Disclaimer:
All articles published within this section of The Cor Chronicle are the opinions of the respective authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Cor Chronicle.
Human beings love to be entertained. We crave it so much that we will take it in any form we can get, as cheap as we can get it. We need entertainment so much that we almost never go a day without consuming it in some way, whether we listen to music, watch TV and movies, scroll social media – or gossip about other people. Gossip is certainly a form of entertainment.
Some people gravitate towards it more than others, but it definitely seems to have a universal appeal. People love to sit back, observe and discuss the mistakes and suffering of others as if there were a fourth wall between us and them.
This is an essential part of what makes gossip so harmful. The term “gossip” has the general meaning of damaging another’s reputation by talking about their faults to other people. It also includes the two sins of detraction and calumny– the former unjustly damages another’s reputation by revealing true faults or scandalous actions, and the latter reveals faults or scandalous actions that are false. Gossip, detraction and calumny are harmful to communities because they turn people against each other, and in general do not foster a loving environment between those who ought to be friends.
Spreading gossip and “enjoying the drama” is offensive to others’ dignity. All people have the right to a good name, and spreading gossip, whether true or false, directly opposes that. There is an obvious difference between unnecessary and unjust revelation of another’s faults or crimes and talking about such things when it is appropriate. This fine line can sometimes get blurred when one finds oneself in a small and close community like ours at the University of Dallas. For example, our school newspaper does not have a gossip column, nor does it publish articles that criticize certain individuals directly.
Gossip may pull lots of readers, as people tend to enjoy reading about scandal and drama, but The Cor Chronicle chooses not to publish it. While criticizing the misdeeds of certain individuals to a large audience is not always wrong, this would ultimately cause even more harm to a smaller community than to a larger one. What if a passionate student strongly disliked a lecture that a professor gave, an event that a club sponsored, a music student’s semester recital, or even the mainstage play and felt the need to put his thoughts into writing for the whole university to read? In most cases, I would discourage this student from publishing an article like that.
How should we act, then, when the line between detraction and useful criticism is not very clear? As lovers of our friends and enemies alike, we should rejoice in others’ successes, and refrain from talking about their failures for purely entertainment purposes— it’s cheap and vulgar. We can enrich our lives much better by going to the theater, watching quality films, listening to beautiful music and reading great stories.
Let us love the good, true and beautiful rather than reveling in the evils of the world. Think of the sinners in Dante’s “Inferno,” who selfishly rejoice in the suffering of others as they watch them get dragged down to their level, or even lower. Let that be a model of how we should not treat each other.