The Web Means the End of Forgetting
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/magaz ... ?th&emc=th
Excerpt:
"We’ve known for years that the Web allows for unprecedented voyeurism, exhibitionism and inadvertent indiscretion, but we are only beginning to understand the costs of an age in which so much of what we say, and of what others say about us, goes into our permanent — and public — digital files. The fact that the Internet never seems to forget is threatening, at an almost existential level, our ability to control our identities; to preserve the option of reinventing ourselves and starting anew; to overcome our checkered pasts.
In a recent book, “Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age,” the cyberscholar Viktor Mayer-Schönberger cites Stacy Snyder’s case as a reminder of the importance of “societal forgetting.” By “erasing external memories,” he says in the book, “our society accepts that human beings evolve over time, that we have the capacity to learn from past experiences and adjust our behavior.” In traditional societies, where missteps are observed but not necessarily recorded, the limits of human memory ensure that people’s sins are eventually forgotten. By contrast, Mayer-Schönberger notes, a society in which everything is recorded “will forever tether us to all our past actions, making it impossible, in practice, to escape them.” He concludes that “without some form of forgetting, forgiving becomes a difficult undertaking.”
It’s often said that we live in a permissive era, one with infinite second chances. But the truth is that for a great many people, the permanent memory bank of the Web increasingly means there are no second chances — no opportunities to escape a scarlet letter in your digital past. Now the worst thing you’ve done is often the first thing everyone knows about you."
NINDA
Be Impeccable With Your Word.
Speak with integrity.
Say only what you mean.
Avoid using your word to speak against yourself
or to gossip about others.
Use the power of your word
in the direction of truth and love.
- don Miguel Ruiz
Better than a thousand hollow words,
is one word that brings peace.
- The Buddha
Every thought you think
and every word you speak
is affirming something.
- Louise L. Hay
Today's affirmation:
I open myself for the word of Spirit to flow through me.
Speak with integrity.
Say only what you mean.
Avoid using your word to speak against yourself
or to gossip about others.
Use the power of your word
in the direction of truth and love.
- don Miguel Ruiz
Better than a thousand hollow words,
is one word that brings peace.
- The Buddha
Every thought you think
and every word you speak
is affirming something.
- Louise L. Hay
Today's affirmation:
I open myself for the word of Spirit to flow through me.
Link to Kalame Mowla Verses on Gossip
U. Dar Fazeelate Kamasukhan - Importance Of Minimizing Speech & Gossip
http://ismaili.net/heritage/node/23036
U. Dar Fazeelate Kamasukhan - Importance Of Minimizing Speech & Gossip
http://ismaili.net/heritage/node/23036
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder
- Anonymous
Judgements prevent us from seeing the good that lies beyond appearances.
- Wayne Dyer
Let mad beauty collect itself in your eyes.
- Jewel
A flower is a weed seen through joyful eyes.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
The virtue of anyone or anything is solely in our perspective.
See gold, and there is gold; see lead and there is lead.
If you see this thistle as a thorny nuisance, then it is a weed.
If you appreciate its bright pink bloom, then it is a flower.
It becomes what you name it.
The power is in your choice, your perspective, your speaking.
“At your absolute best, you still won't be good enough for the wrong person. At your worst, you'll still be worth it to the right person.” ~ Karen Salmansohn
“The need to prove who you are will vanish once you know who you are.” ~ Danielle Pierre
- Anonymous
Judgements prevent us from seeing the good that lies beyond appearances.
- Wayne Dyer
Let mad beauty collect itself in your eyes.
- Jewel
A flower is a weed seen through joyful eyes.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
The virtue of anyone or anything is solely in our perspective.
See gold, and there is gold; see lead and there is lead.
If you see this thistle as a thorny nuisance, then it is a weed.
If you appreciate its bright pink bloom, then it is a flower.
It becomes what you name it.
The power is in your choice, your perspective, your speaking.
“At your absolute best, you still won't be good enough for the wrong person. At your worst, you'll still be worth it to the right person.” ~ Karen Salmansohn
“The need to prove who you are will vanish once you know who you are.” ~ Danielle Pierre
Kalame Mowla has a lot of Wisdom. it is sad that more research is not available on this work. Many years ago (actually I have the date; 29 June 1991) late al-Waez Noordin Baksh wrote to me from Karachi. He said "I have original source of Kalam-e-Mowla in Arabic and Persian. " He was to attend the Khojki Conference and present a paper on the subject but could not come and I have no access now to his study. I wonder how many important works of this kind we have lost in the last few decades.kmaherali wrote:Link to Kalame Mowla Verses on Gossip
U. Dar Fazeelate Kamasukhan - Importance Of Minimizing Speech & Gossip
http://ismaili.net/heritage/node/23036
This One Magic Phrase Will Stop Gossip in Its Tracks
Just about everyone gossips, and once you start sharing juicy tidbits, it's hard to stop.
Psychologists have studied the societal uses of gossip--learning from others' mistakes, knowing who to avoid, and developing social rules--but there's no denying that gossip can be just plain hurtful. 'Spreading a malicious rumour doesn't just hurt the subject of the gossip, but it makes the person gossiping look bad in a rude and immature way,' says Sharon Schweitzer, an international etiquette expert and founder of Protocol & Etiquette Worldwide. Talk badly about people too often, and your reputation of being a rumour monger will make others stop trusting you. (Related: These subtle habits will make people trust you.)
Resisting the temptation to bring up dubious rumours or badmouthing other people is one thing, but things get trickier when you're talking to a group of gossips. 'Sometimes people start saying something benign, and someone makes a comment that initiates a full-blown gossip session,' says Schweitzer. If your conscience tells you the subjects of the discussion wouldn't like what they were hearing, it's time to bring that conversation to a close. (Find out the seven magic phrases that can save an awkward conversation.)
More..
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/lifestyle/wha ... ailsignout
Just about everyone gossips, and once you start sharing juicy tidbits, it's hard to stop.
Psychologists have studied the societal uses of gossip--learning from others' mistakes, knowing who to avoid, and developing social rules--but there's no denying that gossip can be just plain hurtful. 'Spreading a malicious rumour doesn't just hurt the subject of the gossip, but it makes the person gossiping look bad in a rude and immature way,' says Sharon Schweitzer, an international etiquette expert and founder of Protocol & Etiquette Worldwide. Talk badly about people too often, and your reputation of being a rumour monger will make others stop trusting you. (Related: These subtle habits will make people trust you.)
Resisting the temptation to bring up dubious rumours or badmouthing other people is one thing, but things get trickier when you're talking to a group of gossips. 'Sometimes people start saying something benign, and someone makes a comment that initiates a full-blown gossip session,' says Schweitzer. If your conscience tells you the subjects of the discussion wouldn't like what they were hearing, it's time to bring that conversation to a close. (Find out the seven magic phrases that can save an awkward conversation.)
More..
