Conversation

Replying to
This may sound weird, but I don’t expect actual thinking from the rest because their value lies is faithfully reproducing old arguments, that were once progressive in their own time. I expect high-quality reproduction. Classic greatest hits from Aristotle to Hayek.
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Virtue signaling is expected from believers in old ideas that have been distilled. But “progressive” definitionally implies new ideas and fresh thinking. Stuff that hasn’t yet been compiled into “virtues” that can be signaled
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Most ideologies are almost by construction acting-dead ideologies (cf ). Progressive politics has historically been associated with subversive thought, good art that disturbs and challenges, etc. To virtue signal is to admit failure at the progressive acting-alive project.
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To resort to virtue signaling represents a deeper failure of progressivism than failure at politics. It represents failure at art. Failure to consistently surprise yourself and others. Failure to put the familiar into unfamiliar perspectives. Failure to in fact *progress*.
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Continuing from last night. Typical progressive values — justice, compassion, sustainability — seem to be far more deeply rooted in tradeoffs and compromise relative to non-progressive ones. There is no such thing as a “purist” way to be just, compassionate, or sustainable.
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This might be why using them as fodder for virtue signaling is grating and smacks of authoritarianism. Justice is a tradeoff between confidence in evidence vs timeliness of redressal of harms experienced Compassion is a tradeoff between your pain and mine, present and future
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Sustainability is a tradeoff between living with the knowledge we have versus waiting to know it more deeply and completely. You cannot actually practice any progressive value in a formulaic way. Every instance of applying it requires non-trivial thought.
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By contrast patriotism and nativism for example seem like such simple values. Purist version = Be born in a country, look like the majority, and go die for it in war. Easy, clean signal. Not much thinking needed. Identify, resonate, go off in straight line.
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Much of what I’ve attributed to progressivism also applies to liberalism, but I think liberalism lost its way at some point and became a non-frontier ideology that admits a kind of purist version at the cure. The fact that there is such a thing as a “classical” liberalism.
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I’m a liberal to the extent that progressivism was at one point historically close to it, and to the extent recent liberalisms such as neoliberalism, align with still “live” concerns like globalization. But I cant sign up for anything with a purist “classical” variant at a core.
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Purity testing and language policing, inherited from a historical bad marriage with socialism, also grate and strike a false note. A big challenge for progressivism is wrapping up a century long messy divorce with socialism. Socialism was progressive I 1909, but is not in 2019.
Replying to
Interesting thoughts, but a couple of things come to mind. First, virtue signaling is a label often applied to dismiss views or actions one dislikes. Second, signals are important to community, often serving to offer moral support to besieged others.
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