Rumours & Gossip

 No one gossips about other people's secret virtues ~  Bertrand Russel

I find it mind-boggling at best and horrific at worst when people decide that gossiping and spreading rumours are some kind of relevant sharing of information - like they're doing people a favour, distributing negative details about others; often those details are simply made-up or misappropriated knowledge by scurrilous intent. In the age of social media, people will share suicide prevention campaigns and then appallingly denigrate people in their community; playing a lame adult game of broken-telephone, happily dispersing horrible specifics of things they know nothing about. Folks will tell others to 'grow up' without taking a good look inside themselves.

It's pathetic and apathetic, it's habitually unconscious and consciously mischievous. These same people pretend to be self-aware, perhaps even think they're aware; but it's a facade easily exposed by watching and listening to what they actually do and say. Here is my insincere meme about love and light and grace and have-a-nice-day; here also is my ridicule about people in my community.

This is not the same thing as calling people out on misconduct - we can stand up and perhaps use inappropriate language to denounce actual inappropriate behaviour; but deliberate gossipers will shine a light on the language instead of the bad behaviour, still lying there in the shadow. It's a contest of wills, between truths laid bare and falsehoods piled on - who's right and who's wrong? It's easy to find out what the truth is simply by going to the source; but most won't do that and it's because most know in their hearts that the 'news' they're spreading is actually just lies.

The objectives of nattering busybodies are to create divide, push people down they don't like, and make themselves feel like they're doing something beneficial. They're lowly souls who have nothing better to do than try to ruin the reputations of others. It takes a certain kind of deep insecurity to do that; covering up an inferiority complex with an outward appearance of social virtue by boasting about having some sort of 'inside' information.

And all those people on the sidelines, cheering on the drama, they're almost as guilty as the talebearers - whether they know the truth or not, their interest is in gleefully watching the public demise of fellow humans being smothered in the strangling grapevines. The spectators don't have the guts to stand up for what's right, thinking it's not their fight... well, they never put themselves into positions of scrutiny either. It requires courage to call out bad behaviour, not bad language, not mistakes, not honest human errors; but to call out conduct that has the purposeful aim of belittlement. Oh, yet if someone succumbs to the effects of these disparaging rumours - depression or worse - they'll all say 'how awful, something should have been done!'

So, in earnest.. up yours, gossipers - take a good look inside.

 

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