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Many people vocally stake their identity on proclaimed values. Some build their brands, careers, and communities upon the stated mission of promoting, spreading, and sometimes even enforcing them. And yet, it's no secret that hypocrisy is a blight upon ideologies, especially those concerned with the regulation of human behavior, chief among them religions and political movements.
Injunctions tend to be pretty simple, and a person's outward behavior is an observable and straightforward occurrence, so it's usually quite easy to spot inconsistencies between the two.
And as it happens, it isn't uncommon to notice gaping gulfs between the speech and actions of many proselytic zealots, no matter the denomination. Ironically enough, the more extreme and vocal they are about imposing their ultimate commandments and antagonizing dissidents, the more likely they are to contradict their theoretical worldview through their actions. It's a pattern frequent enough to have earned dedicated sayings, such as "Do as I say, not as I do" or "Rules for thee but not for me".
This phenomenon has only become more blatant with the rise of social media and online discourse. With an ever-increasing quantity of pundits who produce an ever-expanding profusion of preaching and the unrelenting encroachment of private life exposure, if you're in the market for hypocrisy, you won't have to search long to find abundant supplies anywhere you look.
The "don't tread on me" libertarian-flavored conservatives constantly harping on about small government and gun rights, who play defense for a militia of misbegotten jackboots harrying and gunning down citizens in all impunity for the most trivial of offenses, including open carrying.
Self-proclaimed Christians — named after a man who preached universal egalitarianism, clemency, and providing hospitality to migrants — posturing as the bulwark of family values whilst cheering for deportations without due process and ripping away children from their parents.
The online leftists who wax lyrical about the benefits of diversity, tolerance, and rehabilitation, advocate for the complete replacement of the police with mediators in the name of a gentler, more humane approach, and yet have simultaneously elected virulent harassment campaigns fueled by shame and ostracization as their favorite hobby and form of activism.
People who are apparently capable of swapping out their entire value system after being bullied a bit too hard by their former in-group and cash in on "why I left team A and now make a living lulling team B's circular self-satisfaction".
For some more specific and in-depth examples, you might be interested to check out the two following articles that contributed to inspiring the creation of this post: How I Got Canceled by the Left and Right by Lydia Laurenson and The Bluesky-ization of the American left by Noah Smith.
In any case, there are probably enough examples to fill an entire post, but I'm sure you get the picture and are fully capable of complementing this list with your personal list of pet peeves. So let's move on and try to understand why this pattern is so common.
Why so inconsistent? #
It's one thing to acknowledge this reality, but it's another to rack your brain over this glaring disconnect. It is both an infuriating and perplexing phenomenon. If you take these people at their word, their actions make no sense. Since what they allege to stand for and what they actually prioritize in practice do not align, what is it they are truly dedicated to?
There is the simple grifter hypothesis: these people don't actually hold any lofty ideals or values. And sure, this can explain perhaps a few cases in the lot, but all of them? Being a grifter is only profitable when you're in a position of influence. What about all the no-name, ordinary people who follow these pundits? Nobody actually believes anything? Everyone is secretly a nihilistic Machiavellian? I find that pretty hard to believe.
Of course, it's only reasonable to expect the vast majority of people to display some amount of divergence between their stated beliefs and actual actions. It's common to be a little lacking in regard to your own standards. However, the consistent, shameless, and unaddressed betrayal of one's proclaimed principles is a different beast.
I have a hard time coming to terms with things that are both appalling and incomprehensible. At least one of these properties needs to be dealt with. Hence, with a never-ending supply of examples and by mashing up different sociological theories I came across and what stuck with me from social psychology 101To be more specific, here's a non-exhaustive list. Psychological theories of social identity and social representations, cf. Durkheim, Moscovici & co. Harari's concept of "imagined orders" developed in his book Sapiens. Blasco, Gianola & Tinoco's anthropological theory of existential social meaning-making., I eventually came up with my own simplified, nonacademic, crackpot model to explain what's really going on. The result is what I'll be presenting in the rest of this post.
Two types of allegiance #
You see, in this world there's two kinds of people, my friend.
— The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), written by Sergio Leone, Luciano Vincenzoni, Age & Scarpelli
The first step isn't particularly mind-blowing. Instead of assuming everyone genuinely cherishes the values they prattle on about, we add another category of people and get two contrasting stances. The second one offers an explanation for what the phonies are really about.
My speculation is that their allegiance lies to their in-groups of choice rather than actual values. However, they are not particularly self-aware and avoid owning up to the source of their true loyalty since it doesn't come across as particularly dignified.
Hence they claim to embrace the opposing stance and will justify their actions by gesturing to the principles they are supposed to swear by and follow, and in so doing muddy the waters, which is the cause behind this entire confusion in the first place.
For the rest of this post, I will be referring to these in-groups as "cliques" for reasons that will be elucidated further along.
I'm not claiming this model is perfect or even complete. It's a work in progress. That being said, it does make this pattern of behavior consistent and predictable. The pattern remains distasteful and disappointing, but at least intelligibly so.
With that said, let's detail and contrast these two stances. Based on both external advice and personal experimentation, I've realized that it's far clearer to parse descriptions and comparisons of human characters rather than abstract ideas. So to keep things smooth, I'll represent each stance with its own human personification and give them names that start with the same letters for intuitiveness.
Furthermore, repeatedly mixing singular and plural "they" can also quickly get confusing. Thus, for the sake of legibility, I'll use a different set of pronouns for each stance and grudgingly gender our allegories. Since both men and women are just as likely to embrace either allegiance, we need an arbitrary tie-breaker. Let's go with gallantry. We'll let women stand for the more flattering option.
As such, Val will be our feminine allegory for value allegiance, and Cliff will be her masculine counterpart standing in for clique allegiance.
With that out of the way, let's dive into it, starting with Val.
Allegiance to values #
Right is right, even if nobody does it. Wrong is wrong even if everybody is wrong about it.
— G. K. Chesterton
By default, we tend to assume that everybody is a Val. For some reason, whether it's innate factors, life experience, or whatever else, Val has prioritized a few values over all others and delineated an associated set of principles to stand by. These guide and bind her behavior by favoring certain choices while forbidding others.
She will try her best to act in ways that align with her principles, even if, as a flawed human being like most others, she probably won't always have a perfect track record. That being said, if she's called out on her failings, she should acknowledge them contritely.
If she's faced with a new dilemma, she will try to infer the behavior or strategy that best aligns with her principles. This is how she will translate her more idealistic and abstract values into concrete and practical policies.
Whereas it should be very hard to get Val to change her mind about her fundamental values, she will be a lot more open about debating the second-order policies she endorses as a means to bolster them. If you can demonstrate to her that an alternative can serve her overarching ideals more effectively, it's in her own best interest to update her position.
She might join or create communities around shared values. However, given her core allegiance, if push comes to shove, she will sooner relinquish her membership to said community than her principles.
This stance provides an inner sense of identity, alignment, and purpose. If Val follows through on it, she will also garner a reputation of honesty and trustworthiness over time. However, it also comes with its costs. Firstly, getting clear on your values requires some level of introspection and independent discernment. More importantly, her principles limit her behavior and can get in the way of her self-interest. They will also sometimes demand the courage to stand up for what she believes alone against a hostile crowd.
Now that we have a decent understanding of what value allegiance looks like, let's contrast Val to Cliff.
Allegiance to cliques #
It's hard enough to make a living in the boxing world, so every now and then you gotta do something that might not agree with your principles. Basically, you have to forget you've got any.
— Snatch (2000), written by Guy Ritchie
Cliff doesn't start with a strong inner sense of well-defined principles. Instead, he has a loose idea of the type of person he wants to be perceived as based on nebulous preferences toward certain aesthetics and ideologies.
