idea of a two-state solution has been openly and defiantly dismissed (again?) just this week by Natanyahu.

Environmental ‘virtue signallers’ are growing in number, in newspaper columns, in conferences, in UN-sponsored conventions where agreements are signed, unfortunately without the imprimatur of sanctions to assure that commitments to protect the environment are carried out. Voluntarism, on the part of nations, as witnessed by the multi-national commitment (including Russia and the United States)) to protect Ukraine after she gave up her nuclear weapons in 1991, has proven hollow That failure or omission has perhaps even contributed to the ease with which Putin conceived first of his invasion of Crimea in 2014 and years later, in 2022, attempted to take over the whole nation.

There is a quote from the gospel of John, that reads, ‘In the beginning was the word’……while it originates in a religious context, please, dear reader, show mea something, anything, a relationship, a project, a corporation, a product or a law that does not begin with a word. And the choice of words does matter, unless, like those adolescent males, words are only for the ‘effete’ literati, which, by itself is another of those reverse snobberies that plague our culture at least as much if not more than top-down hierarchical snobbery. If words matter only to those who consider their significance seriously, and who contemplate what word ‘fits’ into a specific context, then dismissive epithets like ‘virtue signalling’ will come to spread their glib and superficial and reductionistic influence in many quarters of our social discourse.

And if our social discourse descends to the level where words are flippantly,  almost as if they were ‘flilpped off’ as someone who disdains another ‘flips him off,’ then it will not only be social media to which we point as seeding our discourse with faux thoughts, faux ideas, and faux interactions. Relationships depend on and require thoughtful consideration of the subject, and the meaning of a request, even an insignificant request to think critically of the idea of municipal support for a nuclear weapons ban.

Pointing to the promptness and the honesty of the response as ‘better than most political responses’  (another of the new perceptions and attitudes I learned) also depresses me. If we are merely competing on the level of promptness and straight talk, both of which have their place, then what is really happening to communication?

Of even competing, as the first ‘take’ on a letter from a taxpayer, is just another of the many ‘reductionisms’ to which I never dreamt local life could fall. Politicians have a difficult role; they are being besieged by their peers, and their voters for demands, many of which do not warrant even a response. However, not to respond is to risk another public humiliation, for not having even responded. Many Republicans are refusing to conduct town halls, for fear of being pilloried by their voters in their districts. And, when was the last town hall conducted by a municipal councillor in a small town in Ontario, except for those instances where there might be a contentious planning issue that needs public input?

Language has many levels, as does each and every issue before the world citizen. And we can no longer consider ourselves isolated from the rest of the world, just because we know many of the people who voted for us, and because we live in small communities.

Our voices matter, on local, provincial, national and global issues. And so long as we bury our heads in the sands of localism, parochialism and traditional methods and perceptions, we will be watching the world fly by at our peril.

Thanks for the many lessons I learned without any real consideration of the implications of my request..