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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022

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This is the framework I'd start with; you might find it helpful.

There are two distinct but related concepts here--your character and your reputation.

Your character is the objective picture of your moral self. It's the accumulation of all the choices you've made, within the context of each of those choices. You have usually got the best access to what this picture looks like--the shiny spots and the black marks--but there are many varieties of self-deception that can produce a distorted view of yourself, either better or worse than accurate (or both, in different areas).

Your reputation is the socially-constructed external view of your moral self. While your character will constantly provide evidence of itself, contributing to your reputation, there are other factors: others' limited knowledge of you, unearned compliments, malicious rumors, etc. Your reputation may be better or worse than your character, or a mix in different areas, but while you can provide the most reliable evidence of your character through your actions--and therefore influence your reputation--the full social interpretation of your character is not within your control.

I think both are important, and you have some level of moral responsibility to maintain both, though not equally. Your choices are what define you in your character; your public choices have the biggest impact on defining your reputation. That's why compelled speech is so powerful--it affects both. The choice to comply or defy contributes to your character; how your choice is viewed by others contributes to your reputation. Other people don't have direct access to your actual character, either to know it or affect it. Only you can affect it, and your knowledge of it is usually the best available, if imperfect.

So, actual advice--I would start with considering your character. You're the one who has to live with yourself indefinitely; make the choice that will minimize your long-term regret in your own view of yourself. Second, consider how to implement that choice in a way that best preserves your reputation, starting with the people whose views you most value. For myself, I believe I would show up with a non-orange shirt, and if questioned, state that I oppose compelled social signaling, even in a good cause (...without specifying whether I think this is a good cause).

Good luck.