He either grows up within a group that already matches this projected persona or finds one that does and forms a symbiotic relationship with it. In exchange for his unquestioning loyalty, the clique will provide him with a social support structure and the external reassurance he needs to sustain a positive self-image. Overall, it will make him feel safe enough to navigate life functionally.
Cliques are centered around a set of tenets all members must pay deference to. These usually include a simplistic model to understand the world through as well as justifications for mistreating members of the out-group when necessary, thus enabling a sense of self-satisfied superiority and vindication.
The last perk of this setup is strength in numbers. Members of a clique will gladly unite in order to lay waste to any opposing group.
All in all, clique membership provides a tangible, external safety net for psychological and social needs.
Cliff's first priority is to maintain and improve his status within the clique, since it serves as a load-bearing pillar of his identity and social standing. Giving off the impression he aligns with his proclaimed ideals only comes as an afterthought. Cliff will only use values as a way to signal group belonging. He will always prioritize improving his status within his clique or increasing its power over other groups at the cost of his stated principles.
Because he only cares about signaling his clique allegiance, he will be obsessively single-minded with policies regardless of how effective they actually are in furthering his alleged values, whether it's raising the minimum wage, banning abortion, turning every single business into a worker cooperative, shaming homosexuality, intensifying taxation, abolishing taxation, or whatever else. Cliff won't even humor any attempt at conversation on these topics. Questioning the shibboleth is blasphemy of the highest order. It proves your first order of business isn't unwavering loyalty to the clique. Not following through on the policy as well as harming the underlying values are fair game, however.
This is where this lens of analysis comes in handy. If you assume the average political pundit is a Val, then their actions are inscrutable, and they come across as psychotic. However, if you postulate they are actually Cliffs, then their behavior suddenly makes a lot more sense and becomes much more logical, though it remains distasteful.
There are several subtypes of Cliffs. A few may be self-aware, Machiavellian grifters who couldn't care less about the clique's mythos and are only in it to extract as many benefits as they can from it. But most people don't have the stomach and courage to bluntly see themselves as callous, predatory sharks nor the creative maestria to whip up a narrative that paints them as the good guy in spite of it. So they just have to cope with distractions, denial, and rationalizations instead.
This is a pretty crude and simplistic explanation, but minutely disentangling the intricate web of psychological factors at play here is far beyond the scope of this post, so we'll just leave it at that.
Some might be inclined to say I'm just giving a needlessly elaborate description of tribalism. In my opinion, this framing offers a bit more nuance and predictive power than simply "people think in-group good and out-group bad".
Speaking of which, using the term "tribalism" implies that cliques can be equated to tribes, which is a mistaken line of thinking as far as I'm concerned.
Cliques aren't tribes #
Chacun pour soi et Dieu pour tous.
— Delicatessen (1991), written by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Marc Caro, and Gilles Adrien
English translation: Every man for himself and God for all.
I specifically chose not to use the term tribe to refer to the group-based type of allegiance. Nowadays, we tend to take the concept of the tribe pretty lightly. It's just another synonym for a pretty tight group of people.
Ironically, due to our own "tribalistic" social bias, we're conditioned to devalue and dismiss everything that came before the dawn of so-called "civilization". Surely whatever those "Stone Age" chumps (and the very few modern-day indigenous tribes that haven't yet been crushed under our imperialism) were up to holds absolutely no lessons or value for us, even if it represents the lion's share of our species' history.
This is a very foolish and pernicious perspective. Don't belittle the importance of the tribal lifestyle. Tribes are the configuration that best enabled the survival and flourishing of humanity across the test of natural selection for hundreds of millennia. They're what we're biologically optimized for. They should not be underestimated.
The mass-scale abandonment and destruction of the tribal lifestyle has cost humanity dearly, and its loss lingers as a nameless pit of grief within each of us. The accelerating individualism and social alienation that plague our societies, just like the ceaseless substitution of anything that still has a few embers of soul and authenticity left with synthetic simulacra, are merely the tail end of a trend that started about twelve thousand years ago.
