Sunday, July 12, 2020

Moralistic Overkill Kills Give-a-Damn

Today's local rag prints a story about an "anti-racism" hike sponsored by a Catholic church.  All the usual bloviating generalities, signs, heart-string-pulling stories, etc.  And as a bonus, the Gannett subsidiary is now using the "CAPITAL B" on 'black', as in Black people, Black neighborhood, etc.  Nothing like capitalizing your own racism, morons.....


One of the basic premises of Grandstanding: The Use and Abuse of Moral Talk is that our ability to give a damn about moralizing claims is a sort of "scarce resource." So using moral claims to try to accomplish things has diminishing returns...

...These days, we're running very low on giving-of-a-damn. Our shared societal tank of damn-giving is exhausted by people who resort to moralistic claims over irrelevancies. People today are doing a lot of grandstanding, using high stakes moral language that's really just intended to "try to make themselves look good." The problem isn't just that it's a false, vain way of communicating. It's antisocial behavior....
The farcical invocation of "systemic racism" in this country, at this time, is grandstanding, as is the constant accusation of "racism"....and the geometric growth of imputation-of-racism in e.g., math (!) and traffic signals.

So go ahead:  exhaust the supply of "give-a-damn" and see how that works in November.



No comments: