Leo D.M.J. Aurini - Virtue Signalling is the Enemy of Virtue [Requested Video]

00:00:00.000 So, this requested video comes from Kim Christian, and it's on the topic of virtue signaling.

00:00:10.240 Now, we're going to dig into this, because I think it's an important topic, that we really

00:00:13.980 should explore what the term means, because virtue signaling, it destroys information,

00:00:20.340 it destroys character, it destroys virtue itself.

00:00:23.640 But to start from a fun place, let's address where it's coming from.

00:00:27.220 So, Kim Christian stumbled across a video, screenwriter Max Landis posts YouTube video 0.95

00:00:34.840 calling non-SJWs assholes, and deletes it.

00:00:38.680 And Jake Starr has it up on his channel, I'll link to that down below.

00:00:44.660 And, now here's the thing, Max Landis, you guys probably know him, he's a friend of the

00:00:50.700 Red Letter Media Fellows, and quite frankly, I'm a fan of his.

00:00:54.020 Not necessarily the movies he's written, I don't think they were directed very well,

00:00:58.000 but I just like the guy.

00:01:00.600 Okay, he's just one of those honest geeks, you know, not like the fake geeks they have 0.99

00:01:05.060 on that stupid Big Bang Theory, but just an honest, geeky guy.

00:01:09.020 I would love to sit down with him for a beer, and hey, Max, if you're ever in the same place 0.96

00:01:15.220 as any sort of meetup, you are more than welcome.

00:01:17.760 And we would love to have you. 1.00

00:01:20.040 But that said, Max, you're a bit of a pussy. 1.00

00:01:25.780 Let me try and explain something to you. 1.00

00:01:28.160 What you see as Donald Trump being a big bully, or alpha males, you know, being mean to their

00:01:35.400 girlfriends, or what have you. 0.92

00:01:37.760 It's not actually them being mean, okay?

00:01:43.720 Max, women are over-emotional, and they kind of need a guy to calm them down, to be that 1.00

00:01:51.240 rock that they can cling to.

00:01:53.080 They need a guy to say, no, honey, it's okay.

00:01:56.560 No, honey, the dog is fine.

00:01:58.560 Stop having a panic attack. 0.99

00:01:59.900 It's just a freaking dog. 0.95

00:02:01.000 The dog will be fine. 0.99

00:02:02.700 You know, they need that.

00:02:04.120 They need that calming influence.

00:02:06.100 And that's not the man or the husband being abusive.

00:02:08.920 That's just him being a man.

00:02:10.660 They crave that.

00:02:11.900 They want it.

00:02:12.740 They need it.

00:02:13.980 As much as we need them to be women. 1.00

00:02:16.820 So what you're viewing as abusive is anything but.

00:02:21.080 And, you know, the same thing goes for the whole race issue that SJWs bring up.

00:02:26.980 Like, Max, I know you're in Hollywood, and you're just inundated with this, oh, we need

00:02:32.000 to do something to help the Africans, to help the poor people, to, they don't need that 1.00

00:02:37.080 sort of help, okay? 0.99

00:02:39.000 Blacks don't want to be pandered to, okay? 0.99

00:02:41.660 They would like some economic opportunities. 0.98

00:02:44.340 They would like fair and straight dealing, okay?

00:02:47.840 They certainly don't want to be called names or anything like that.

00:02:51.720 But being frank about the situation in the ghetto, being frank about crime rates, interracial 1.00

00:02:59.000 crime rates, calling a spade a spade, and no, that's just a saying, that's not a dog

00:03:05.720 whistle, that doesn't upset them.

00:03:09.760 They know what's going on, man.

00:03:11.360 You can deal frankly with them.

00:03:13.280 You don't need to walk on eggshells.

00:03:14.720 All right, and it's when you get caught up in all of this, this SJW, nicey-nice liberalism

00:03:23.760 from Hollywood sort of thing, you know, you wind up being really condescending to women

00:03:29.540 and men, okay?

00:03:32.540 If a woman's with a guy, it's because she wants to be with that guy, all right? 1.00

00:03:36.960 There's nobody forcing her.

00:03:38.600 He's not threatening.

00:03:39.380 If he's threatening her, she can go to the police.

00:03:41.380 There's plenty of domestic violence shelters, okay?

00:03:43.720 Like, they don't need you to go and talk about their issues for them.

00:03:50.420 They can talk about them themselves.

00:03:52.980 And that's why we call it virtue signaling, because they don't need you talking.

00:03:58.620 They need economic opportunities.

00:04:00.420 They need good advice.

00:04:03.520 But if they're being over-emotional, they don't need you pandering into their fantasies.

