A dear friend brought her new boyfriend to me because, she said excitedly, “he wants to be a writer.” Within thirty seconds of talking to him, I understood the truth: He did not want to be a writer. He wanted to have written something. He wanted the admiration, the identity, the aesthetic of “writer” — the knowing nods at parties, the Instagram or X brag on the bio line, the imagined aura of depth — without the hard, often lonely work inherent in becoming one.
He was perfectly capable, mind you. He was a smart, creative guy with verbal fluency and interesting observations. But he was hunting for shortcuts rather than doing the hard, often tedious work of learning the craft. That moment was a microcosm of a serious cultural affliction that goes far beyond writing.
The allure of the label
This has become a common phenomenon: the desire to appear virtuous or excellent but not doing the work to acquire the virtue or skill. Self-proclaimed “empaths” perform verbal acts of compassion on social media but show no real sacrifice, no volunteer time, no donations beyond maybe a round-up on a purchase. The credentialed “intellectual” boasts initials behind his name, but his actual professional work is limited, untested (and untestable), and sometimes fake. Worst of all is the activist whose whole identity is focused on moral posturing but whose daily habits reveal a less savory orientation. This supposed paragon lacks virtue.
Aristotle called genuine virtue hexis: a stable disposition with a settled habit of character forged through repeated action. Courage does not rise from posting inspirational quotes. Rather, it rises from repeatedly doing courageous things, especially when it is inconvenient, unseen, or costly. Virtue is earned muscle, not aesthetics, built in private through sweat and pain long before it is displayed in public.
Modern culture, steeped in omphaloskepsis — obsessive navel-gazing turned inward on self-image, feelings, and curated identity — has inverted virtue. Qualities such as intelligence, empathy, creativity, or moral commitment have become accessories to collect rather than disciplines to practice. The result is performative virtue: the desire to seem rather than to become.
Intelligence as pseudo-virtue
For some reason, our culture elevates raw intellect above all other virtues — though never before in history has straight intellect been considered a virtue. There is no doubt that cognitive ability is powerful. It predicts success within complex domains, enables rapid learning, and generates real value in a knowledge economy. It is a critical trait in our knowledge economy. But we have turned it into a moral virtue, an innate marker of superiority rather than a useful but neutral tool, like height or a strong voice.
This overvaluation is a seductive trap for the intelligent, who often crave approval. Equating “clever” with “superior” undermines the quality that turns intelligence into wisdom: phronesis, or practical wisdom. Phronesis is the cultivated ability to deliberate well within uncertainty, to perceive the particulars of a situation, weigh conflicting goods, and act rightly. In short, it is judgment, the ability to make intellect usable. Envision intellect as theoretical science; phronesis is that theory applied, the engineering part of thought. Aristotle taught that phronesis demands epistemic humility: the recognition of one’s own limits, the complexity of reality, and the ever-present possibility of error.
Without the humility inherent in phronesis, high intelligence often collapses into hubris: clever rationalizations, ideological rigidity, and overconfidence in models detached from the messy realities of human life. These are the smartasses we all hate, the smug, always correct jerks who so often and so unfortunately find themselves with some modicum of power due primarily to a clever brain. Performative intellectuals master the vocabulary of insight while avoiding the uncomfortable work of self-correction. They want to have wisdom without wrestling with doubt, failure, or contradictory evidence. The result is brittle competence: impressive in narrow domains, frequently disastrous when, as happens too often, it is applied to life.
Empathy, activism, and the performance trap
Intellect is not alone. “Empathy” has become so elastic and performative that it frequently does more harm than good. What begins as emotional resonance or perspective-taking mutates into virtue signaling and moral licensing: “I posted the right slogan, therefore I am good.” Paul Bloom and others have noted how raw emotional empathy is biased toward the visible and relatable, prone to burnout, and a poor guide for sound policy. Genuine compassion demands discernment and discipline. The performative version needs only the right aesthetic.
This extends to activism, allyship, creativity, and even basic decency. People adopt an identity (“I’m a writer,” “I’m an empath,” “I’m on the right side of history”) and then seek social rewards as they dodge the hexis — the daily, often unglamorous habits that actually produce the promised benefits. Social media supercharges the decay. It rewards the clever signaler faster than the quiet person grinding out real work in obscurity. Likes and thumbs-ups arrive for the curated self-narrative. The revised manuscript, the kept promise, and the uncomfortable conversation remain theoretical. The empath is praised for potential, not actual performance.
When omphaloskepsis dominates — when we obsess over how we are perceived rather than who we are becoming — institutions fill with pretenders. Academia rewards sophisticated signaling over rigorous truth-seeking. Workplaces prize the appearance of collaboration or innovation over the harder habits of reliability and execution, sometimes even over hard results. Public discourse becomes a status contest rather than a pursuit of true consensus and actionable ideas.
The more serious damage is not to the pretenders, but to those who might actually make a difference if given space and time. Those who pursue genuine hexis feel alienated, even repulsed, by the fraudulence. If you’re real, why would you want to be classified with those who are all sound and fury? Others internalize a quiet cynicism: if virtue is mostly performance, why bother? Meanwhile, the intelligent and articulate, deprived of cultural pressure toward humility, become less corrigible and more arrogant. Their phronesis atrophies. A society full of clever people who never learn humility is ultimately brittle, no matter how high its average IQ climbs. What a terrible, terrible waste of potential!
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The antidote: earn it
The fix is ancient and brutally simple: Earn it or stop claiming it.
Sit down and write the damn pages — even when they are mediocre. Especially when they are mediocre. Elon Musk has it figured out: You learn more from failure than success. Fail. The performative intellectuals are terrified of failure. Flip that. Seek out failure and imperfection, and learn from both so the next iteration is better.
Practice the uncomfortable virtues in private, implementing fixes instead of just mouthing words, before broadcasting those virtues. Seek correction more than applause. Choose substance in place of aesthetic. Cultivate humility not as self-flagellation but as the necessary ground for phronesis. Recognize that reality is larger and more complex than any single mind, and embrace that humility.
Stop praising people for performative compassion or virtue signaling or saying the right things but doing nothing. Switch your admiration to the doers, not the thinkers. Ignore IQ and focus on results.
Intelligence, creativity, compassion, and moral conviction are all amplifiers, but amplification is useless with no signal. They become useful only when joined to hexis. My friend’s boyfriend was not wrong to want the writer’s life. He was wrong to believe the identity could be separated from the work, or that it was superior to the work, or to think he should be admired for his potential rather than its actualization. He centered himself, not the writing, not the work.
In a culture addicted to shortcuts and self-image, the quiet revolutionaries are those who still choose the harder path: the writer who actually writes, the intelligent person who remains humble, the compassionate one who acts productively without fanfare. They remind us that virtue is not something we have. It is something we become, one unglamorous, repeated choice at a time.
(I need to read this to myself at least once a week. None of us is perfect or even close to it!)