But we don't have the time for a deep dive on this topic for this post. If you're interested, I'd recommend checking out Daniel Quinn's Ishmael book series. For our current needs, we shall merely compare real tribes with cliques.
Actual tribes are built on an egalitarian model, which is much more compatible with human instincts and prevents much social unrest. They may have leaders who call the shots, but that is not associated with hoarding the resources. There is no aristocracy and wealth disparity within a tribe. In contrast, cliques tend to have steep hierarchies where a few individuals monopolize most of the influence and riches.
A tribe isn't just a group of people who hang out together because they share a few affinities. It's an extended family. Its members are ride or die. The tribe dies and survives as a unit. Sacrifices may still occur, but seldom and only when they're downright necessities. Each member has skin in the game. The vast majority of them have near-absolute commitment and investment in the well-being of the tribe, which means they can rely on each other.
They're founded upon a basis of asynchronous reciprocal support. I help you today when you need it, and I know that when I'm the one in need one of these days, you'll be there for me.
Cliques, on the other hand, are unreliable. They're groups of individualists. Their members are motivated by self-interest: status, power, safety, and so on. If it's advantageous for Cliff to backstab another member, he will usually do so. The immolation of black sheep and scapegoats is the privileged means of gaining status and bonding within a clique.
The members of a clique are disposable. It only takes a little proselytizing to replenish the ranks. The beating heart of the clique is its symbolic rallying power. As long as it survives, nothing else matters. Hence, loyalty to the party line is paramount. Loyalty to your fellow members is highly optional.
A tribe is made up of its past, its customs, and its members. The tribe cannot survive without its people. Thus, it will not casually use them as cannon fodder. Especially given that it's a lot harder to repopulate a tribe. Integrating one is a very lengthy process due to the high trust requirements. Unlike cliques, you can't get away with a mere profession of faith and kissing a few rings here and there. Being part of a tribe is not something you say; it is who you are and what you do.
Although tribes are biased in thinking their way of doing things is the coolest, they don't hold any imperialistic ambitions. They're not hellbent on imposing their way of life unto others. They'll get into occasional skirmishes with their neighbors, but those are more about upkeeping their territory and reputation. They have no intentions to expand their dominion and annihilate dissenters through either conversion or extermination. On this front, they couldn't be more different from cliques. In spite of their spotty record at holding their principles, cliques will stop at nothing to grow their numbers and influence.
Just like any other human organization, tribes are not completely immune to all forms of hypocrisy. However, their philosophies were built from the bottom up, based on a concrete and grounded way of life compatible with reality, even if they can come across as pretty messed up from the outside looking in. This differs pretty significantly from the conjectural pie-in-the-sky theories that serve as the cornerstone of cliques. You know, the ones that always fail catastrophically when put into practice.
Most current-day communities are at best pale imitations of genuine tribes. They are far more petty and fickle. That's why I chose the word clique, which gives off a shallow, mean-spirited high school energy that suits them well.
Now that I've set the record straight regarding tribes, it's time to turn my attention to the concept of "virtue signaling".
A note on virtue signaling #
Virtue signaling is commonly viewed as a hackneyed, disingenuous, and thus deeply annoying type of behavior. It's basically making a statement to the effect of, "Good thing is good. Bad thing is bad. And I'm good for emphatically drawing attention to it."
I don't disagree with this general sentiment. I'm not a big fan of phoniness or cliche drivel used as a peremptory cudgel to close off rather than deepen discussions. I vastly prefer keen analysis scalpels that open up new avenues of understanding.
However, I've heard people argue that everyone engages in virtue signaling, and in actuality, poo-pooing this practice only amounts to another form of virtue signaling. For instance, in a way I'm implicitly throwing flowers at myself for being an exemplary bastion of honesty and thoughtfulness in the previous paragraph.
If we broaden the concept of virtue signaling to such an extent, then I don't think endeavoring to eradicate it is a reasonable project. Furthermore, I think an important distinction between two types of virtue signals should still be made.