00:04:09.420 So that's just my piece with Max Landis.

00:04:12.780 I still really like the guy. 1.00

00:04:14.720 And like I said, Max, I'd love to have a beer with you sometime, but you've got to stop being such a pussy, okay? 1.00

00:04:20.000 Most people are not emotionally fragile little snowflakes that melt at the first blush of heated conversation. 0.99

00:04:26.800 Now, all that said, virtue signaling, it's more than just what the SJWs get up to.

00:04:39.460 In fact, I'd say it's a very endemic thing in our culture right now, in all walks of life, not just amongst the effet liberal elites.

00:04:50.560 And I think it's worth considering the etymology of the term.

00:04:54.260 Where did this word come from?

00:04:57.640 Well, I was looking it up on Google Ngram Viewer.

00:05:01.280 It's a search algorithm that you use to look through books that have been published.

00:05:06.580 It goes back 200 years or so.

00:05:08.740 And quite frankly, it didn't come up.

00:05:10.480 Now, I searched virtue as well, and that's getting mentioned less and less often in books.

00:05:17.020 But no virtue signaling.

00:05:20.340 So I decided to look it up online.

00:05:22.660 Where and how is virtue signaling being mentioned online?

00:05:25.680 And it really started peaking around 2014 or so, with no mentions before that.

00:05:32.100 So I think it's safe to say that the term virtue signaling derives from the work of Robin Hanson, a professor of economics at George Mason University, who talks a lot about social signaling.

00:05:47.480 Okay, about how a great deal of communication can be understood as meaning to signal something about yourself.

00:05:56.280 And he gives the example of how there were some upper class people wearing shirts that said FAKUK on them. 0.51

00:06:05.120 F-C-U-K.

00:06:06.900 You know, to signal that, look, I'm so much above these people that have to wear suits that I can wear an almost swear word on my shirt. 0.95

00:06:15.540 But also, I'm above the people that would wear an actual swear word on their shirt.

00:06:19.880 I'm just doing it ironically.

00:06:21.380 Quite frankly, I think this whole thing is a very destructive process.

00:06:28.300 And think about what you're wearing for a moment.

00:06:33.660 Okay, why are you wearing what you're wearing?

00:06:36.720 Because it says a lot about yourself.

00:06:38.440 You chose to wear this.

00:06:40.940 Why are you choosing to wear that?

00:06:42.580 Now, it used to be that certain styles of dress, they communicated accomplishments.

00:06:49.680 A military uniform, a firefighter's uniform.

00:06:53.000 This communicates some sort of accomplishment, some sort of objective, real-world status in your life.

00:07:01.820 You know, wearing clean clothing, wearing good-fitting clothing, this communicates status.

00:07:08.180 That you, not just status, but that you have self-respect.

00:07:11.540 That even if you're not rich, you keep an ordered house.

00:07:15.940 But with the amount of hypocrisy we have in civilization and society these days, many of these signals are getting mixed.

00:07:23.600 They're turning into counter-signals.

00:07:25.600 And eventually, they're turning into nothing but signals for the sake of signaling.

00:07:30.360 So any inherent meaning that started this all is lost.

00:07:38.200 You know, a rich entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, instead of wearing a comfortable Oxford shirt and jeans and some nice shoes,

00:07:49.160 is going to wear something trashy and ugly to signal that he can get away with it.

00:07:54.120 And you just wind up with this spiral of meaninglessness.

00:07:58.260 And from this, we get virtue signaling.

00:08:03.580 You know, as Matt Forney said, in this post-virtue society, the only remaining sin is hypocrisy. 0.98

00:08:13.620 And so people desperately signal that they aren't hypocrites while being complete and utter hypocrites. 0.85

00:08:20.740 And I think it's important to consider the post-Christian world that we're living in. 0.98

00:08:30.180 Now, if we were a post-Shintoist world, for example, we would have something else entirely. 0.99

00:08:38.780 Okay, and in fact, if you watch anime, and if you watch anime looking to detect the sickness in Japanese society, 0.66

00:08:46.880 you're going to find a subtly different form of sickness over there.

00:08:52.640 The effects are the same.

00:08:54.580 You know, neats, dropping birth rate, masculinized women, feminized men. 0.98

00:09:02.520 The same effects, but a different root sickness, because theirs is a shame-based culture, 0.74

00:09:10.040 while ours is a guilt-based culture.

00:09:13.000 And so without the actual Christianity, without the higher purpose of refining your soul, 0.77

00:09:21.920 of becoming a person worthy of human company that's present in Christianity,

00:09:28.200 when we remove that mystical element, it becomes a guilt-based culture,

00:09:32.920 which is all about going along to get along.