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/lifestyle/wha ... ailsignout
Through Each Other's Eyes
Could a greater miracle take place
than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?
- Henry David Thoreau
Before you criticize a man,
walk a mile in his shoes.
- Anonymous
The more we care for the happiness of others,
the greater is our own sense of well-being.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama
Understanding is a two-way street.
- Eleanor Roosevelt
We are all different - and we are all one.
Take time to understand, and to appreciate.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Could a greater miracle take place
than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?
- Henry David Thoreau
Before you criticize a man,
walk a mile in his shoes.
- Anonymous
The more we care for the happiness of others,
the greater is our own sense of well-being.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama
Understanding is a two-way street.
- Eleanor Roosevelt
We are all different - and we are all one.
Take time to understand, and to appreciate.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Criticism Does Not Foster Change
We cannot change anything until we accept it.
Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.
- Carl Jung
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain,
and most fools do.
- Benjamin Franklin
Never ascribe to malice that which is
adequately explained by incompetence.
- Napoleon
When they are disappointed, most people react by assigning blame,
and finding someone to criticize.
What if we accepted that our disappointments
are seldom the result of malice on the part of anyone,
and worked together to make life better for all.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am,
then I can change.
- Carl Rogers
We cannot change anything until we accept it.
Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.
- Carl Jung
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain,
and most fools do.
- Benjamin Franklin
Never ascribe to malice that which is
adequately explained by incompetence.
- Napoleon
When they are disappointed, most people react by assigning blame,
and finding someone to criticize.
What if we accepted that our disappointments
are seldom the result of malice on the part of anyone,
and worked together to make life better for all.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am,
then I can change.
- Carl Rogers
What You See Reflects Your Thinking
What you see reflects your thinking.
And your thinking but reflects your choice of what you want to see.
- A Course In Miracles
Life is a mirror, and will reflect back
to the thinker what he thinks into it.
- Ernest Holmes
What others say and do is a projection of their own reality.
- don Miguel Ruiz
Smile and the world smiles with you.
- Anonymous
Everyone is a mirror image of yourself -
your own thinking coming back at you.
- Byron Katie
I am a Mirror for Love and Light,
but never for Anger or Fear.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
What you see reflects your thinking.
And your thinking but reflects your choice of what you want to see.
- A Course In Miracles
Life is a mirror, and will reflect back
to the thinker what he thinks into it.
- Ernest Holmes
What others say and do is a projection of their own reality.
- don Miguel Ruiz
Smile and the world smiles with you.
- Anonymous
Everyone is a mirror image of yourself -
your own thinking coming back at you.
- Byron Katie
I am a Mirror for Love and Light,
but never for Anger or Fear.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
The Merchant and the Parrot
By Jalal-ad-din Rumi (1207–1273)
From the ‘Masnavi’: Version by A. V. Williams Jackson
THERE was a merchant owned a parrot which was kept shut up in a cage, the paroquet’s world. 1
On a certain occasion the merchant made preparations for a journey, beginning with Hindustan. 2
Calling each of his man-servants and his maid-servants, he said: “What am I to bring back to you? Let me know.” 3
Each expressed a wish according to his own choice; and the good man promised something to every one. 4
Turning to the poll-parrot, he said: “And what gift am I to bring you from the land of Hindustan?” 5
Polly replied: “When you see those parrots there, make my situation known to them, and say:— 6
“‘There is a certain parrot who is longing for you, but is confined from the free vault of heaven, shut up in a cage. 7
“‘He sends you his greetings, and he asks of you direction and some means of deliverance.’ 8
“And add: ‘Does it seem fair for me to be wasting my life in longing and to die here far away? 9
“‘Am I to be allowed to continue in durance vile, while you are in green nooks among the boughs? 10
“‘Is this to be the loyalty of friends—for me to be in a cage, and you out in the gardens? 11
“‘Recall to memory that grieving bird, O ye grandees, in the morning draft amid your delightsome nooks.’” 12
[The parrot proceeds then to expatiate upon love, and upon the union existing between souls.] 13
The merchant received the message, with its salutation, to deliver to the bird’s kindred. 14
And when he came to the far-off land of Hindustan, he saw in the desert parrots, many a one. 15
Stopping his beast and raising his voice, he delivered his salutation and his message. 16
Then, wonderful to relate, one of the parrots began a great fluttering, and down it fell, dead, and breathed its last. 17
The merchant sore repented of telling his message, and said: “’Tis only for the death of a living creature I am come. 18
“There was perchance a connection between these parrots, two bodies with but a single soul. 19
“Ah, why did I do it! Why did I carry out my commission! I am helplessly grieved at telling this.” 20
[The merchant moralizes at some length upon life, and upon the soul and its relation to God.] 21
When the merchant had finished up his business abroad, he returned to his glad home. 22
And to every man-servant he presented some gift, and to each maid-servant he handed out a gift. 23
Then up spake the Polly: “What gift for the prisoner? What did you see and what did you say? Tell me that.” 24
Said the merchant: “Ah me! That whereof I repent me, and for which I could bite my hand and gnaw my fingers. 25
“Why did I, through ignorance and folly, vainly carry that idle message?” 26
Said Poll: “Merchant, what’s this repentance about? And what has brought about this passion and grief?” 27
He replied: “I told that plaintive story of yours to a flock of parrots that looked just like you. 28
“And a certain parrot felt so keenly for your distress that its heart broke in twain, and it fluttered and dropped dead. 29
“I felt deep regret. What was this I had said? But what does regret help, whatever I said?” 30
[The merchant moralizes at some length.]
31
As soon as the parrot heard what that bird had done, he too fluttered and dropped down and grew cold. 32
When the merchant observed it thus fallen, he started up and flung down his turban upon the ground. 33
And when he saw the bird in such plight and condition, he started to tear the very clothes at his throat, 34
Saying: “O Polly, my pretty creature, what is this, alas, that has happened thee? Why art thou thus? 35
“Ah, alas, my sweet-voiced bird! Ah, alas, my companion and confidant! 36
“Ah, alas, my sweet-note bird; my spirit of joy and angel of the garden!” 37
[He continues to lament over the departed bird. But it must have fallen in accordance with the Divine Will. Man’s dependence upon God.] 38
Thereupon the merchant tossed the bird out of the cage; but the paroquet instantly flew up on a high bough. The merchant was dumbfounded at the bird’s conduct; amazed and at a loss, he marveled at the mystery of the bird. 39
And looking upward he said: “My nightingale, give some explanation of what you have done!…” 40
Said the parrot: “That bird it was gave me counsel how I should act; in effect, this: ‘Rid yourself of your speech, voice, and talking; 41
“‘For it is your voice that has brought you into captivity.’ And then to prove its counsel it died itself.” 42
[The parrot dilates further in religious manner upon the changes and chances of mortal life.] 43
Then Polly gave one or two bits more of guileless advice, and now said:— 44
“Adieu, good-by! Farewell, my merchant; you have done a mercy to me: you have set me free from bonds and oppression. 45
“Farewell, O merchant: I am now going home; and one day mayest thou become free just like me.” 46
The merchant responded: “To God’s keeping go thou; thou hast taught me from this instant a new path of life.”
