If someone asked me for a simple indication of a morally decent person, I would answer: The individual who is not prone to gossip. Of course, helping others is generally speaking a wonderful indication of a decent person. But, alas, many people do not have the means or the wherewithal to do that. But anyone who is in full possession of her or his mental faculties has the wherewithal to refrain from gossiping.
Gossip has a very striking feature: It veers towards gratuitous negativity about another. I suppose that strictly speaking there can be good gossip. But the truth be told, it is rare that the unconfirmed rumor going around is that Smith stayed up all night helping the neighbors or that Jones refused to attend the party because the host informed him that there would be drugs at the event. In general, it is rare that what people gossip about is what anyone admires. This is part of the reason for why I hold that one indication of a decent person is that the individual is not prone to gossip.
The idea that gossip is gratuitous is extremely important to why I think it unlikely that someone who gossips is also decent individual. That said, there clearly are times when we need to talk about another. If you are my friend and Opidopo (whom I know well) wronged you in a most egregious manner, then it might be perfectly natural for you to talk about that wrong with me. My job, if I am a decent person, would be to help you to understand how it is that Opidopo, contrary to your wildest expectations, has wronged you; and doing that might require me to share with you some unsavory details about his life.
Suppose that Opidopo is prone to jealousy. I have done my job if I have helped you to appreciate that. But now suppose that not only is Opidopo prone to jealousy but he was convicted of pedophilia 20 years ago, where this has nothing whatsoever to do with what he did to you. On my view, to tell you about that conviction constitutes gossip, precisely because that fact has nothing whatsoever to do with his having wronged you.
So Opidopo has just egregiously wronged you and I explain to you that he is given to jealousy, as well as telling you about his pedophilia conviction. The latter might very well be an instance of excusable gossip—if, that is, my motive was to help you see that in general Opidopo is a troubled person. A lot would turn on just how egregious the wrong is. There are lynchpin negative facts, as I shall say, that put everything in perspective regarding a person’s inappropriate behavior. Knowing when to offer a lynchpin fact is a matter of great maturity. I shall come to that later.
Why have I chosen gossip as the indicator of a decent person? The answer is extremely simple. Given that we are healthy: If there is anything on this earth over which we have very nearly complete control it is what we say. If we don’t have that control, surely we could have it if we wanted to have it. We could have that control even when we are angry or profoundly hurt.
With rare exception, we do not say anything and everything that is hurtful when we are angry. And when we do it is because we chose to do so in order to hurt the person. We may cry uncontrollably, but we do not speak uncontrollably. This is because necessarily speech requires a choice of one word rather than another. Thus, you might call me a “bastard” or a “fucking bastard” or a “mother-fucking bastard”. But necessarily you made a choice.
On the one hand, then, nothing is easier to produce than a string of words. On the other, we have no greater control than over that which we speak. Therein lies the key to my claim that we can judge a decent person by the extent to which he is prone to gossip.
When it comes to many things—food, for example—you may deceive me or simply, with the best of intentions, inaccurately describe what the food item is or tastes like. But it is utterly impossible for you to deceive me about what I might choose to utter in response to what you say.
The greatest exercise of free will among human beings lies in what they choose to say. The choice to say one thing rather than another or not to say anything at all is always there. And with speech more than with any other activity not doing—that is, not saying—anything is often a formidable exercise of willpower. With an activity, it is easy enough to miss the moment to offer help or it can be easy enough to doubt whether one has the skills to offer the assistance needed. Not so with speech. Accordingly, silence is invariably a choice like none other.
The line between gossiping and being properly informative about a person, especially that person’s faults, is undoubtedly a very thin one. But it is no less real on that account.
If I know that Opidopo has a pedophilia past, then surely I have a moral duty to inform you of this, even though he is married, if I also know that you are getting ready to have your young children spend the weekend at the home where he and his wife reside. Suppose, on the other hand, that he is given to viciously berating you. Whether I shall tell you the lynchpin fact about his pedophilia past no doubt has a lot to do with the kind of person that you are.
You might be the kind of person who in response to that information remarks: “Thank you so much for sharing that with me. I can now put things in perspective and simply ignore his remarks”. Or, you might be the sort of person who feels the need to tell every Jane, Tom, and Harry. Given that I can have clarity here: my telling you in the first instance would not be gossip; whereas my telling you in the second would be.
This gives us another insight into why a person’s not being prone to gossip points towards that individual having a decent character. There are two ways for a person not to be prone to gossip: (i) The individual may choose by and large to error on the side of caution and simply refrain from commenting on others. (ii) The individual may exercise enormous maturity of judgment. With (i), we have an enormous exercise of self-control, as the person refuses to speak negatively about others. With (ii), we have the excellence of not speaking negatively about others plus the additional excellence of the ability to judge moral character well. And this tells us what we already know, namely that every excellence admits of degrees. In the move from (i) to (ii), a person moves from being not only a decent person but to being an upright person.
These remarks underscore the time-honored saying that knowledge is power. It has been the case and it shall always be the case that he mark of how a person uses her or his power is an ineluctable indication of the kind of moral character that the individual has. Alas, the idea behind gossip presented in this essay is none other than an expression of this time-honored truth.
A most striking corollary here is this: A gossip should not be among those whom we admire. But that is another essay.