00:09:36.080 Being an obedient little office worker who doesn't upset other people,

00:09:40.040 and so you're supposed to feel guilty all the time.

00:09:43.000 And the forms of virtue that we signal about tend to be about being guilty and about being charitable.

00:09:54.740 The irony, of course, being that you shouldn't be doing charity in public.

00:09:59.300 Okay, in the Christian culture, charity that's done in public is not highly regarded.

00:10:06.840 Okay, because it's not really about the charity, it's about signaling the charity.

00:10:10.800 You're doing the charity for the sake of God, because you know that God cares about those other people,

00:10:16.800 and so you're trying to make their lives better for the sake of God.

00:10:21.900 Because, I mean, he's got a bleeding heart, and he's done so much for us.

00:10:25.140 In the post-Christian society, there is no God. 0.98

00:10:31.160 The only God is the corporation, is the culture.

00:10:36.200 And so, when you go and be charitable, you do it in a public manner.

00:10:41.340 Public perception is all that exists at this point.

00:10:45.040 So you want to do something charitable,

00:10:47.340 but really you're just saying, you're just making appropriate noises.

00:10:50.380 It's no different than a corporate meet-up that they have for the whole company,

00:10:56.040 and you're supposed to wear a blue shirt with a logo on it saying,

00:10:59.000 we're doing the new thing for the future,

00:11:00.800 and you're supposed to do a cheer, and they're going to have games,

00:11:02.940 and yippity-doo-dah day.

00:11:06.000 Any purpose or meaning, anything inherent, is lost.

00:11:12.360 Suddenly you're not at the corporation to earn money so you can live your life.

00:11:16.640 You're at the corporation to derive meaning,

00:11:20.200 because you have no meaning in your real life.

00:11:24.560 It's through this, that virtue signaling,

00:11:28.460 it actually destroys virtue in the process.

00:11:33.620 Okay, because the person that's doing it for the corporation,

00:11:36.340 their locus of valuation, their locus of meaning,

00:11:41.860 is tethered to something that can change.

00:11:44.780 The objective world can change.

00:11:48.660 So if right now environmental causes are popular,

00:11:52.140 they will tether their definition of virtue to environmentalism.

00:11:56.940 You know, if in five years it's breast cancer,

00:12:00.480 and by the way, you should look at the documentary Pink Ribbons Incorporated

00:12:04.760 to see what a scam the breast cancer industry is. 0.61

00:12:08.760 They'll tether their sense of meaning to breast cancer. 0.99

00:12:11.700 And it's all about wearing a pink shirt and doing the fun run and etc., etc.,

00:12:17.920 even though that money is completely mismanaged.

00:12:20.920 It's not actually about curing cancer.

00:12:23.600 It's about appearing to care about curing cancer.

00:12:26.480 And virtue signaling, it happens on the right as well.

00:12:35.700 There are so many shibboleths,

00:12:37.760 so many terms that people will throw out to signal allegiance to a group.

00:12:44.060 And this allegiance signaling can get out of control.

00:12:51.280 Soon you have entire groups that are signaling allegiance to something

00:12:54.440 just for the sake of signaling it,

00:12:56.340 and they're not actually doing anything to accomplish the goals

00:12:59.880 which that allegiance suggests.

00:13:02.600 All of us are guilty of this to some degree.

00:13:08.440 So I'm not calling out any individuals or particular organizations,

00:13:12.100 although you can probably think of a few.

00:13:14.260 All of us are guilty of this.

00:13:16.240 All of us are trying to belong,

00:13:18.940 and through the process of trying to belong,

00:13:22.580 we forget what we were doing in the first place.

00:13:26.740 Belonging becomes more important than action.

00:13:29.720 This virtue signaling becomes very, very destructive.

00:13:37.960 And so we're left with the question,

00:13:39.540 what are we supposed to do about it?

00:13:42.000 You know, how can we avoid virtue signaling?

00:13:46.000 Because there's always that temptation.

00:13:48.320 And how can we keep our eyes on the ball?

00:13:49.920 How can we stay humble?

00:13:51.160 And how can we actually focus on doing the right thing,

00:13:54.360 doing the charitable thing,

00:13:55.980 making an action that improves the world,

00:14:00.720 as opposed to a statement that tells other people

00:14:03.500 that we want to improve the world?

00:14:07.580 Well, when it comes to our personal affairs,

00:14:10.800 first of all, whenever possible,

00:14:15.480 you should be calling people out in private,

00:14:19.060 not in public.

00:14:21.360 And again, this goes back to reclaiming our Christian culture.

00:14:23.680 You know, right from the beginning,

00:14:26.540 you know, I believe it was Paul that talked about this.

