I am not sure what to make of this strange pattern I've noticed recently. Not that it's a new pattern, just that I've become more aware of it.
Example One: A friend was complaining about the previous provincial government, and claimed they were trying to turn Alberta into a communist state. I asked him to elaborate, and he said something about the old communist slogan, "From each according to their ability, to each according to their need." Not that the NDP government ever cited that slogan, mind you. Just that he seemed to think they adhered to that as an ideal, and so that made them communist and therefore bad.
Example Two: In another conversation with a complete stranger online who expressed the opinion that racists and fascists deserved to die, when I said I didn't care what they deserved and the reason to oppose them is to protect their victims, not to mete out just deserts to people we think deserve punishment, he said, and I quote "You're not a good person, don't act like it."
I can sort of understand at least some of the genesis of the first example. Communism does not exactly have a great historical track record in practice when it comes to things like human rights and morality, so it's not wrong to be suspicious of it. But that slogan? There's nothing inherently communistic about it. It's the kind of bland platitude that almost any political movement could at least pretend to espouse, with roughly similar amounts of fudging and equivocation. Capitalism, for example, ideally has everyone contributing what they can (according to their ability) to receive in trade the ability to meet their needs. We can certainly disagree about the best way to attain these goals, but who could seriously object to a principle of people contributing what they can and getting what they need? So what disturbs me about the first example is that a general goal that would seem to be uncontroversially good is rejected as bad because of its association with an arguably bad political ideology. It's as if my friend thinks that, to be good champions of freedom, we have a moral duty to deny people what they need, and encourage people to contribute less.
The second example is even more bizarre, and seems to come from a different pathology, one I've referred to before in this blog. Charitably, I think my interlocutor might have been saying that I shouldn't falsely put on the façade of a good person when in fact I'm not. But I can't imagine how one would go about trying to be a good person without trying to act like one. And so the admonishment that I shouldn't act like a good person seemed to be just plain perverse.
I realize this isn't entirely a new thing. People have been disparaging virtuous behaviour in various ways forever. But somehow the tone seems a little different from the old "goody two-shoes" insult I remember from my youth. That was more about the belief that being "good" was unrealistic, that being a grownup meant having a more nuanced and pragmatic approach than just naively following The Rules like an obedient child. What I'm seeing now, in the anti-virtue-signalling "don't act like you're good" sentiment, has more bitterness to it. It's like a resentment at being made to look bad by someone else being good.
I don't mean to imply that I think I am virtuous in my words and deeds. Not at all. I try to be, but I am not anywhere near as successful in this as I would like. I'm not really talking about me personally in any event; what I'm troubled by is the form of the argument as I've encountered it, and as I've seen it used on others. What kind of words and deed do we have a moral duty to perform? Is it wrong to express aspirations to "good" behaviour or principles if, in so doing, we make someone else look bad? Does that mean we have a duty to look as bad or worse than other people? Really, what's wrong with wanting to do good?