By Jalal-ad-din Rumi (1207–1273)
From the ‘Masnavi’: Version by A. V. Williams Jackson
THERE was a merchant owned a parrot which was kept shut up in a cage, the paroquet’s world. 1
On a certain occasion the merchant made preparations for a journey, beginning with Hindustan. 2
Calling each of his man-servants and his maid-servants, he said: “What am I to bring back to you? Let me know.” 3
Each expressed a wish according to his own choice; and the good man promised something to every one. 4
Turning to the poll-parrot, he said: “And what gift am I to bring you from the land of Hindustan?” 5
Polly replied: “When you see those parrots there, make my situation known to them, and say:— 6
“‘There is a certain parrot who is longing for you, but is confined from the free vault of heaven, shut up in a cage. 7
“‘He sends you his greetings, and he asks of you direction and some means of deliverance.’ 8
“And add: ‘Does it seem fair for me to be wasting my life in longing and to die here far away? 9
“‘Am I to be allowed to continue in durance vile, while you are in green nooks among the boughs? 10
“‘Is this to be the loyalty of friends—for me to be in a cage, and you out in the gardens? 11
“‘Recall to memory that grieving bird, O ye grandees, in the morning draft amid your delightsome nooks.’” 12
[The parrot proceeds then to expatiate upon love, and upon the union existing between souls.] 13
The merchant received the message, with its salutation, to deliver to the bird’s kindred. 14
And when he came to the far-off land of Hindustan, he saw in the desert parrots, many a one. 15
Stopping his beast and raising his voice, he delivered his salutation and his message. 16
Then, wonderful to relate, one of the parrots began a great fluttering, and down it fell, dead, and breathed its last. 17
The merchant sore repented of telling his message, and said: “’Tis only for the death of a living creature I am come. 18
“There was perchance a connection between these parrots, two bodies with but a single soul. 19
“Ah, why did I do it! Why did I carry out my commission! I am helplessly grieved at telling this.” 20
[The merchant moralizes at some length upon life, and upon the soul and its relation to God.] 21
When the merchant had finished up his business abroad, he returned to his glad home. 22
And to every man-servant he presented some gift, and to each maid-servant he handed out a gift. 23
Then up spake the Polly: “What gift for the prisoner? What did you see and what did you say? Tell me that.” 24
Said the merchant: “Ah me! That whereof I repent me, and for which I could bite my hand and gnaw my fingers. 25
“Why did I, through ignorance and folly, vainly carry that idle message?” 26
Said Poll: “Merchant, what’s this repentance about? And what has brought about this passion and grief?” 27
He replied: “I told that plaintive story of yours to a flock of parrots that looked just like you. 28
“And a certain parrot felt so keenly for your distress that its heart broke in twain, and it fluttered and dropped dead. 29
“I felt deep regret. What was this I had said? But what does regret help, whatever I said?” 30
[The merchant moralizes at some length.]
31
As soon as the parrot heard what that bird had done, he too fluttered and dropped down and grew cold. 32
When the merchant observed it thus fallen, he started up and flung down his turban upon the ground. 33
And when he saw the bird in such plight and condition, he started to tear the very clothes at his throat, 34
Saying: “O Polly, my pretty creature, what is this, alas, that has happened thee? Why art thou thus? 35
“Ah, alas, my sweet-voiced bird! Ah, alas, my companion and confidant! 36
“Ah, alas, my sweet-note bird; my spirit of joy and angel of the garden!” 37
[He continues to lament over the departed bird. But it must have fallen in accordance with the Divine Will. Man’s dependence upon God.] 38
Thereupon the merchant tossed the bird out of the cage; but the paroquet instantly flew up on a high bough. The merchant was dumbfounded at the bird’s conduct; amazed and at a loss, he marveled at the mystery of the bird. 39
And looking upward he said: “My nightingale, give some explanation of what you have done!…” 40
Said the parrot: “That bird it was gave me counsel how I should act; in effect, this: ‘Rid yourself of your speech, voice, and talking; 41
“‘For it is your voice that has brought you into captivity.’ And then to prove its counsel it died itself.” 42
[The parrot dilates further in religious manner upon the changes and chances of mortal life.] 43
Then Polly gave one or two bits more of guileless advice, and now said:— 44
“Adieu, good-by! Farewell, my merchant; you have done a mercy to me: you have set me free from bonds and oppression. 45
“Farewell, O merchant: I am now going home; and one day mayest thou become free just like me.” 46
The merchant responded: “To God’s keeping go thou; thou hast taught me from this instant a new path of life.”
-
swamidada_2
- Posts: 297
- Joined: Mon Aug 19, 2019 8:18 pm
Quran says:"O you who have believed, avoid much [negative] assumption. Indeed, some assumption is sin. And do not spy or backbite each other. Would one of you like to eat the flesh of his brother when dead? You would detest it. And fear Allah ; indeed, Allah is Accepting of repentance and Merciful".
Al Hujjarat # 11
Al Hujjarat # 11
-
swamidada_2
- Posts: 297
- Joined: Mon Aug 19, 2019 8:18 pm
-
swamidada_2
- Posts: 297
- Joined: Mon Aug 19, 2019 8:18 pm
Admin wrote:
Get your own server and you can become an Admin and open as many duplicate threads as you wish.
It is a good idea, at present I am busy with livelihood and other projects, may be some day I shall start blog in competition to yours and show Ismaili youth REAL Ismailism according to Quran, Farmans and guidance of Hazar Imam.
BUT I shall not be arrogant, rude, loose tempered, taunting, and blocking posts. How's that!!
Get your own server and you can become an Admin and open as many duplicate threads as you wish.
It is a good idea, at present I am busy with livelihood and other projects, may be some day I shall start blog in competition to yours and show Ismaili youth REAL Ismailism according to Quran, Farmans and guidance of Hazar Imam.
BUT I shall not be arrogant, rude, loose tempered, taunting, and blocking posts. How's that!!
I look forward to reading and participating in your blog. Of course diversity is a strength and we welcome diverse opinions.swamidada wrote: It is a good idea, at present I am busy with livelihood and other projects, may be some day I shall start blog in competition to yours and show Ismaili youth REAL Ismailism according to Quran, Farmans and guidance of Hazar Imam.
BUT I shall not be arrogant, rude, loose tempered, taunting, and blocking posts. How's that!!
At the same time if you choose to participate in this forum you have to respect the rules. You are not forced to be here. There are many other forums where you can share your knowledge.