At this point, you can probably guess what I'm about to say. What we should pay attention to is what is being signaled and to whom. At the end of the day, the goal of all virtue signals is to broadcast one's allegiance. Thus, the question becomes: where does the allegiance lie? Is it to the values underlying the claim or to a clique that markets itself around them? Is the message a sincere expression of personal conviction? Is its main purpose to promote an ideal? Or is it merely a means to an end, a sneaky ploy to publicly delineate one's sworn alliances and enmities?
I don't see a problem with virtue signals that belong in that first category, as long as they're not too obnoxious and mindless. After all, assuming their words can be trusted, it's helpful to know what values the people you interact with stand for. Meanwhile, I think the distaste associated with the second type is warranted, and it's probably healthy to socially disincentivize performative slogan slinging by calling it out.
That being said, the lack of originality and insight is tedious but not harmful in itself. Plus, it's valuable to know whether someone has relinquished their personal sense of discernment to the hive mind of their clique of choice. So, provided they weren't pretending to be something they aren't and muddying the waters with deceptive tactics, the signaling wouldn't be a problem.
With that said, and now that we've pretty thoroughly investigated the phenomenon of value vs. clique allegiance, let's cover how it's been evolving and in what direction it seems to be headed lately.
The nefarious influence of social media #
Clique allegiance isn't a new fad by any measure. However, the rise of social media and online discourse hasn't done anything to help. As a matter of fact, it's throwing oil on the fire in several different ways.
Due to the emergence of the attention-based economy, the business model of social media platforms is founded upon the perverse incentive of keeping people glued on them as long as possible.
Because the algorithms don't ever want us to leave, they don't risk subjecting us to too much novelty or challenge. Instead, they keep feeding us the things we have already demonstrated an affinity for. As such, we get trapped in self-perpetuating distortions of reality, locked away from opportunities to course-correct through observations that contradict our pet narratives. This leads to the proliferation of epistemic bubbles and echo chambers.
This is true of "content consumers" but it also affects the creators and pundits. Most of them have to settle on a well-defined niche, formula, and rhetoric in order to achieve sustainable income. This makes deviating from their usual editorial line a very risky move. If they stop coddling their self-satisfied followers in the way they've grown accustomed to, they risk causing severe backlash and a mass exodus, which could mean losing both their revenue stream and relevance. So even if they end up changing their heart or mind and grow uncomfortable with their audience and messaging, they're held back by the sunk costs. All the incentives baked into the platforms are standing in the way of acting with integrity.
In the end, both audiences and pundits keep each other trapped in a codependent vicious cycle of toxic complacency.
This is not the only way that online discourse exacerbates polarization and radicalization. Indeed, extreme emotions foster and sustain engagement, so social media promotes sensationalism. Nuance and moderation aren't sexy. In order to squeeze out the maximum amount of indignation and outrage from us, they only ever show us the worst of our out-groups. The perceived lunacy of our opponents drives out the worst behavior from us, which isn't good for the world but great for business. Our counterattacks can then be fed back to the other side and fuel the flame of their own outrage and eventual reprisals. And round and round the carousel goes.
Furthermore, in the depersonalized vacuum of online interactions, we can't quite feel the full impact of our actions. We can't see the shock and hurt in the faces of the people we demean and harass. Our sense of responsibility and decency is weakened, and we feel a lot more comfortable being terrible to each other. This environment only serves to deteriorate our already frayed societal empathy and maximizes our potential for sociopathy. In so doing, it feeds back into the previously mentioned factors.
The increasing division and polarization of society. The widening gap between fractured partisan realities. The intensification of clique-on-clique violence as well as its conjoined persecution of scapegoats and overall wanton collateral damage. All these trends are seriously concerning. It would probably be a good idea to do something about them, but it's a complex problem, and I'm not even remotely claiming to hold the magical solution. In any case, coming up with a better diagnosis model is probably a decent first step, so let this post be my contribution.
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