If you understand what the term "virtue-signalling" means you probably get the argument made by the book. I essentially agree with the thesis of the book but I found that the points it made were already very clear to me. Most importantly, they show how, by avoiding grandstanding, we can re-build a public square worth participating in. Using the analytic tools of psychology and moral philosophy, they explain what drives us to behave in this way, and what we stand to lose by taking it too far. The pollution of our most urgent conversations with self-interest damages the very causes they are meant to forward.ĭrawing from work in psychology, economics, and political science, and along with contemporary examples spanning the political spectrum, the authors dive deeply into why and how we grandstand. As politics gets more and more polarized, people on both sides of the spectrum move further and further apart when they let grandstanding get in the way of engaging one another. To philosophers Justin Tosi and Brandon Warmke, who have written extensively about moral grandstanding, such one-upmanship is not just annoying, but dangerous. Nowhere is this more evident than in public discourse today, and especially as it plays out across the internet. We want to be seen as taking the moral high ground not just to make a point, or move a debate forward, but to look a certain way-incensed, or compassionate, or committed to a cause. We vilify those with whom we disagree, and make bolder claims than we could defend. We call people terrible names in conversation or online.
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