Breda O'Brien
The View
Two recent incidents nudged my conscience. The first was a young woman who told me that something from one of my talks had lingered with her and she had tried to implement it. The topic mentioned was moral licensing, in the sense of feeling that I am such a good Christian that I can allow myself to be lax in just one area.
I had used the example of young (and not-so-young) Christians and excessive drinking. The reasoning works something like this: I pray, I go to Mass, I work for the pro-life movement. I have to stand out from the crowd in so many ways that I am entitled to be a typical Irish young person in this one way and go out and get cheerfully drunk with my friends.
Then my husband attended the funeral of a beloved friend of his mother’s. One of her sons mentioned that she had no time for gossip and actively discouraged people from taking part in it. She much preferred to be positive and build people up.
The two incidents made me uncomfortable. Despite the fact that it is gratifying that anyone would not only listen to but try to put something I had said into practice, I wondered whether I was indulging in a bit of moral licensing of my own.
No, I don’t go out and get cheerfully drunk but my standards on gossip are not so high.
Society
It does not help that gossip has got a better reputation in recent decades. There are even experts who claim that gossip is essential to human society, like Robin Dunbar, professor of evolutionary psychology at Oxford. He believes that language evolved as human groups got bigger. It allowed people to transmit social norms and to maintain cohesiveness. Put simply, if Mary comes racing over to me to tell me that I will never believe what Jack did, I internalise that this behaviour is bad.
This is particularly important among young children. But what about adults? Dr Jennifer Cole of Manchester University did some interesting research that shows that people do not like those who gossip negatively but neither do they like people who never gossip at all.
Perhaps it all revolves around the definition of gossip? I have been wrestling with this one myself. There are some clear-cut instances where gossip is simply wrong, the most egregious being passing on negative information that you are not even sure is accurate.
But what about the human need to talk things through? Someone may be deeply hurt by someone else’s actions and need to talk. How someone both listens to and curates the information gained may be the feature that distinguishes whether something is gossip.
Being a careful listener who allows the person to talk themselves into a more balanced state is a service. Resisting the temptation to tell someone else that Mary was really hurt by Jack’s actions is also vital.
Never saying anything negative at all is obviously a flawed approach. Suppose a group of friends is becoming concerned that one of their members is drinking to the extent of damaging herself and possibly losing her marriage.
There is a vast difference between chatting about it in a gossipy way and a group of friends discussing it to see if some form of intervention would be helpful.
In relation to squelching all negative talk, decades ago I had the experience of being involved in a Christian community where there was a strong culture of not ‘murmuring’, as it was called. This meant complaining or grumbling about others.
It became clear to me that it was an unhealthy control mechanism because it shut down legitimate complaints just as effectively as it prevented pointless carping and complaining. All communities need methods to handle genuine complaints.
There are examples of complaining in the New Testament, such as when the Greek widows complained that they were not being treated as well as the widows of the Jewish Christians. This led to a re-ordering of priorities. The Twelve decided that they should focus on preaching and prayer and appointed seven good men to oversee the charitable works. Everybody was happy. (Acts, Chapter 6)
Perhaps that leads to the most important question regarding gossip – why am I sharing this information? Is it to be the first with a juicy bit of gossip and therefore (briefly) increase my social standing? Is it because I do not like someone? Or is out of genuine concern and a desire to be helpful?
I find it a bit dispiriting how difficult I find these distinctions and how often I resort to moral licensing in this area. Nor do I yet have good ways of gently steering others away from gossip without sounding sanctimonious or preachy. Readers’ ideas on the topic would be appreciated.