-
swamidada_2
- Posts: 297
- Joined: Mon Aug 19, 2019 8:18 pm
Appreciate your encouragement, but rules should be followed and obeyed by both parties at both ends. Freedom of speech and expression should be respected of contributors, their accounts should not be blocked and restrict Forum. By the way I am also on 2 other non Ismaili blogs defending Ismaili khojas.kmaherali wrote:At the same time if you choose to participate in this forum you have to respect the rules. You are not forced to be here. There are many other forums where you can share your knowledge.swamidada wrote: It is a good idea, at present I am busy with livelihood and other projects, may be some day I shall start blog in competition to yours and show Ismaili youth REAL Ismailism according to Quran, Farmans and guidance of Hazar Imam.
BUT I shall not be arrogant, rude, loose tempered, taunting, and blocking posts. How's that!!
What Moral Philosophy Tells Us About Our Reactions to Trump’s Illness
The impulse to wish harm on others may come naturally, but that doesn’t make it right.
The other day, my 7-year-old, having gotten wind of President Trump’s Covid-19 diagnosis, asked me point blank, “Mommy, are you glad that Trump got the coronavirus?”
I am a moral philosopher, and yet I had a hard time coming up with an answer. The question demands we grapple not only with the moral meaning of the president’s illness but also with our complex and contested reactions to it. To be clear, I am not debating whether it is morally wrong to wish for the president’s death. It is wrong. Full stop. Nevertheless, now that Mr. Trump has been declared healthy enough to return to work, I think it is important that we assess the moral significance of the positive reactions his run-in with Covid-19 has produced.
Mr. Trump’s diagnosis generated an immediate torrent of glee, gloating and schadenfreude on social media. It was followed by an equally quick and ferocious attempt to tamp it down. Joe Biden and Barack Obama, among other Democratic politicians, offered well wishes for the president and his wife, while left-leaning columnists rushed to wish them a speedy recovery. Many went on to admonish those rejoicing in the president’s misfortune, suggesting that such apparent meanspiritedness is but one more symptom of the moral rot that has come to consume our political culture.
While I agree that the gloating over Mr. Trump’s illness is morally concerning, I also find it fair to ask whether certain less celebratory but still positive reactions to his disease are entirely blameworthy and without moral merit.
It is generally accepted that Mr. Trump’s mendacious and reckless attitude toward the coronavirus, including his contempt for his government’s own public health guidelines, has helped lead indirectly but predictably to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans. This is not to mention the individuals he directly and perhaps knowingly endangered once he had learned of his own diagnosis. In light of these catastrophic misdeeds, was it morally wrong to want Mr. Trump to suffer the consequences of his own callous incaution?
Ambivalent reactions to President Trump’s medical condition become more understandable when we appreciate that valid moral principles are often in tension with one another and can pull us in different directions. Condemning the pleasure that his misfortune has produced is certainly correct from one moral perspective, but there are also valid moral reasons to regard his illness as a potentially positive thing. Judging the moral meaning of Mr. Trump’s bout with Covid-19 — and our reactions to it — is no easy task.
The same bedrock moral principles — that life is sacred, that all people deserve to be treated with dignity and respect — make it wrong both to wantonly endanger others and to wish suffering and death upon any individual. We appeal to these principles in objecting to the glee and schadenfreude that engulfed Twitter in the wake of Mr. Trump’s diagnosis. From this perspective, it does not matter how morally corrupt he may be, nor the harms he has inflicted on others, wittingly or unwittingly, directly or indirectly. This is all beside the point when we consider that the president is a person with dignity or, as columnists more often put it, “a man with a family.” According to this line of thought, we should not wish to see Mr. Trump fighting for his life on a ventilator, no matter what he has done, and we are right to be concerned by attitudes that seem to contravene this principle.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/09/opin ... 778d3e6de3
The impulse to wish harm on others may come naturally, but that doesn’t make it right.
The other day, my 7-year-old, having gotten wind of President Trump’s Covid-19 diagnosis, asked me point blank, “Mommy, are you glad that Trump got the coronavirus?”
I am a moral philosopher, and yet I had a hard time coming up with an answer. The question demands we grapple not only with the moral meaning of the president’s illness but also with our complex and contested reactions to it. To be clear, I am not debating whether it is morally wrong to wish for the president’s death. It is wrong. Full stop. Nevertheless, now that Mr. Trump has been declared healthy enough to return to work, I think it is important that we assess the moral significance of the positive reactions his run-in with Covid-19 has produced.
Mr. Trump’s diagnosis generated an immediate torrent of glee, gloating and schadenfreude on social media. It was followed by an equally quick and ferocious attempt to tamp it down. Joe Biden and Barack Obama, among other Democratic politicians, offered well wishes for the president and his wife, while left-leaning columnists rushed to wish them a speedy recovery. Many went on to admonish those rejoicing in the president’s misfortune, suggesting that such apparent meanspiritedness is but one more symptom of the moral rot that has come to consume our political culture.
While I agree that the gloating over Mr. Trump’s illness is morally concerning, I also find it fair to ask whether certain less celebratory but still positive reactions to his disease are entirely blameworthy and without moral merit.
It is generally accepted that Mr. Trump’s mendacious and reckless attitude toward the coronavirus, including his contempt for his government’s own public health guidelines, has helped lead indirectly but predictably to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans. This is not to mention the individuals he directly and perhaps knowingly endangered once he had learned of his own diagnosis. In light of these catastrophic misdeeds, was it morally wrong to want Mr. Trump to suffer the consequences of his own callous incaution?
Ambivalent reactions to President Trump’s medical condition become more understandable when we appreciate that valid moral principles are often in tension with one another and can pull us in different directions. Condemning the pleasure that his misfortune has produced is certainly correct from one moral perspective, but there are also valid moral reasons to regard his illness as a potentially positive thing. Judging the moral meaning of Mr. Trump’s bout with Covid-19 — and our reactions to it — is no easy task.
The same bedrock moral principles — that life is sacred, that all people deserve to be treated with dignity and respect — make it wrong both to wantonly endanger others and to wish suffering and death upon any individual. We appeal to these principles in objecting to the glee and schadenfreude that engulfed Twitter in the wake of Mr. Trump’s diagnosis. From this perspective, it does not matter how morally corrupt he may be, nor the harms he has inflicted on others, wittingly or unwittingly, directly or indirectly. This is all beside the point when we consider that the president is a person with dignity or, as columnists more often put it, “a man with a family.” According to this line of thought, we should not wish to see Mr. Trump fighting for his life on a ventilator, no matter what he has done, and we are right to be concerned by attitudes that seem to contravene this principle.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/09/opin ... 778d3e6de3
Re: NINDA
Gossiping Is Fun. It’s Natural. And These People Won’t Do It.
By Michal Leibowitz
Ms. Leibowitz is a staff editor in Opinion.
In its most recent survey on the topic, the polling giant YouGov found that half of Americans admit to having “spread a piece of gossip.” YouGov did not report that the other half of Americans are filthy little liars, but it probably could have.
