Business Ethics, Moral Values, and the Herd Conformity of Virtue Signaling

So-called virtue signaling means showing off to the significant others of one’s group in order to maintain identity as a prominent and respected member. It is always other directed with eyes on conforming to the herd. “Sucking up” might be a vernacular way of describing the behavior. “Looking good to be good” is another way.

Genuinely virtuous behavior is an expression of one’s character and what others think of us is fundamentally irrelevant.

Ethics (or morality—the two words are synonyms), as Ayn Rand defined it, is “a code of values to guide man’s choices and actions—the choices and actions that determine the purpose and the course of his life.” The first part of this definition is the genus and includes not just Ayn Rand’s theory, but the other ethical theories that have been developed throughout history. More importantly to understand, the genus also includes the applied sciences and the many personal values we choose that are morally optional, such as taste in ice cream, choice of romantic partner and career, or the eating of red meat and drinking water out of plastic bottles.

Moral values are universal. Optional values are not, which means they do not have to be accepted and pursued by everyone.

The second part of the definition is the differentia that gives us a standard of moral value, as well as the derivative values and virtues that guide our choices and actions. A value is whatever we act to acquire and enjoy and a virtue is the action to acquire it. Moral values and virtues are broad abstractions and general actions, not concrete objects or specific actions.

Rand’s standard of moral value is human life as a being that possesses the capacity to reason. Her fundamental value, then, is reason with the corresponding virtue of rationality. Deriving from that standard, Rand identifies several other moral values, including honesty, courage, integrity, independence, productive work, and justice, to name several that are relevant for the present discussion.

The corresponding virtues derived from reason and rationality are telling the truth, acting against great odds or opposition, remaining loyal to one’s fundamental values, relying on one’s own mind to perceive reality, purposeful pursuit of a rewarding career, and judging oneself and others by conformity to moral and legal standards, including especially in business by the standard of the ability to do the job. Vices are the opposite: lying, cowardice, corruption, dependence, indolence, and unfairness. Irrationality means placing something higher than reason, such as faith or emotion.

At this point let me highlight the optional values that guide our lives. First, the applied sciences. The engineer has a code of values to guide his or her thinking and development processes of designing and making tools to improve human life. The end value may be to build a bridge; the principles of civil engineering are the guides. We normally do not call the actions of engineers moral virtues and the mistakes vices, unless dishonesty or cowardice is involved. The values and principles of action required of applied sciences, and the behavior of their practitioners, are assumed to be moral unless one has reason to think otherwise.

Our personal values also are assumed to be moral, but just as everyone does not have to be a civil engineer, or an engineer at all, not everyone has to like vanilla ice cream or even like ice cream at all. We all hold and pursue a large number of morally optional or personal values. Choice of romantic partner and career both are extremely personal and optional, but also complicated in the sense of requiring a great deal of thought, planning, and knowledge before making the choice. And both do have moral components, as Rand has discussed extensively (1, 2), but I am focusing here are the optional element.

As stated above, red meat and water in plastic bottles are not moral values and acting to acquire and use both are not vices. Someone putting a slab of red meat over your face such that you cannot breathe would be a moral issue, but then we would be talking about attempted murder!

In a free society, no one will stop you from refraining from eating red meat, if you think that is necessary for your physical health. But it is not a moral issue. Neither will anyone stop you from drinking water out of non-plastic bottles.

Individual rights mean that everyone has the moral right to choose whatever each person wants to eat and whatever container each wants to drink water out of. Preaching a gospel of “immoral” foods and containers is the moralization of concretes that I have written about before. It is rampant in today’s culture and a major source of “virtue signaling.”

It is also condescending and phony, condescending because the signalers are convinced they are right and everyone else is wrong and phony because the signalers are playing at ethics without a clue as to what ethics really is.

Leaders of the intelligentsia, however, do or should know better, especially when they are spewing communist/fascist propaganda, such as: “the United States is systemically racist,” “recent state laws are election suppression,” and the favorite of all Marxists, “capitalism puts profits over people.”*

Such signals as these are either false (the first and third) or highly questionable without further investigation (the second). And all, in contrast to true moral values and virtues, are political catchphrases used as virtue signals to intimidate any opponent into thinking he or she is immoral.**

For business leaders to cite and promote them is not just gutless compromise of the principles of individual rights and capitalism, but their actions bring up 1932 Germany (1, 2) when twenty-two business leaders urged President von Hindenburg (who some said was senile) to appoint Adolf Hitler as Chancellor.

