What is Gossip?
Gossip is surprisingly hard to define but its real. Like loud laughter, peace, and the Spirit, its one of those things you have to experience yourself to know what it is.
Worse, we don’t even have a word or a concept for the virtue that gossip distorts. What even is the virtue? Family stories? Personal news? Social communication? I thought of arbitrarily calling the virtue “confiding” but that only applies to private communications. Let’s call it goodsip for now as a placeholder that is too dumb to not be easily displaced if a better term comes along.
The goodsip is network forming and relationship strengthening, whereas gossip disrupts networks. That is not the same as saying that gossip is bad information and goodsip is good information. Warnings can also be good.
It comes down to intent, the willingness to course correct, and decency. There isn’t a rule. Though we always want a rule. The spirit of the law is not a relaxation of the law. It is harder.
Goodsip:gossip :: discretion:taciturnity
Or alternatively
Goodsip:gossip :: privacy:cover-ups
What do you think?
E.C.
March 12, 2024
I don’t have a better term for you, but I know it when I see it. I used to work for a sweet old deaf lady who was what one might call ‘nosy’.
The thing is, she wanted information about people in the ward and neighborhood – how they were doing, what their challenges were, how they were being helped – purely because she wanted to be kind. When I asked her why she wanted to know, once, she told me, “I just don’t want to accidentally offend someone!”
She was the kind of grandmotherly figure who knew the names of every child in the ward and what extracurriculars they were interested in; who was struggling financially and might need an opportunity; who was about to have a baby and needed freezer meals, etc.
The thing is, once she knew information, she would often confirm its accuracy, usually with the person it was about. She rarely passed information on, unless it was helpful in some way.
Her husband died 10 years before her, but he also had a spiritual gift: he would just show up, tools and everything, to help when people needed it, even when nobody had told him there was a need.
They were the kind of old people I aspire to be.