Gossip — often defined as informal talk about people who are not present — is a universal feature of human culture. It’s also long been the target of passionate, widespread censure. “Thou shalt not go up and down as a talebearer among thy people,” says Leviticus 19:16. In “The Analects,” Confucius is reported to have said that “the gossip-monger is the outcast of virtue.” The Quran proscribes backbiting. In 2017, a neighborhood in the Philippines passed an ordinance against gossip, making it an offense punishable with a fine and an afternoon of picking up litter. Even in increasingly secular America, more than two-thirds of Americans believe gossiping is usually or always bad for society.
And yet … who doesn’t gossip? “Anyone who has obeyed nature by transmitting a piece of gossip experiences the explosive relief that accompanies the satisfying of a primary need,” wrote Primo Levi, the Italian Jewish writer and chemist. OK, sure, some of us don’t gossip, exactly, but we do vent. Or we get something off our chest. Some of us gossip only to our spouses, or only to our mothers, only about our mothers. Some of us spill the tea gleefully and at every opportunity. Some of us do it only when gossip is prefaced with a, “Now, you know I don’t like to talk bad about anybody.” But a key part of being human, a social animal, is talking about others in one form or another.
Isn’t it?
Except there are people out there who don’t obey nature, who try their best to deny themselves the satisfaction of that primary need, even in a world where the word “gossip” is associated more with a guilty pleasure than a sin.
I spoke with nearly a dozen of these people, whom I’ll call abstainers. The people I spoke with were almost entirely women. I found them through friends, through articles they’d written about gossip, through a Facebook group for Bay Area women. Different things motivated them. For some it was religion or karma. Many were inspired by Don Miguel Ruiz’s self-help book “The Four Agreements,” which preaches the importance of being “impeccable with your word.” One young woman had been motivated to examine her own speech after becoming the subject of hostile office rumors.
No one I spoke with claimed to be a perfect exemplar of pure speech, but all of them took it seriously. I sought out the abstainers in the hopes of understanding why these people would deny themselves what seemed to be a natural expression of human sociality. Also, I hoped to get a sense of how this choice affected their lives and their relationships. What were they getting out of it? I was curious, in other words, if they could be on to something.
I was first introduced to the idea that gossip is a harmful act through a particularly grating religious children’s song by Yossi Toiv, the guy whose musical stylings form the basis of the Kars4Kids jingle. Lyrics include: “Guard your lips from speaking evil / in your house and school and shtiebel!” (A shtiebel is a small, often informal synagogue.) This teaching was regularly reinforced throughout my childhood — at my Jewish day school, by my parents, even by my classmates.
As an adult living and working in the secular world, I’d noticed, of course, that not everyone shared the same compunctions about gossip as the religious culture of my youth (though, to be clear, many people in my religious community still gossiped, just with a little more shame). In the past few years I’d shaken most of my hangups about gossip, not because I believed it was particularly virtuous but because it was, well, fun. And because at work, I found that gossip was a way to bond with my colleagues — and even to get ahead.
Last year I realized that without being fully conscious of it, I’d come to spend a decent portion of my conversations talking about other people. Most often I was venting about some petty frustration or another: the hurtful thing a sibling had said, something thoughtless a friend or colleague did, the incompetence of a therapist. But these small irritations were adding up to a significant portion of my conversation time. They were beginning to meaningfully color how some people in my life (my husband) viewed those I most often complained about. And I was beginning to wonder whether talking about other people so much was making me more negative in general, more broadly critical, less happy. It was against that backdrop — wondering whether I needed to make a change in my own life, but not quite ready to commit to it — that I started seeking out abstainers.
In some ways, Jackie Pallas is exactly who you’d expect to swear off gossip. A dietitian living in San Francisco, Pallas is a practicing Catholic who describes herself as “kind of a goody-two-shoes.” She started thinking about gossip in her early 20s, mostly in the context of Catholic teachings about calumny and detraction — calumny referring to slander, detraction to the spreading of true, negative rumors.
Ms. Pallas, now 41, told me that many of the moral guidelines of her faith aren’t difficult for her to follow. But the prohibitions around speech — particularly detraction — nagged at her precisely because they posed such a challenge. It was hard to stop, though, and she still often joined in when others started gossiping.
It wasn’t until Ms. Pallas started attending an unrelated 12-step program, years later, that the issue became top of mind again. Her group emphasized minding your own business and “keeping your side of the street clean.” That got her thinking about gossip again, especially about what she was getting out of it.
“I used it as a way of kind of not examining my own life,” she told me, describing gossip as “an escape.” “I was thinking more about other people and what they were doing and how what they were doing was so much worse than what I was doing. And so I didn’t really have to think about myself.”
Ms. Pallas wasn’t the only one to describe gossiping as a distraction or a form of avoidance. The novelist E.M. Forster, in “A Passage to India,” described gossip as “one of those half-alive things that try to crowd out real life.” More recently, my colleague, the columnist Zeynep Tufekci, described the public’s fascination with gossip about Catherine, Princess of Wales, as a modern version of “bread and circuses.” Among abstainers, viewing tittle-tattle as a distraction was a common theme. For many of them, refraining from gossip is a way of ensuring necessary confrontations still happen.
Stevonna Gordon, a community health worker, isn’t afraid to let you know if she has a problem with you. This penchant for confrontation didn’t always result in positive outcomes. “I grew up a fighter,” she told me, adding, “just because of my mouth.” But as an adult she’s embraced a more effective — though still direct — communication style. Ms. Gordon doesn’t gossip to others, and she doesn’t like to hear gossip, either, especially at work.
“When people start, I disengage,” she says. When co-workers try to gossip to her about someone they have an issue with, “I’ll tell them, like, ‘Hey, that’s not my business. Why don’t you go tell her how you feel and come to some sort of resolution?’”
“People don’t like that answer,” she said.
The American philosopher and psychologist William James wrote, “My experience is what I agree to attend to. Only those items which I notice shape my mind.”
Image
A black and white photo of two people placing their hands over their ears.
Credit...Eva Stenram
I was curious about whether abstaining from gossip could, as many of the abstainers proposed, actually make you a less negative person. So I spoke with Dr. James Gross, a professor of psychology at Stanford and the director of the Stanford Psychophysiology Laboratory, which studies emotion.
When people engage in systematic patterns of behavior, “whether that’s trying to be really nice or whether that’s really being beastly to other people,” those systematic patterns and behavior “certainly affect our brains,” he told me, comparing self-control to a muscle that can be strengthened with practice.
He suggested I think about strategies to manage temptation — including temptation to gossip — as falling into three buckets: situational forms of control, which involve avoiding situations or people that could draw you into gossip; cognitive forms of control, which involve changing the ways you pay attention and think about gossip; and willpower. The white-knuckle approach is “not really going to build any capacity over time,” he said. But the other two strategies can be effective.