The group that today’s business leaders are sucking up to is the communist/fascist left and they, the business leaders, apparently think they will be protected when the left finally takes over the US government. Think again, business leaders, and do your homework about what happened to business leaders in the USSR and Nazi Germany.

Business ethics does not differ from general ethics, as moral values and virtues are broad enough to cover all applied fields. Business leaders, therefore, need to practice Rand’s virtues. Justice is particularly relevant to business ethics and virtue signaling because it means judging each individual person according to the moral standards of honesty, courage, integrity, independence, and productive work and treating each person by his or her conformity to those standards. It does not mean judging one by membership in a group, class, race, or by sex or sexual orientation (i.e., social justice). Individual justice in society means abiding by the US Constitution’s Bill of Rights and treating everyone equally, regardless of group, class, race, sex, or sexual orientation.

All virtue signaling is manifestly unjust because it is a pretension to ethics that does not treat each individual fairly or equally. At root it is collectivist. To some virtue signaling may be a psychological problem, which means they want to be liked, but for the virtue-signaling leaders, especially our business leaders, it puts us on a dangerous path to dictatorship—as in one-party rule, show trials or worse, expropriation of private property, and censorship.

Are we there yet, business leaders?

You and many others in the intelligentsia have become true believers, to borrow Eric Hoffer’s words on mass movements. You seem to be seeking, in your desperate and foolish virtue signaling, to identify with the left’s holy cause (1, p. 12; 2).

Hoffer has many phrases to describe the true believer, but here is a choice one (p. 62): each individual member of the movement “must be stripped of his individual identity and distinctness . . .  by the complete assimilation of the individual into a collective body.”

It means conformity to the herd.

In the late nineteenth century an advertising client asked his agent if he had any good ideas for ads. The agent replied, “Try honesty for a change!”

Altering this advice a bit, my suggestion to you, dear business leaders, is to try a genuinely virtuous behavior for a change—especially one of honesty, courage, integrity, independence, justice, and productive work.

A virtuous character is not a signal. It is a way of life.


* The intelligentsia does far worse. Cancel culture, according to David Horowitz, is tantamount to Nazi book burning and should be called what it is. And most or all of today’s leftist leaders are bigoted racists. Their intimidation tactics are right out of the Nazi playbook. Ominous parallels? The problem with conservatives, says Horowitz, is that they want to “play patty cake with the devil.”

** Racism, as Shelby Steele has demonstrated (1, 2), effectively ended in the 1960s with desegregation. What we have now is systemic white guilt. Issues of election irregularities or fraud are factual issues that need to be thoroughly examined, not evaded. And under capitalism, profits are earned through customer satisfaction. They are not deductions from the wages of workers; wages are deductions from profits (1, 2).
 

Identity Politics and Psychological Defense Values

If put into words, intelligence defense values would say something to the effect, “I’m smarter than you” or, “I’m smart; you’re not.” I have mentioned them before, but this post is about the less savory version.

Defense values are a special case of defensive habit, more commonly called “defense mechanisms,” that aim to fend off self-doubt and anxiety by giving us a pseudo-self-esteem—a salve, as it were, for the self-doubt and anxiety. Defense values may be any value, rational or irrational, that we use as our source of (pseudo) worthiness and efficacy.

The way the values are held in our minds and pursued are what makes them defensive. Feeling a jolt of excitement, for example, when thinking or talking about the value and especially bragging to others are signs that a defense value may be operating.

When expressing or practicing a defense value, we tend to feel special in the eyes of significant others, whomever that group of others might be, and superior to outsiders. Defense values are other directed and always carry an air of condescension. For example, “I make the best creamed spinach” (on earth, is the implication). Or, “I have a very high IQ” (a lot higher than yours). Or, on the irrational side of values, “I shoplift and never get caught” (unlike you, you sucker who doesn’t even try).

If someone does not like your creamed spinach, or does not like creamed spinach at all, and you feel crushed as a result, that is another clue that a defense value may be operating.

Defense values are always comparative and are therefore key to understanding group identity and identity politics. People gather together in groups, formally and informally, and think of themselves as belonging to groups, based on a common value. They identify with each other based on that value, whether it be one’s family, a cooking or gun club, a rogues’ gallery of criminals, or just shared philosophical, religious, or political values.

It matters whether the values are held in the members’ minds genuinely or defensively. Genuinely held values derive from the confidence of an authentic self-esteem that generates pleasant interactions among the groups’ members. Defensively held values generate psychological dependence that requires us, so to speak, to look over our shoulders to ensure that we are successful at impressing certain people, securing their approval, or maintaining our superiority over them, or all three. Such interactions lead to group rules of “political correctness,” whether or not the group is political in the literal sense.

