Love, Cruelty, Shame, and Virtue

I got to thinking this morning, yes that happens occasionally, and two things dawned on me that had never come to light for me before.

First, I realized that the opposite of love is not hate the way we always imagine it to be. The opposite of love is cruelty. For love to be realized it needs to be expressed as an action, not merely as a feeling. Hate is a feeling. Cruelty is an action.

The second realization came an hour or so later. The opposite of shame is virtue. Shame exposes guilt and is therefore a good thing. Virtue hides it. This contrast is almost Orwellian.

Virtue signaling makes people with malicious intent appear to be good.