I thought about Dr. Gross’s first bucket: situational forms of control. Whenever I’ve considered really trying to stop gossiping, I’ve worried that abstaining would affect my friendships. Gossip, as many psychologists have argued (and as any schoolchild instinctively knows), is one of the fundamental ways human beings bond. Who wants to be friends with the person who shuts down a dish session just when things are getting good? Who wants to be friends with someone who doesn’t want you to vent to them about that crazy thing that Jessica did at the wedding?
My conversations with abstainers didn’t entirely appease this fear. One woman told me that she felt certain she’d have more friends if she gossiped more freely, or at least deeper friendships with a few people. Another said that she thought that her reluctance to engage in gossip might have affected her job growth, because “there’s so much that goes into, like, company politicking.”
But overwhelmingly, abstainers felt that the trade-offs were worth it, and that the relationships they did have were deeper, stronger and more trusting for their gossip-free nature. Dr. Gross’s framing helped me understand why.
I’d been thinking of friendships as something a person has, which she then stands to lose. But it’s more complicated than that. Friendships are, or should be, a mutual selection process: Two people are friends because they’re a good fit for each other. If I chose to stop gossiping entirely — if I changed the subject when other people were brought up, or if I left the room — I think most of my relationships would naturally adjust, the time once spent talking about other people filled instead by talking about books or news or future plans. But maybe the incorrigible gossips in my life (and there are a few) really wouldn’t want to hang out with me anymore. Except neither, according to Dr. Gross’s framework, would I want to hang out with them, because their behavior would be a constant temptation, one I’d probably want to avoid.
The second group of strategies Dr. Gross mentioned has to do with the way we use our attention and the way we think about things. The brain, he told me, can learn to shift its focus away from negative things, and the results can carry on even after we stop consciously trying. Someone who wants to avoid gossiping, he suggested, might reframe the urge by considering how gossiping might make him look bad. (Many of the women I spoke with mentioned that refraining from gossip helped them be perceived by others as more trustworthy.) Or he might try to focus instead on the positive elements of someone’s character.
This latter suggestion is more or less the strategy employed by Dassy Litchman, 35, an educator and mother of five who’s spent “a good chunk” of the last decade learning and teaching the Jewish laws regulating lashon hara, or evil speech.
“There’s almost this assumption that if you’re more intelligent, then you’re better at picking up on people’s flaws,” Ms. Litchman told me. We were talking about what happens in the best kinds of gossip sessions, the ones where you playact as psychologists, diving beneath “he did this” and “she did that” to “but you know why she really did that.” I thought of how accomplished I sometimes feel at the end of such a session, as if I’ve unlocked a secret of the human psyche.
“What I’ve found in my life is that the genuinely intelligent people are the ones with enough depth to see past the obvious flaws,” she said. For Ms. Litchman, interpreting someone’s qualities for the good, rather than ill, is a religious imperative, part of recognizing that everything in creation was created by God for a purpose. But it’s also a way of exerting self-control, a way of training her attention to seek out the positive rather than the negative.
One of the great ironies of gossip in the 21st century is that abstaining from it may be judged a morally dubious act. If gossip can help take down sexual abusers then isn’t it, in a way, unethical not to gossip? Or if sharing your experience with a man’s lousy dating etiquette could lead to him apologizing for ghosting his paramours, isn’t there a kind of obligation to warn others to stay away?
The social sciences, too, provide myriad — and increasing — reasons gossip is natural, or useful, or simply good. A recent study from Stanford and the University of Maryland found that gossip and ostracization are “tools that help groups to reform bullies, thwart exploitation and encourage cooperation.” In other words, for those who want to keep gossiping, there is no shortage of justifications for doing so.
But me, personally? I found the lives and relationships described by the abstainers compelling. I was intrigued by their optimism, by their grace, by their commitment to judging others by their best features. Which is not to say I’ve sworn off gossip entirely. But I’ve definitely cut back.
And what do you know? The less I judge people, the less I want to judge people. The less I complain, the less I want to complain. The less, maybe, that I even see things to complain about.
Now I call my sister not to rant about some passing offense but to connect over things that delight us, rather than frustrate us. (Or, you know, we talk about memes.) I recently moved to a new Jewish community and found that by cutting back on gossip, I’m able to dodge a lot of the politics that naturally arise when a group of people engages in a shared project. It turns out that when you don’t take sides, fewer people come to you asking you to take sides.
I can think of one friendship that has probably suffered from my new reticence to gab. But it’s a friendship with someone who habitually gossips about her friends and family and partner — a friend who, if I’m being honest, I’ve lately been thinking I can probably do without.
But maybe don’t tell her I said that.
More on gossip:
Opinion
The Pleasures of Being a Little Bit Bad https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/202 ... latedLinks
Opinion | Kelsey McKinney
Gossip Is Not a Sin https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/14/opin ... latedLinks
July 14, 2021
Opinion | Kaitlyn Greenidge
Meghan Markle and My Tabloid Obsession https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/28/opin ... latedLinks
March 28, 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/26/opin ... 778d3e6de3
By Michal Leibowitz
Ms. Leibowitz is a staff editor in Opinion.
In its most recent survey on the topic, the polling giant YouGov found that half of Americans admit to having “spread a piece of gossip.” YouGov did not report that the other half of Americans are filthy little liars, but it probably could have.
Gossip — often defined as informal talk about people who are not present — is a universal feature of human culture. It’s also long been the target of passionate, widespread censure. “Thou shalt not go up and down as a talebearer among thy people,” says Leviticus 19:16. In “The Analects,” Confucius is reported to have said that “the gossip-monger is the outcast of virtue.” The Quran proscribes backbiting. In 2017, a neighborhood in the Philippines passed an ordinance against gossip, making it an offense punishable with a fine and an afternoon of picking up litter. Even in increasingly secular America, more than two-thirds of Americans believe gossiping is usually or always bad for society.
And yet … who doesn’t gossip? “Anyone who has obeyed nature by transmitting a piece of gossip experiences the explosive relief that accompanies the satisfying of a primary need,” wrote Primo Levi, the Italian Jewish writer and chemist. OK, sure, some of us don’t gossip, exactly, but we do vent. Or we get something off our chest. Some of us gossip only to our spouses, or only to our mothers, only about our mothers. Some of us spill the tea gleefully and at every opportunity. Some of us do it only when gossip is prefaced with a, “Now, you know I don’t like to talk bad about anybody.” But a key part of being human, a social animal, is talking about others in one form or another.
Isn’t it?
Except there are people out there who don’t obey nature, who try their best to deny themselves the satisfaction of that primary need, even in a world where the word “gossip” is associated more with a guilty pleasure than a sin.
