Virtue vs. Signals

“Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.”

It didn’t start with ribbons, but that is where I first realized it was a thing. People decided to indicate their concern for an issue by pinning a piece of colored ribbon to their clothes. I think it was red that showed solidarity and concern for the AIDS crisis, but now red ribbons have come to mean concern for over 50 causes from heart disease to “sniffing abuse.” There are hundreds of colors with multiple causes each: pink for breast cancer and other issues, cranberry for Fibromyalgia, amber for appendix cancer, and perhaps my favorite—brown for colon cancer.

The beauty of the ribbon is that you don’t actually have to DO anything. Wear the ribbon and you show you care. It is a way of presenting yourself as a kind of person who is good because you care, and it is much easier and less taxing than actually contributing to the cause. Humanity being what it is, it evolved into an obligation though. If you DON’T wear the ribbon, you must be a bad person. You could be a cancer research scientist, but if you don’t signal your solidarity through the ribbon, you must not really care.

In politics a similar trend has emerged. Candidates invariably wear an American flag pin on their lapels. They could be public servants their whole lives and veterans of the arms forces, but if they don’t signal their love for country with a pin, they aren’t true patriots!

With the advent of social media these past two decades, this has become a reality of life. There is pressure to keep up with everything happening in the world. Not that there is anything you can do about most of the world’s problems. If you don’t show enough awareness, concern, and participate in enough symbolic acts of solidarity, you are not a good person.

Meanwhile, people right next door could be lonely, hungry, and in need of human contact. They aren’t on the world’s radar, however. So any act of kindness in your neighborhood will not earn you virtue points in the public consciousness. Not to mention, it is sometimes harder to actually do something in your neighborhood than merely virtue signal about issues half-a-world away.

However, let me suggest that doing actual good in your real world and not obsessing about every injustice happening around the globe is actually less stressful, better for your mental health, and benefits the world more. I’m not advocating for ignorance or putting your head in the sand, but you should be investing more time and energy in helping kids in your town than the amount of time and energy you spend fretting over kids in Gaza. Exponentially more.