Are You An Al Gore Environmentalist?
Al Gore Environmentalist: noun; The type of person who tells everybody else how to save the environment from his air-conditioned 10,000 square foot mansion.
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Over the past few months I've been paying closer attention to virtue signalling behavior. And in the domain of environmentalism we see lots and lots of it.
There are studies for example, that show that people make green purchases primarily to signal their status and "morality" to others. Or worse, when people feel they're being observed, they are significantly more likely to buy an environmentally-friendly or green product, but when not watched they default to a standard product. And worse still, they make their environmentally wasteful and consumerism-based purchases quietly, at home, online, where nobody can see.
True virtue is practiced in private, out of sight of others. Virtue practiced in public is always compromised, at least to some extent, by the fact that you get credit and status by your "virtue" being seen. And of course this becomes pure pseudo-virtue if you practice contrary behaviors when you think no one's looking.
Al Gore's problem lay in the fact that it's awfully tough to conceal a gigantic mansion. Or the fact that at one point he had the single highest residential electric and gas bill in the entire state of Tennessee, at some $30,000 a year in power usage. Practicing pseudo-virtue at this level is risky: eventually someone's going to discover the inconvenient truth and point out the yawning chasm between what you preach and what you practice.
Al Gore-ism is perhaps the worst form of hypocrisy. But even more galling is the implicit truth that some people get to make the rules, rules that are somehow totally optional for them. Not for us though.
Read Next: Peat Village: A Parable
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Over the past few months I've been paying closer attention to virtue signalling behavior. And in the domain of environmentalism we see lots and lots of it.
There are studies for example, that show that people make green purchases primarily to signal their status and "morality" to others. Or worse, when people feel they're being observed, they are significantly more likely to buy an environmentally-friendly or green product, but when not watched they default to a standard product. And worse still, they make their environmentally wasteful and consumerism-based purchases quietly, at home, online, where nobody can see.
True virtue is practiced in private, out of sight of others. Virtue practiced in public is always compromised, at least to some extent, by the fact that you get credit and status by your "virtue" being seen. And of course this becomes pure pseudo-virtue if you practice contrary behaviors when you think no one's looking.
Al Gore's problem lay in the fact that it's awfully tough to conceal a gigantic mansion. Or the fact that at one point he had the single highest residential electric and gas bill in the entire state of Tennessee, at some $30,000 a year in power usage. Practicing pseudo-virtue at this level is risky: eventually someone's going to discover the inconvenient truth and point out the yawning chasm between what you preach and what you practice.
Al Gore-ism is perhaps the worst form of hypocrisy. But even more galling is the implicit truth that some people get to make the rules, rules that are somehow totally optional for them. Not for us though.
Read Next: Peat Village: A Parable
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