I spoke with nearly a dozen of these people, whom I’ll call abstainers. The people I spoke with were almost entirely women. I found them through friends, through articles they’d written about gossip, through a Facebook group for Bay Area women. Different things motivated them. For some it was religion or karma. Many were inspired by Don Miguel Ruiz’s self-help book “The Four Agreements,” which preaches the importance of being “impeccable with your word.” One young woman had been motivated to examine her own speech after becoming the subject of hostile office rumors.
No one I spoke with claimed to be a perfect exemplar of pure speech, but all of them took it seriously. I sought out the abstainers in the hopes of understanding why these people would deny themselves what seemed to be a natural expression of human sociality. Also, I hoped to get a sense of how this choice affected their lives and their relationships. What were they getting out of it? I was curious, in other words, if they could be on to something.
I was first introduced to the idea that gossip is a harmful act through a particularly grating religious children’s song by Yossi Toiv, the guy whose musical stylings form the basis of the Kars4Kids jingle. Lyrics include: “Guard your lips from speaking evil / in your house and school and shtiebel!” (A shtiebel is a small, often informal synagogue.) This teaching was regularly reinforced throughout my childhood — at my Jewish day school, by my parents, even by my classmates.
As an adult living and working in the secular world, I’d noticed, of course, that not everyone shared the same compunctions about gossip as the religious culture of my youth (though, to be clear, many people in my religious community still gossiped, just with a little more shame). In the past few years I’d shaken most of my hangups about gossip, not because I believed it was particularly virtuous but because it was, well, fun. And because at work, I found that gossip was a way to bond with my colleagues — and even to get ahead.
Last year I realized that without being fully conscious of it, I’d come to spend a decent portion of my conversations talking about other people. Most often I was venting about some petty frustration or another: the hurtful thing a sibling had said, something thoughtless a friend or colleague did, the incompetence of a therapist. But these small irritations were adding up to a significant portion of my conversation time. They were beginning to meaningfully color how some people in my life (my husband) viewed those I most often complained about. And I was beginning to wonder whether talking about other people so much was making me more negative in general, more broadly critical, less happy. It was against that backdrop — wondering whether I needed to make a change in my own life, but not quite ready to commit to it — that I started seeking out abstainers.
In some ways, Jackie Pallas is exactly who you’d expect to swear off gossip. A dietitian living in San Francisco, Pallas is a practicing Catholic who describes herself as “kind of a goody-two-shoes.” She started thinking about gossip in her early 20s, mostly in the context of Catholic teachings about calumny and detraction — calumny referring to slander, detraction to the spreading of true, negative rumors.
Ms. Pallas, now 41, told me that many of the moral guidelines of her faith aren’t difficult for her to follow. But the prohibitions around speech — particularly detraction — nagged at her precisely because they posed such a challenge. It was hard to stop, though, and she still often joined in when others started gossiping.
It wasn’t until Ms. Pallas started attending an unrelated 12-step program, years later, that the issue became top of mind again. Her group emphasized minding your own business and “keeping your side of the street clean.” That got her thinking about gossip again, especially about what she was getting out of it.
“I used it as a way of kind of not examining my own life,” she told me, describing gossip as “an escape.” “I was thinking more about other people and what they were doing and how what they were doing was so much worse than what I was doing. And so I didn’t really have to think about myself.”
Ms. Pallas wasn’t the only one to describe gossiping as a distraction or a form of avoidance. The novelist E.M. Forster, in “A Passage to India,” described gossip as “one of those half-alive things that try to crowd out real life.” More recently, my colleague, the columnist Zeynep Tufekci, described the public’s fascination with gossip about Catherine, Princess of Wales, as a modern version of “bread and circuses.” Among abstainers, viewing tittle-tattle as a distraction was a common theme. For many of them, refraining from gossip is a way of ensuring necessary confrontations still happen.
Stevonna Gordon, a community health worker, isn’t afraid to let you know if she has a problem with you. This penchant for confrontation didn’t always result in positive outcomes. “I grew up a fighter,” she told me, adding, “just because of my mouth.” But as an adult she’s embraced a more effective — though still direct — communication style. Ms. Gordon doesn’t gossip to others, and she doesn’t like to hear gossip, either, especially at work.
“When people start, I disengage,” she says. When co-workers try to gossip to her about someone they have an issue with, “I’ll tell them, like, ‘Hey, that’s not my business. Why don’t you go tell her how you feel and come to some sort of resolution?’”
“People don’t like that answer,” she said.
The American philosopher and psychologist William James wrote, “My experience is what I agree to attend to. Only those items which I notice shape my mind.”
Image
A black and white photo of two people placing their hands over their ears.
Credit...Eva Stenram
I was curious about whether abstaining from gossip could, as many of the abstainers proposed, actually make you a less negative person. So I spoke with Dr. James Gross, a professor of psychology at Stanford and the director of the Stanford Psychophysiology Laboratory, which studies emotion.
When people engage in systematic patterns of behavior, “whether that’s trying to be really nice or whether that’s really being beastly to other people,” those systematic patterns and behavior “certainly affect our brains,” he told me, comparing self-control to a muscle that can be strengthened with practice.
He suggested I think about strategies to manage temptation — including temptation to gossip — as falling into three buckets: situational forms of control, which involve avoiding situations or people that could draw you into gossip; cognitive forms of control, which involve changing the ways you pay attention and think about gossip; and willpower. The white-knuckle approach is “not really going to build any capacity over time,” he said. But the other two strategies can be effective.
I thought about Dr. Gross’s first bucket: situational forms of control. Whenever I’ve considered really trying to stop gossiping, I’ve worried that abstaining would affect my friendships. Gossip, as many psychologists have argued (and as any schoolchild instinctively knows), is one of the fundamental ways human beings bond. Who wants to be friends with the person who shuts down a dish session just when things are getting good? Who wants to be friends with someone who doesn’t want you to vent to them about that crazy thing that Jessica did at the wedding?
My conversations with abstainers didn’t entirely appease this fear. One woman told me that she felt certain she’d have more friends if she gossiped more freely, or at least deeper friendships with a few people. Another said that she thought that her reluctance to engage in gossip might have affected her job growth, because “there’s so much that goes into, like, company politicking.”
But overwhelmingly, abstainers felt that the trade-offs were worth it, and that the relationships they did have were deeper, stronger and more trusting for their gossip-free nature. Dr. Gross’s framing helped me understand why.
I’d been thinking of friendships as something a person has, which she then stands to lose. But it’s more complicated than that. Friendships are, or should be, a mutual selection process: Two people are friends because they’re a good fit for each other. If I chose to stop gossiping entirely — if I changed the subject when other people were brought up, or if I left the room — I think most of my relationships would naturally adjust, the time once spent talking about other people filled instead by talking about books or news or future plans. But maybe the incorrigible gossips in my life (and there are a few) really wouldn’t want to hang out with me anymore. Except neither, according to Dr. Gross’s framework, would I want to hang out with them, because their behavior would be a constant temptation, one I’d probably want to avoid.