Individual psychologies, of course, are complicated and exist along a continuum, so some members of a group may hold a genuine self-esteem, others may not, with many gradations in between. The more defensive the membership is, the more enforcement of certain “politically correct” rules comes into play. Extreme defensiveness of a group may generate such severe rules that admission to the group requires one to be a “true believer,” to identify with the “holy cause,” as Eric Hoffer (chap. 2) puts it.

This is the psychological source of the leftists’ identity politics that we have today. It does not display a strong personal identity based on an authentic self-esteem that practices courage, integrity, and independence as its primary virtues.

Defense values, like most defensive habits, begin in childhood and become so automatized that we are not aware of them, or of how they have developed, or that the habits are less than healthy and may be contributing to a less than happy life. They feel like, “That’s me, and I can’t do anything about it.”

Psychologist Edith Packer (esp. chap. 4, 5, and 10) identifies defense values as developing earlier in childhood than the other “helper” defenses,” such as repression, compulsiveness, projection, etc., although compulsiveness often quickly accompanies developing defense values.

Ironically, and sadly, it is profuse praise of children that encourages the development of defense values. For example, a young boy energetically helps mom or dad clean up a mess of spilled milk. The parent gushes, “You’re such a good little boy!” Repeated enough times, the  boy will begin compulsively to seek out similar praise. A girl who is good at school and is praised frequently with “You’re so smart” is on the path to developing an intelligence defense value.*

Family conversation can reinforce and cement the intelligence defense value by a parent (or both) repeatedly gushing: “So and so went to an Ivy League school and was top in his class,” or: “So and so teaches at that top-rated school, which means she is so smart to be there that she could not possibly be biased, ineffective, or unfair as a teacher.” Over the years, a child inhales the parents’ intelligence defense value that also expresses a good dose of condescension.

If we discover that we have an intelligence (or any other) defense value, we should not feel guilty or bad about ourselves. We should, however, work to replace the defenses we do have with genuine values.

To be sure, not all children accept parental values as illustrated in these examples, but such values are significant “environmental” influences on many children.

Intelligence defense values are endemic to certain groups in our culture. Academics are one, at any level, but especially at universities, and the higher the rating of the university, the stronger the intelligence defense value and, usually, the greater the condescension. And politicians and bureaucrats of the “deep state” are a second. Indeed, in some European countries, it is a badge of honor for a young person to land a job in the bureaucracy; the last thing such a person would want to do is work for a “greedy,” profit-making business. (This also, unfortunately, seems to be the case of many ivy league graduates in the United States.)

The self-esteem that derives from these group memberships is “pseudo” because self-esteem does not derive from other people. Authentic self-esteem is confidence that we are worthy—meaning loveable, worthy of being loved—and competent—mentally competent—to live our lives as healthy, happy human beings. Initially, we should derive this confidence from being loved by our parents and significant others around us, along with sincere, nonjudgmental respect from our teachers, and we should be (or should have been) taught how to introspect the contents and processes of our minds to identify and correct mistakes. As we mature, self-esteem becomes a quiet confidence, a quiet pride in effort and achievement, that gives us the courage, integrity, and independence to stand up to disapproval or criticism or fears of being challenged or condemned.

When the intelligence defense value becomes tied to a group identity, especially one involved in today’s identity politics, it can become a nasty political correctness and condescension, expressing envy and hatred toward anyone who is different or who disagrees.

Group conformity is the source of such behavior and group conformity is the desired result. It is external control psychology in action (1, 2) and has another name in the political sphere: collectivism.

At the level of politics, where facts cease to be relevant (Applying Principles, pp. 307-09), fines and imprisonment can be recommended and imposed by the group’s enforcers. This leads ultimately, in the totalitarian state that this eventually establishes, to the recommendation and imposition of executions.

Frail egos do not tolerate differences or disagreements.


*The correct principle to use when relating to children in these situations is Haim Ginott’s: Describe, don’t evaluate. Let the child draw the evaluative conclusion. As Ginott says (1, chap. 2; 2, chap. 5), “Direct praise of personality, like direct sunlight, is uncomfortable and blinding.” . . . “It creates anxiety, invites dependency, and evokes defensiveness.” (Interestingly, advertising man David Ogilvy (Applying Principles, pp. 201-03) gave the same advice to his copywriters: Describe the product factually. Avoid evaluative terms, especially superlatives. Let the consumer draw the evaluative conclusion.)