Morning News, June 22: Bi-lateral virtue signalling

The day after the summer solstice, but we can still luxuriate (and sweat) in long days in Georgia (although not as long as much farther north).  It's still dusk at 9:15 for a while.  

My dog, Butter, has a wanderlust that has pushed me to the brink. Well, he either is tied up or isolated in the "back back yard," but the second is like sending a child to his room where he has Internet, video games, and streaming services.  It is a large space, he has a shed to hide under in the heat (what is it about dogs and getting under porches and sheds?) and I even put a kiddie pool out there for him to keep cool. He loves to run through creeks and get filthy. He seems to see the pool as a punishment (perhaps precursor to a bath). 

I am driving to Rome, Georgia, a mystery place for me, to have a book "event" as I call them.  Normally I would be at the Rabbit Valley Market, but they are free of me for a couple of weeks.  

Last night I drove about 35 miles to attend a poetry reading and book signing. I live on the south end of what is the Chattanooga metro area, and this was in the north end, Hixson. The location is a new bookstore, independent, where I will also be having a reading in August. The poets are friends of each other and both in my writers group; I have been in absentia mostly but do send in critiques.  Perhaps this week I'll make it..... 

Anyway, they are wise, beautiful women with startling poetry, and I enjoyed the event despite the long drive.  I even bought two books, despite my self-protestations that I shouldn't buy any more.  Ha! What a waste of energy and breath!  I know I will, kindle or otherwise.  One of my poet friends has a "dedication" or "inscription" to her book of poems, "The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning," Ecclesiastes 7:4, and that has clutched my heart. We have concluded that because the fruit of the Holy Spirit is love, joy, peace.... that we do not mourn. That is hardly what the New Testament says; do a study of grief and mourning in the gospels and epistles.  Our insistence on a happy face is a symbol of our superficiality faith, and something else. 

Virtue signalling.  We hear the "left" or the "woke" accused of virtue signalling, and heaven knows I have seen enough of it in higher education. A feigned open-mindedness and inclusivity and acceptance is usually how it manifests, and performative goodness. But we who would roll our eyes at such better roll them at ourselves. We virtue signal when we pretend a joy we don't have to be accepted by our "church peers," when we don't stand up for both sides of the truth, but only one, and in many other ways that used to be called hypocrisy. One of the poets mentioned it briefly how in the Christian world (well, her experience of it in the U.S. South) we put on a happy face and act like we are not hurting. 

To do so is cowardice; in fact, I think virtue signalling is a type of cowardice, a type of truth denial. It is a call for acceptance by others, or a desire to be seen as something we fear we are not seen as. 

Two examples from the macrocosm of virtue signalling:  Facebook.  On Juneteenth white people posted things about the holiday. Fine, they mean well, and we should respect the holiday for its meaning, but I just sighed and moved on. A former student, African American, now an educator in NC, also did.  His showed more depth, more connection, in my mind.  I am not one of those people who say white people should not write about other races, but we can't write about it in the same way and perhaps our performative empathy might be a bit overweening. 

Second: this issue of Louisiana wanting the Ten Commandments in public places. Two things can be true at once; no three or four things.  The Ten Commandments posting is really a rightist virtue signalling, a "look at us, we can put these verses from the Bible up in schools and such, ain't we grand?" I am not sure what the purpose is or whether they think it will reduce crime or something. On the other hand, they are a historical document; they do exist in the Supreme Court building; they are a basis of our legal system.  So I am not sure why the separation (so-called) of church and state is invoked or why people get so bent out of shape. On the third hand, posting about it on FB is virtue signalling, especially those I've seen comparing or contrasting it to denying free lunches to poor children. 

Has Louisiana stopped lunch programs for poor children so they can use the money to put up the Ten Commandments? I think not. So why bring it up? Straw man, red herring, anyone? 

On the fourth hand, Christians follow the law of Christ, not the Ten Commandments. Or we should. And I imagine the law of Christ has something to say about discernment before posting random opinions on blogs and social media.Touche. 

Finally, I am reading E. Lilly Lu's book on writing--

Break, Blow, Burn, and Make: A Writer's Thoughts on Creation

and it is burrowing deep into my soul.