Awareness
The popularity of awareness campaigns cannot be overstated. Raising awareness is a form of virtue signaling – announcing to others that you possess a quality of righteousness. Due to the cost of such signals hovering around zero, it does not earn us anything worthwhile. The desired effect is that others will interpret our signal as a willingness to suffer a cost that is commensurate with the righteousness of the enterprise. This will bestow us with an unearned status that we acquired without having to pay any cost.
Not only is this cheating, but it actually produces the opposite of what it alleges. In lieu of suffering a cost and generating value for others, we pay nothing and hope to glean status for ourselves. When we are successful in such endeavours, it is an evolutionary bargain. Because this form of signaling is so lucrative, it spreads memetically like wildfire, and thus becomes an obvious scam that is recognizable by everyone.
The fact that awareness campaigns are so prevalent to this day is a testament that lazy idealogues have infected virtually every sphere of human existence. This may actually be a blessing in disguise; if they were any more industrious, they may actually achieve their ideological goals.
Thank goodness for human incompetence.
Posted: 30 Dec 2022
