Virtue Signaling, Mask Wearing and Hershel of Ostropol

[joshuazelinsky]

In the last few years, there's been a lot of discussion of "virtue signaling." This is the idea that someone is doing something not because it is actually a good thing to do but because it signals to one's community that one is virtuous, that one is a loyal member of the tribe, and certainly not allied at all with that hated Other Group. The idea first arose in the context of sociology of religion, as an explanation of essentially ostentatious displays of piety. The idea is now most popularly used by some on the American right-wing as essentially an accusation directed against political opponents.

One of the basic problems with such accusations is that they frequently conflate not understanding or not sharing a motivation with deciding that it must be signaling. For example, people who have solar power on their homes or buy electric cars are often accused of virtue signaling; almost invariably this is done by people who at a fundamental level, don't care about climate change or don't believe in it. In this situation, the accusers are confusing people having a genuinely different set of motivations with instead having a cynical motivation.

To be sure, some virtue signaling certainly does exist. The decisions by some large corporations in the last month to issue statements in support of Black Lives Matter, or engage in name changes which no one asked for, can be in part understood as virtue signaling by the corporations. Similar remarks apply to cities: painting a giant slogan on the road is substantially easier than making any sort of systemic changes to how policing occurs. And this really does seem to be virtue signaling: it takes little effort to issue a statement or paint a road. The easiest signals are the cheapest ones. The hardest signals of genuine feeling to fake are those which require a lot of resources.

One recent area where the accusation of virtue signaling has been most prominent has been wearing masks. People have claimed that wearing masks is about signaling virtue, not any actual desire to protect anyone else. At this point, the evidence suggests that wearing a mask helps protect both the wearer and people around them. That it also may protect the wearer does not seem to have filtered down to the general population. Thus, the virtue signaling claim has focused on the idea that people are wearing masks not to protect others, but to signal that one is one of the sort of good, responsible people who wears a mask.

And there's probably at least a little truth to this claim. I took a walk this afternoon in the local park, wearing a mask, and I definitely felt some degree of pride about it. "Look at me! I'm responsible! I'm wearing a mask! You should too!" I'd like to think that's not the only reason I wear a mask, but that's tough to say. It is very easy for a person to convince themselves that they have noble intentions.

Here's the important thing though: It doesn't matter why someone is wearing a mask.  A person could literally put on a mask while thinking "I don't care if I'm protected by this. I don't care if anyone else is protected. I just care about everyone seeing how prosocial I am." That person's droplets will be just as blocked as the droplets from a person who puts on a mask with perfect sincerity. The laws of physics and biology don't pay attention to one's personal motivation.

This last idea is tough for humans to get. We have some basic intuitions that intention matters in a deep way. Ideas about magic in almost all societies and general beliefs strongly connect to this. In fact, one of the ways in the modern world we sometimes distinguish natural or supernatural claims is whether human intent impacts them. In other contexts intent also matters.

To some extent this idea is connected with the sometimes repeated slogan that people need to realize that "the map is not the territory" that is that our conception of something isn't the same as what exists in the external world. Curiously, although this is a tough lesson, it turns out to be actually not completely true in a limited, technical sense. There's a neat theorem that if you take a map of a region, crumple it up and drop it somewhere in the region, no matter what, at least one point on the map will be exactly marking itself. I've been surprised for a long time that no mystic has tried to read something deeper into that statement.

What is labeled as magical beliefs though aren't unique to magic. For example, most major religions believe that at least some of their ritualized behavior only works with intent. In Judaism, the idea of intent for religious rituals, called kavanah, is important. There is a large amount of disagreement in Judaism over which things require kavanah and which do not.

There's a wonderful little children's book, "Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins," about the folk hero and trickster figure Hershel of Ostropol. In the story, Hershel confronts a series of goblins which play tricks with the Jews of the town. The only way to defeat the goblins is if the King of the Goblins lights a Menorah on the last day of the holiday. Spoiler alert: Hershel manages to trick the King into lighting a Menorah without realizing that the candles are for Chanukah, and the goblins' hold on the town is broken. Some readers may be aware that for a long-time I've argued that the story should have a different ending: The King should have explained that Jewish law is that lighting candles for Chanukah takes intent, and that all he has done is light a few candles in a row. Then he should have ripped off Hershel's head, and the book would have a good lesson about how one shouldn't interact with any supernatural being unless one understands the rules under which it operates.

But at another level my criticism of the story is a poor one. The story is a modern story, not a true folktale, and so if anything it is a positive sign of understanding how people think that intent does not end up mattering. All that matters are the abstract rules.

In that context, let us all realize that COVID-19 is just like the King of the Goblins. What intent anyone has does not matter. Wearing a mask is helpful whether or not one has proper intentions. So if wearing a mask is virtue signaling, then by all means, let us all signal our virtue.

Comments

[mindstalk]

Oh, well, I would reply here but did Facebook first. :)

[sorcyress]

There's a fairly 101 level anti-racist idea which is "intent is not impact". Just because you didn't _mean_ to be racist does not mean that your action didn't come across as a microaggression (or worse). I feel like your point about wearing masks is a nice corollary to that.

It literally doesn't matter what your intent is for wearing a mask! Whether you're doing it to protect yourself, to protect others, to look really cool, or to signal virtue the effect is going to be the same.