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Let the bells ring out
Wow! That was a week. So many emotions. So much disappointment. So much love. So much lockdown. If you know me, and most of you never will, I’m on the road to becoming a “woke” person. Last week was a week of being educated. Last week I learned a bit about “ghosting, gaslighting and virtue signalling”. Of all of those Urban Dictionary kind of “things” I found virtue signalling to be the most interesting. I didn’t know what to call what I was seeing, online and hearing on the street. Apparently, some of it was “virtue signalling”. Lucky me, a young friend told me what it meant and I was impressed by how appropriate that term actually is. Virtue signalling. Virtue is the beacon of the seventh highest order of the ninefold, celestial hierarchy. Whatever happened to just doing good stuff for others without the parade, the bells, the banners and the beacons? Sheesh, I must be a seriously old fart.
For those of you who aren’t as focused on getting “woke” like this gal, let me ‘splain. “Virtue signalling” occurs when a person (or group of people) make(s) a very conspicuous, but often useless, action to support a good cause simply to show the folks along their parade route how much more moral they are than everyone else is. Whew! That being said, during the course of my life I have seen people do this. Virtue signalling isn’t new, it’s just a new way of describing a human behaviour as old as time. So it isn’t a new phenomenon, just a new phrase. When I see it happening, it always brings to mind that Bugs Bunny cartoon where the genie pops out of the bottle, with a great flourish, bellowing, “I’m here. I’m here. Let the bells ring out. Let the banners fly. Feast your eyes on me. I’m too good to be true, but I’m here.” Or something like that. When I was less woke, I would have called those people “blowhards”. My dad would have referred to them as a “fart in a wind storm”. Any old way, now I know it’s much better defined as virtue signalling. I kinda love the description. I kinda hate the actual activity. And I sorta wonder if we could all just do nice, selfless stuff for others without the fanfare. Right? You know I’m right! Right?
So, we’ve all seen a lot of VSing, recently. You know you have, and now that I’ve explained it, you know its new moniker. It’s a whole lot of moral grandstanding. We witnessed people calling out other people and businesses implying those people and businesses don’t really believe in a cause they publicly support or they’ve got an ulterior motive for doing what they did to keep “the stink” off of them. To that end, since Saturday, Ontario Lockdown Again Day, a lot of people are blathering on about not being able to get a hair cut, because personal service businesses are now closed, but they can shop at big retailers, like Walmart and Costco. Many of those folks, making all that noise, are now suggesting you and I could spend all of our grocery dollars at local “Mom and Pop” stores. They further suggest the closure the big grocery stores. If this isn’t a seriously itchy case of virtue signalling, I don’t know what it is.
I want to know, first of all, who among us lives in a community where a “Mom and Pop” grocery store actually exists. Oh, sure there’s lots of little shops around the County where we can pick up a freshly baked pie, a loaf of bread, or a pound of grass fed, certified organic beef but let’s be honest about this, most of us can’t afford to pay those “Mom and Pop” prices for all of our groceries. Last year, at this time, some of those Mom and Pop stores had toilet paper and for $18 you could get six rolls of bumpf. If what VS-ers mean is for all of us to stay out of Walmart and Costco and shop at your local grocery store, like Sobeys or Metro or No Frills or Food Basics, I’m good with that. Sure, Costco is a great big organization. It’s a great place to get seven hundred rolls of toilet paper for the price of five hundred rolls. And Walmart isn’t much different. But let’s not pretend that our local grocery stores aren’t big, corporate or profitable. I used to shop at Costco, but now can’t be bothered jumping in the car, driving to Kingston, and spending far too much on things I don’t really need to have. I’ve also shopped in Walmart, but only if I happened to be in Belleville and happened to be really, really close to that plaza. I do shop in Sobeys, No Frills and Metro, but I’m not delusional about those places being “Mom and Pop” stores.
So, I’m woke to all y’all. You Virtue Signallers don’t really mean most of what you say when you’re standing on your social media platform spouting your words of righteous indignation about every little thing and about nothing at all. Enough of the sermonizing. Closing Costco and Walmart during the pandemic would put a lot of people out of work and take low-priced groceries off a lot of tables. If you’ve got a beef, and some of us do, then do something about it—but let’s not make a pep rally out of it. Be kind. Be informed. And, above all, be dignified. I, personally, am working on a big batch of dignity, kindness and self-education. And, I’ll continue to patronize our local, independently owned and operated grocery stores. I may even, deliberately, look for a Mom and Pop shop.
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