If you had a bumper sticker and you wanted
a quick, dirty definition of moral grandstanding,
it's the use of moral talk for self-promotion.
Grandstanders are moral showboaters.
They use public discourse as a vanity project.
They're less concerned about saying what's
true.
They might be less concerned about helping
other people.
They're less concerned about contributing
to a conversation that might be productive.
More specifically, someone might want to be
seen as having spectacular, superhuman insight
into what is just.
Some people might want to be seen as caring
the most about the poor or about the troops.
Some people might want to be seen as the most
affected by some injustice.
So grandstanding doesn't always look like
the same sort of animal.
Grandstanding sometimes looks like piling
on.
You often see cases of piling on when a lot
of people join in on a shame fest for someone
who's misspoken or engaged in a small minor
infraction.
In order to signal to their in-group or to
their enemies that they have a heightened
sense of justice, they pile on in cases of
public blaming and shaming.
Another form that grandstanding takes is what
we can call ramping up.
Ramping up involves trying to out-do each
other in moral discourse.
You can think of it as a kind of moral arms
race.
So I might say something like, 'The senator's
behavior was highly unacceptable.
She should clearly be censured for it.'
Now you, not wanting to be outdone, might
say something like, 'Yes, I agree that her
behavior was wrong, but it's clearly way out
of bounds.
She should no longer hold her office.
She should be impeached.'
And then someone else, again, not wanting
to be outdone, might say, 'As someone who
has long stood on the side of injustice, we
should look into the criminal law.
This cannot go unpunished.
We must remember the world is watching.'
And you can think of ramping up in terms of
what psychologists call social comparison.
Social comparison theory says, roughly, we
think of ourselves in comparison to others.
So if I think of myself as caring deeply about
the poor or about the troops, that's going
to be important to me, I'm going to think
of myself as a more just person or a more
caring person than my peers.
What happens in conversation is that once
people reveal their positions about how much
they care about or how affected they are by
some problem, you can now look like you don't
care as much as others about some problem.
And so in order to beat someone else in the
moral race, you have to outdo them.
And so this often results in people taking
more extreme stands than they might otherwise
do on reflection, because when the world is
watching, you must show that you care more.
Moral philosophers tend to think there's three
main ways for something to be morally good
or bad: One, it could have morally good or
bad consequences.
Two, it could be morally good or bad insofar
as it mistreats other people, or shows them
respect or disrespect.
And that's irrespective of the bad or good
consequences it might have.
And third, philosophers will often say something
like: Something is good or bad if a virtuous
person would do it or not do it.
So we think about the virtues, like honesty,
courage.
We think that grandstanding is bad according
to all three ways of thinking that something
could be morally good or bad.
Grandstanding has bad consequences.
We argue that it contributes to political
polarization.
It increases levels of cynicism about moral
talk and its value in public life.
And it causes the kind of outrage exhaustion.
Imagine if you get outraged about everything
in order to show how good you are.
Outrage is no longer a reliable signal of
serious injustice in the world.
And it's going to be harder for you to muster
outrage when it actually is called for if
we're outraged about everything in order to
show our moral qualities.
So for those reasons, grandstanding is probably
going to have unbalanced negative consequences.
Grandstanding is also disrespectful.
So one way to think about this is, you know,
I don't know if you've ever lived in a neighborhood
where they come around and ask for collections
for mosquito treatments.
The mosquito treatments are going to happen
no matter what.
And they ask for you to contribute, but you
could get all the benefits of the mosquito
treatment without chipping in -- it's called
free-riding.
Grandstanders are a kind of free-rider, so
they get the benefits of having public discourse
and moral talk go well when other people don't
grandstand, but grandstanders are free-riding
because they're getting extra benefits that
they don't allow others to have.
So think about a world in which everyone was
all the time just grandstanding in public
discourse.
That would not be a world you'd want to live
in.
So grandstanders, as it were, defect from
the norm.
They defect from the rules that other people
are following in order to get extra benefits
for themselves.
That's a way of treating other people with
disrespect.
It's a way of not doing your fair share.
It's a way of not playing fair.
We also think that grandstanding tends to
reveal bad character.
We think that most people who engage in public
discourse should do so because they either
want to help other people or because they
want to help people do what's right and see
what's true.
Grandstanders, however, are in it for themselves.
They're egoistic.
So imagine a group of acquaintances who are
on the one hand discussing a world historic
injustice and on the other fighting or arguing
about who's most offended by it.
In our view, this is just not how a virtuous
person would engage in public discourse.
So, look, on balance, we think grandstanding
is probably morally bad.
It probably has more to recommend against
it than in favor of it.
