Nietzsche wrote about the concept of slave morality, the way in which the weak and the oppressed invert morality so as to see themselves as good, by virtue of being martyrs for instance, or purer than those who are corrupted by power and wealth.
One interesting development of modernity is that the "master" of that slave morality has become diffuse and abstract, a system as opposed to let's say a king or commander. What this means is that people work hard for an abstraction such as "the economy", and then pat themselves on the back based on the fact that they have worked hard, no matter what the consequences of their actions actually entail.
They do not care if their work meaningfully helps real people, they do not care if the "working hard" part is necessary or simply self-imposed—people who stress all the time for nothing see themselves as hard workers—they just want to see themselves as good people even if their "master" is now some chimerical system which no one can even perceive, let alone influence.
The main metrics related to the economy are so gamed at this point that the matter of "doing good for the economy" has become utterly absurd. Being "productive" means making some vaporous figures go up, while people become more and more addicted to their screen, more and more isolated and powerless, and more and more apathetic.
This abstract form of slave morality is one of the many examples in which it is very common for people to not examine their implicit ideals, another one being the insistence that life is all about being happy, and their version of "happiness" being a system-friendly form of hedonism.
All of this leads to some curious and counter-productive consequences, such as how people can nominally be on the same side and yet hold totally different views and objectives, because whatever it is that they defend has become so vague that no one agrees on it, but because they rally around vague ideals they also do not care about being precise. This means that they not only have a vague ideal of "working for the economy" and priding themselves off back-breaking work, but that they will defend the vagueness because it legitimizes their suffering.
Or the way in which any invitation to look at reality and actually improve circumstances is rejected if it goes against the virtual ideal. In other words, if you suggested that people could work less without changing much about the current system because most of people's time is spent on bullshit anyway, then you would go against their deontology of "working hard" even if that would genuinely improve economical performance, the very thing they claim to defend!
Because of this, I would call this general structure a performative ideal, one held not because it is useful or virtuous, or not even because people believe in it per se, but because it makes someone look virtuous and frames their current life as good. It's a bit more than simply virtue signaling, because there's a sort of social reality which manifests and maintains itself implicitly.
In the example above, it's not just that people pride themselves on working "hard" even if the consequences are dubious at best, it's that they want to maintain the illusion collectively. The performative ideal has a way of shaping the individuals who believe in it and fill their mind with bullshit so that they never question the ideal in the first place, but believe enough in a vague version that they can work for it.
In other words, it has defensive mechanisms such as bullshit as mentioned above, or labeling those who against the abstract ideal. If you talk against bullshit work, chances are that you will be seen as "lazy" or some type of "communist", labels which conveniently move the conversation away from ideas and reality to emotionally laced labels. Likewise, if you are against the abstract ideal of environmentalism you must necessarily be a climate change denier and someone who hates nature, if you call out charities you must be a right-wing capitalist monster with no empathy, and if you mention how ridiculous the cult of diversity has become, you must surely be a bigoted white man. 1
Which is exactly what I am going to do now.
§1. Environmentalism and its collectivist deontology is another performative ideal. The environment is inherently valuable, as we directly depend on it to live, but the fashionable ideology which spawns from it has no concern whatsoever with the environment itself, and has everything to do with appearing virtuous once again, which is why it ends up focusing more on performative debates, lashing out anger at companies and institutions, and very little about personal action and a direct, conscious connection with nature and its qualities.
§2. Charity is yet another performative ideal. It does nothing whatsoever to address the roots of the issues it claims to address, such as the outrageous inequality and warfare necessitated by a technological system which always needs more and more energy to maintain itself, a system which we are utterly dependent on because it destroys all other possibilities of living independently of it.
Charity is a way for the rich to assuage their guilt, a secular version of the system of indulgence of the Catholic Church, without having to put much of personal value at stake. They will gladly spend some amount of money which represents little of their wealth, but time, commitment and care into helping someone in need? That would never happen.
I cannot claim to be much better than those rich people, and as we know it's very easy to see everyone's vices but our own, but the broader point is that we are supposed to pretend that charity is good because there is the implicit assumption that we have to keep the system running, the very system which keeps the problems which we are supposedly "fighting" against. Charity is incredibly hypocritical because it's a distraction from the source of the problems and a way to channel resources towards organizations which have no interest whatsoever in addressing the root problems, because those would also remove their source of income.
I'm not saying that charities which help the homeless for instance are actively making people homeless so that they may have more problems to solve. Clearly, the people involved in it have good intentions, and clearly they are doing things, even if efficiently and in corrupt manners.
The problem is deeper and more structural, in that they will always prioritize the well-being of the charity over genuinely solving the problem. Paying the employees and the bosses, convincing other people of the importance of their cause, all of those internal needs are on top, which is why charities can only be a palliative to systemic issues, and a leech on the very same system which perpetuates the problems they are supposed to fight against.
§3. Diversity is a performative ideal. The irony is that much of pre-modern life was more diverse than what most people have now, because people were taking part in a living culture which extended from childhood to elderhood, instead of being restricted to their cliques and niche interests. Perhaps the dreaded whites never saw a person of color, but they spent much of their time around children younger than them, and adults much older than them, which means that funnily enough interactions with people genuinely different than yourself were far more frequent.
Compare this to the office, which is supposed to be "inclusive" and "diverse", but is in fact the human version of a monocropped field. Ignoring the fact that in practice, it is predominantly composed of white middle class people anyway, the interiority of people in corporate jobs is so homogeneous because it's basically non-existent. People are rendered "equal" and "diverse" because they have no interiority, since our world has no use of consciousness and character.
But we are supposed to applaud how many women enter the workforce and maintain the performative ideal, even though what is happening is that women are distorted into insane men, without any of the qualities which conscious women can bring, such as their presence, sensitivity, compassion and their acute observations. 2
Diversity is a totem created by the system to hide the fact that human beings are reduced to being parts in a global social machine, which necessarily requires obedience, homogenization and predictability, because a machine can only work with fungible and predictable parts. Our world has no need for conscious women, or the innocence and play of children, or the perspective and connection to our own mortality that elders would bring. Many of the qualities related to masculinity are also not needed in our system, such as courage and independence, but at least men tend to be better at the abstract and technical work required by the system, which is why as the system keeps "progressing", real diversity of character dies and is replaced by a simulacrum of mere identities.
Performative ideals are so ubiquitous because the source of real virtue, character built from meaningful hardships and sense of connection to something bigger than yourself, are essentially gone. I will go into more-depth in the next piece, on the postmodern spectre which has replaced real culture.
1 I'm a young Asian man if it matters, which let's be honest, it doesn't.
2 Conscious women are very good at feeling out other people, provided that they can be honest (our world rarely allows that) and that they don't have to justify themselves (also rare in our world). I suspect that the reason why women so often find themselves in terrible relationships is because they tend to prioritize pragmatism over their own love, which means that they cannot be honest with themselves, and can hardly explain to themselves or others around them why they might not love the person they are with, which means they end up repressing their own judgement and their love ends up withering away.
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Slavemorality Ideal Spectacle Signaling Racket
2025-10-07