Veganism, Alcoholism, and Quarantine

There is a phenomenon where if one person engages in some morally good action that is above and beyond the societal norms of their group, they are resented by others because the action is a (mild) condemnation of everyone who does not also do it. Morality is judged by the dynamics of the group. If everyone does something, everyone else is expected to do it as well. Slacking is not acceptable because well, if everyone else is doing it, why can’t you?

• Alcoholics will resent and try to sabotage friends who quit alcohol. Frequently it is better for the recovering alcoholic to just cut ties with all of the alcoholics in their life for this reason.
• Obese people who try to lose weight will often be criticized by their other obese friends and have them criticize their new lifestyle with insincere concern trolling: “All that exercise isn’t good for you.”, “your brain needs at least 900 g of refined sugar per day to survive”, “you’ll go into starvation mode if you lose so much”, etc.
• Vegans are often ridiculed and ostracized for being committed to their moral beliefs to the detriment of eating delicious food and following a very strict diet.
• Hard workers at a company, especially new hires, often attract resentment from less hard working employees. There may be good reasons for this such as rushing poor quality work, or working at an unmaintainable pace, but I think for the most part it’s just resentment for putting more effort in than others and the group wanting to maintain a lower standard. You can maintain a breakneck pace for a month or two, but after several years, you’re not going to want to give the company 100%.
• Quarantining from the pandemic is hard and it puts strains on social relationships. If one person either doesn’t believe that the disease is a large threat, or other differences in value judgements, avoiding social interaction can be misconstrued as not valuing a relationship as well as an attack on their beliefs and the condemnation that they are not doing as much for society as you are.
• Trumpism – I think a large reason why the “deplorables” crowd supported Trump is because he puts no moral demands on them. If the president commits crimes, cheats on his wife/taxes, lies, condones violence, is racist etc. then it’s ok for you to do the same too.

I don’t know what to do about all this. If you’re going to go the extra moral mile, sometimes it’s worth trying to evangelize others. By shifting other people’s opinions of what the average person does, you can improve their moral actions. In other situations, it’s better to keep things to yourself to avoid their disapproval, but this phenomenon is a strange quirk of human nature.