The second group of strategies Dr. Gross mentioned has to do with the way we use our attention and the way we think about things. The brain, he told me, can learn to shift its focus away from negative things, and the results can carry on even after we stop consciously trying. Someone who wants to avoid gossiping, he suggested, might reframe the urge by considering how gossiping might make him look bad. (Many of the women I spoke with mentioned that refraining from gossip helped them be perceived by others as more trustworthy.) Or he might try to focus instead on the positive elements of someone’s character.
This latter suggestion is more or less the strategy employed by Dassy Litchman, 35, an educator and mother of five who’s spent “a good chunk” of the last decade learning and teaching the Jewish laws regulating lashon hara, or evil speech.
“There’s almost this assumption that if you’re more intelligent, then you’re better at picking up on people’s flaws,” Ms. Litchman told me. We were talking about what happens in the best kinds of gossip sessions, the ones where you playact as psychologists, diving beneath “he did this” and “she did that” to “but you know why she really did that.” I thought of how accomplished I sometimes feel at the end of such a session, as if I’ve unlocked a secret of the human psyche.
“What I’ve found in my life is that the genuinely intelligent people are the ones with enough depth to see past the obvious flaws,” she said. For Ms. Litchman, interpreting someone’s qualities for the good, rather than ill, is a religious imperative, part of recognizing that everything in creation was created by God for a purpose. But it’s also a way of exerting self-control, a way of training her attention to seek out the positive rather than the negative.
One of the great ironies of gossip in the 21st century is that abstaining from it may be judged a morally dubious act. If gossip can help take down sexual abusers then isn’t it, in a way, unethical not to gossip? Or if sharing your experience with a man’s lousy dating etiquette could lead to him apologizing for ghosting his paramours, isn’t there a kind of obligation to warn others to stay away?
The social sciences, too, provide myriad — and increasing — reasons gossip is natural, or useful, or simply good. A recent study from Stanford and the University of Maryland found that gossip and ostracization are “tools that help groups to reform bullies, thwart exploitation and encourage cooperation.” In other words, for those who want to keep gossiping, there is no shortage of justifications for doing so.
But me, personally? I found the lives and relationships described by the abstainers compelling. I was intrigued by their optimism, by their grace, by their commitment to judging others by their best features. Which is not to say I’ve sworn off gossip entirely. But I’ve definitely cut back.
And what do you know? The less I judge people, the less I want to judge people. The less I complain, the less I want to complain. The less, maybe, that I even see things to complain about.
Now I call my sister not to rant about some passing offense but to connect over things that delight us, rather than frustrate us. (Or, you know, we talk about memes.) I recently moved to a new Jewish community and found that by cutting back on gossip, I’m able to dodge a lot of the politics that naturally arise when a group of people engages in a shared project. It turns out that when you don’t take sides, fewer people come to you asking you to take sides.
I can think of one friendship that has probably suffered from my new reticence to gab. But it’s a friendship with someone who habitually gossips about her friends and family and partner — a friend who, if I’m being honest, I’ve lately been thinking I can probably do without.
But maybe don’t tell her I said that.
More on gossip:
Opinion
The Pleasures of Being a Little Bit Bad https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/202 ... latedLinks
Opinion | Kelsey McKinney
Gossip Is Not a Sin https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/14/opin ... latedLinks
July 14, 2021
Opinion | Kaitlyn Greenidge
Meghan Markle and My Tabloid Obsession https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/28/opin ... latedLinks
March 28, 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/26/opin ... 778d3e6de3
Re: NINDA
َـٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ لَا يَسْخَرْ قَوْمٌۭ مِّن قَوْمٍ عَسَىٰٓ أَن يَكُونُوا۟ خَيْرًۭا مِّنْهُمْ وَلَا نِسَآءٌۭ مِّن نِّسَآءٍ عَسَىٰٓ أَن يَكُنَّ خَيْرًۭا مِّنْهُنَّ ۖ وَلَا تَلْمِزُوٓا۟ أَنفُسَكُمْ وَلَا تَنَابَزُوا۟ بِٱلْأَلْقَـٰبِ ۖ بِئْسَ ٱلِٱسْمُ ٱلْفُسُوقُ بَعْدَ ٱلْإِيمَـٰنِ ۚ وَمَن لَّمْ يَتُبْ فَأُو۟لَـٰٓئِكَ هُمُ ٱلظَّـٰلِمُونَ
O believers! Do not let some ˹men˺ ridicule others, they may be better than them, nor let ˹some˺ women ridicule other women, they may be better than them. Do not defame one another, nor call each other by offensive nicknames. How evil it is to act rebelliously after having faith! And whoever does not repent, it is they who are the ˹true˺ wrongdoers. 49/11
يَـٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ ٱجْتَنِبُوا۟ كَثِيرًۭا مِّنَ ٱلظَّنِّ إِنَّ بَعْضَ ٱلظَّنِّ إِثْمٌۭ ۖ وَلَا تَجَسَّسُوا۟ وَلَا يَغْتَب بَّعْضُكُم بَعْضًا ۚ أَيُحِبُّ أَحَدُكُمْ أَن يَأْكُلَ لَحْمَ أَخِيهِ مَيْتًۭا فَكَرِهْتُمُوهُ ۚ وَٱتَّقُوا۟ ٱللَّهَ ۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ تَوَّابٌۭ رَّحِيمٌۭ
O believers! Avoid many suspicions, ˹for˺ indeed, some suspicions are sinful. And do not spy, nor backbite one another. Would any of you like to eat the flesh of their dead brother? You would despise that! And fear Allah. Surely Allah is ˹the˺ Accepter of Repentance, Most Merciful. 49/12
O believers! Do not let some ˹men˺ ridicule others, they may be better than them, nor let ˹some˺ women ridicule other women, they may be better than them. Do not defame one another, nor call each other by offensive nicknames. How evil it is to act rebelliously after having faith! And whoever does not repent, it is they who are the ˹true˺ wrongdoers. 49/11
يَـٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ ٱجْتَنِبُوا۟ كَثِيرًۭا مِّنَ ٱلظَّنِّ إِنَّ بَعْضَ ٱلظَّنِّ إِثْمٌۭ ۖ وَلَا تَجَسَّسُوا۟ وَلَا يَغْتَب بَّعْضُكُم بَعْضًا ۚ أَيُحِبُّ أَحَدُكُمْ أَن يَأْكُلَ لَحْمَ أَخِيهِ مَيْتًۭا فَكَرِهْتُمُوهُ ۚ وَٱتَّقُوا۟ ٱللَّهَ ۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ تَوَّابٌۭ رَّحِيمٌۭ
O believers! Avoid many suspicions, ˹for˺ indeed, some suspicions are sinful. And do not spy, nor backbite one another. Would any of you like to eat the flesh of their dead brother? You would despise that! And fear Allah. Surely Allah is ˹the˺ Accepter of Repentance, Most Merciful. 49/12