Dostoyevsky watched as many Russians claimed to be in favor of helping the poor and the oppressed. He knew their behavior was virtue signaling 150 years before the term came into existence. He had one of his characters point out the fake compassion of those in high society who claimed to be in favor of ‘the people’. A character in The Possessed says, “Those men of yours never loved the people. They didn’t suffer for them, and didn’t sacrifice anything for them. Though they may have amused themselves by imagining it.” CS Lewis in The Problem of Pain pointed out this same tendency:
Kindness’ is a quality fatally easy to attribute to ourselves on quite inadequate grounds. Everyone feels benevolent if nothing happens to be annoying him at the moment. Thus a man easily comes to console himself for all his other vices by a conviction that ‘his heart’s in the right place’ and ‘he wouldn’t hurt a fly,’ though in fact he has never made the slightest sacrifice for a fellow creature. We think we are kind when we are only happy.”
See The Possessed by Fyodor Dostoyevsky and The Problem of Pain by CS Lewis
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