The kind of self-hatred that's a positive signal on an individual level is maladaptive on a civilizational scale.

An individual who hates herself and thinks that everything about herself is bad and sinful is signalling selflessness and is probably going to make a good wife.

I know many women who obsess over recycling and composting and environmentalism, far beyond any utilitarian need for it.

Why are they doing this?

Simple. They're sending out a costly and accurate signal that they're not a princess.

Veganism is cut from the same cloth.

The whole point of vegan food is that it's disgusting. The day that synthetic meat and dairy becomes as good as the real stuff is the day that veganism as a social movement dies, as it will no longer have a costly signal attached.

Climate change & the Greta Thunberg Cult is the same thing again.

Why is there no interest in geoengineering?

Because that would take away the signalling value of climate change activism. The point of CC activism is to campaign for damaging and regressive moves as a signal.

BLM protests full of white unmarried women? But only rich white women or those from upper class backgrounds; not white women who are from poor families or deprived areas.

It's a reliable signal of class, and that's why it exists.

Feminism is another fantastic example. Feminism is (objectively speaking) the worst disaster of the past 60 years in The West.

It breaks lives and destroys families; it seeks to destroy women and torment men.

Yet it has a huge amount of support. Why?

- because feminism managed to sell itself to men as a signal of kindness and good upbringing, and to women as a signal of intelligence, and then smear any who opposed it as deviants who hated women (if male) or as uneducated and dumb (if female).

All this stuff is good for an individual but bad for civilization as a whole.

The common resources - good human capital, technological progress, functional institutions, political unity and national pride are being burned for virtue signalling.

Specifically:

-- Burn functional family institutions: feminism

-- Burn good human capital: BLM, anti-eugenics, refugees welcome

-- Burn technological/economic progress: Cult of Greta

-- Burn national cohesion: BLM, iconoclasm

-- Burn free inquiry: Cancel Culture

For every positive aspect of civilization, there is now a movement in The West where you can destroy that aspect for personal virtue signalling value.

We need to bring back (and I hate that I have to say this) ...

Christianity.

Christianity has the power to absorb our desire and need for virtue signalling, but to steer it in either harmless or functional directions.

I don't believe in God, but I believe in belief in God.