In the wake of the Notre-Dame cathedral fire, there have been numerous reports of wealthy businessmen pledging huge amounts towards its restoration, which may on the outside sound commendable - but the news has not been without its cynics.
French billionaires Bernard Arnault and Francois-Henri Pinault pledged around 500 million to help rebuild the Parisian landmark, and at least 200 million more has been raised elsewhere. This has given rise to a widespread comparison with the Grenfell Tower fire, where 72 people died and little more than 18 million was raised for the victims.
After all, the devastation caused by the Grenfell fire was far more crippling than that of Notre-Dame, which has already been shown to be more than salvagable. More and more people are sharing memes and statements with regards to this comparison, but among the comments in these posts are a flood of eye-roll emojis and accusations of "virtue-signalling".
The phrase was popularised by The Spectator journalist James Bartholomew in 2015 and refers to the practise of either directly or indirectly making it clear that you are a generous, considerate, charitable and empathetic person, with the biggest examples of virtue-signalling being - in this writer's opinion - when individuals make "virtuous" statements, crucially, without making any effort whatsoever.
In the situation of the Grenfell Tower fire, for example, it's obvious that not everyone sharing the angry posts about the amount of money being donated to Notre-Dame did more than send "thoughts and prayers" following the Grenfell tragedy. Instead, their apparent compassion could be seen more as a display of vanity than actual selflessness.
On the other hand, accusing someone of virtue signalling is an easy way to belittle another person's empathy and truly puts kindess and generosity in danger of being stigmatised. People that preach on behalf of those less fortunate may do so because they genuinely care about a cause, not because they want approval. Accusing someone of virtue-signalling is a facile way of one-upping these people, especially if you can't be bothered to openly support a cause yourself and want to make yourself look better by implying that you don't need to rant and rave about something to support it.
Of course, we all prefer humility when it comes to acts of kindness and consideration, but if people weren't vocal about their beliefs and important causes, empathy for such things would not spread in the way that it does. And besides, supporting a cause or doing a good deed because you want to look good and doing so because you care are not mutually exclusive; you can be both vain and selfless.
The point that we should be focusing on is not whether or not people who point out the discrepancies between the money raised for Grenfell and for Notre-Dame have done anything to support either disaster themselves, but why billionaires like Arnault and Pinault have decided to donate a vast sum of money towards one building when there are 140,000 homeless people living in France today. Why capitalism allows people to hoard billions that they are unable to spend in a lifetime, when almost fifty per cent of the world are starving.
Until the problem of global poverty is solved, we will continue to scoff at what these billionaires choose to spend their money on. The fact that some people have more money than entire countries is proof that there is truly something wrong with the world.