00:14:29.980 If one of your brothers is sinning,

00:14:32.440 then you and another member of the church,

00:14:35.020 you go and talk to them.

00:14:36.500 Talk to them face to face.

00:14:37.340 Say, listen, brother,

00:14:38.380 we think you're getting out of control

00:14:39.860 for these reasons.

00:14:42.060 We don't want to embarrass you,

00:14:43.620 but we care about you.

00:14:46.560 You call them out in private,

00:14:48.120 because in public,

00:14:48.960 people are going to have to defend themselves.

00:14:50.620 Right, yeah, you look very virtuous

00:14:53.360 calling out this person with a purity test,

00:14:57.520 but you're not actually doing anything

00:15:00.120 to amend the behavior.

00:15:03.180 This leads to the next one.

00:15:06.020 Call out behaviors, not individuals.

00:15:08.180 If there's some mistake

00:15:12.720 that is being made by a number of people,

00:15:15.920 don't call them out to win points over them,

00:15:19.720 but describe the behavior.

00:15:23.340 Talk about why the behavior itself is a problem.

00:15:26.780 And finally,

00:15:30.460 lead by example.

00:15:34.820 If your mates 1.00

00:15:36.400 want to do something stupid, 0.99

00:15:38.880 or if your mates are going down a dark path, 0.99

00:15:42.020 no need to attack them,

00:15:43.620 no need to ridicule them,

00:15:44.980 no need to make a big scene.

00:15:48.260 Just say,

00:15:49.060 no, I'm not really into that.

00:15:51.140 Or, you know,

00:15:52.620 if they're virtue-sickling,

00:15:53.800 saying, you know what,

00:15:54.840 I think women can fend for themselves. 1.00

00:15:59.040 To go back to the start of this video,

00:16:01.500 with Max Landis talking about this,

00:16:03.720 this need, apparently,

00:16:05.480 for us to be sensitive

00:16:06.340 to brown people and black people

00:16:09.200 and Muslims, 1.00

00:16:10.540 even though they're murdering people, 1.00

00:16:12.040 and et cetera,

00:16:15.420 here's the thing, Max.

00:16:16.460 On the off chance that you're still listening,

00:16:17.900 us big bullies

00:16:20.860 on the alt-right

00:16:22.500 or whatever we are,

00:16:24.580 us Trump supporters,

00:16:26.600 we actually agree

00:16:28.540 with your goals.

00:16:30.520 Yes, we want 0.96

00:16:31.540 blacks to be doing better financially. 0.97

00:16:34.780 Yes, we don't want 1.00

00:16:35.680 women with abusive husbands. 0.99

00:16:38.040 You know, yes,

00:16:38.820 we want good things

00:16:40.060 to happen in the world.

00:16:42.680 But see,

00:16:43.120 we want to get those good things

00:16:44.540 to happen

00:16:45.040 by destroying

00:16:46.100 the toxic structures

00:16:48.060 that have been

00:16:48.880 holding people down.

00:16:51.200 You know,

00:16:51.860 the people that just

00:16:52.900 talk about doing this

00:16:54.080 all the time,

00:16:55.160 but don't show

00:16:57.100 any action,

00:16:58.380 any goal

00:16:59.300 to actually change things.

00:17:02.580 We're actually

00:17:03.260 on the same side,

00:17:04.400 brother.

00:17:05.220 It's just that,

00:17:06.480 like I said,

00:17:07.180 man,

00:17:08.120 you need to stop 1.00

00:17:09.340 being such a pussy 1.00

00:17:10.180 about it. 1.00

00:17:10.700 But you're a good guy.

00:17:13.420 I'm sure you'll come around.

00:17:15.560 And like I said,

00:17:16.440 you're always welcome.

00:17:18.240 Always welcome

00:17:19.120 to have a beer

00:17:19.760 with me

00:17:21.340 or any of my friends

00:17:22.160 when we're hanging out.

00:17:25.300 So folks,

00:17:26.260 focus on

00:17:27.940 the actions,

00:17:29.480 not

00:17:30.760 the statements.

00:17:32.520 Let your actions

00:17:33.520 speak for themselves.

00:17:35.680 Let your life,

00:17:37.040 let the life

00:17:37.740 you're leading

00:17:38.480 be a life

00:17:39.580 of virtue.

00:17:40.700 As opposed to

00:17:41.700 just an outfit

00:17:42.600 purchased

00:17:43.820 from Hot Topic.

00:17:47.020 Thank you for listening.

00:17:49.220 Deus Volt.

00:17:51.040 Urini out.

Leo D.M.J. Aurini - November 30, 2016

Virtue Signalling is the Enemy of Virtue [Requested Video]

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