soooooooo....

gossip |ˈgäsəp|
noun
casual or unconstrained conversation or reports about other people, typically involving details that are not confirmed as being true : he became the subject of much local gossip.

• chiefly derogatory a person who likes talking about other people's private lives.

verb ( gos-siped , gos-siping ) [ intrans. ]
engage in gossip : they would start gossiping about her as soon as she left.

DERIVATIVES
gos-sip-er .....noun
gos-sip-y.. adjective

ORIGIN late Old English godsibb [godfather, godmother, baptismal sponsor,] literally [a person related to one in God,] from god ‘God’ + sibb ‘a relative’ (see sib ).
In Middle English the sense was [a close friend, a person with whom one gossips,] hence [a person who gossips,] later (early 19th cent.) [idle talk] (from the verb, which dates from the early 17th cent.).




This subject is like dragging nails across a blackboard....for me it is clear, in my actual life, i know quite well where my lines are drawn, and they're easy to keep. It just rarely happens unless it's with my 13 yr old daughter and as we speak , i often ask, are we gossiping? to check the motives and intentions of our words even as we speak them intimately in the privacy of our home.

in her world right now gossip is rampant...they are pubers acting out, pheromones dictating every subtle movement that they make, how they walk , how they flirt, how they strut, how they posture themselves, and they are experimenting with their boundaries, of dress of make up of physical contact with the opposite sex, with smoking , and alcohol and ??

and so they talk about it.
who wore what, who got drunk, who acted like this or that...

it's gossip.

i am not always present to participate and throw in these perspectives, tho in my house we discuss this easily and often.

in some kind of way they need to talk about it, to understand what's happening, to formulate awareness of consequences, to listen to themselves and know that as they scrutinize so are they scrutinized.

what's really 'cool' at the end of the day, and what do they need to do to find out? who's mirror will they choose to see themselves thru?

i hold her hand and show her there's a mirror in everyone and they change just as each day is different from another, constantly.

but back to GOSSIP.

what would you do when asked for feedback, directly, from personal and actual experience, concerning another person.

what would you do if you knew someone was pursuing a direction that could possibly hurt them?

we are adults , we should be able to make those choices, but what if we are "under the influence", do our friends "friends" have the right , or the responsibility to warn or say something??....a head's up?

speaking for myself, i am open to the perspectives of people around me , and naturally some people have greater weight than others, but i still reserve the right at the end of the day to make my own choice, and take my own risks, own my own experience of the situation.

and if my friends were right , i am at ease to say " you called it",and if they weren't, theirs is just another process , or point of view that i can be aware of.

that's just my take....my way of neutralizing gossip.

we give fragments of ourselves to fragments of whole people like us, and wonder why we look so different at different times.... i wonder how we think it's possible to ever paint a picture of who we are as we are all in flux ! coming from and going towards....like water . we are the wave...the currents..we touch eachother in a myriad of ten thousand ways....

and our words need to be spoken carefully, and even when we're clumsy, we need to each stop and scrutinize with humility, our motives for what we say.

i am quite naked in this mirror, because i have exercised this 'head's up'
option on a number of occassions, and it made me think. and examine myself....because i see that i project. my bl8ancy. gossiped.

we don't like it but we do it so when is it ok to you?

hard question to answer.
We should not do it. Most of the time gossip destroys instead of causing benefit.
I guess we need to be reasonable. When somebody comes to us, and they tell us things about other person. Not everything is true.
In the case of friends, we need to be objective, and try to put feelings away, and try to find the truth.
Myself I don't believe in things about other people, until I confirm it through my eyes, or talking to the person involved.
I have to admit that sometimes i have failed, and yes I have brought gossip. But I try not to do it.

It always comes down to 'intention' to me.

I don't have all the answers. In fact, I don't have any of them for anyone else...just my perspective always. What I can monitor and know and understand and evaluate is my intention.

I am open to other people's perspectives. That doesn't always mean I will agree with them or take them onboard but I appreciate them.

I am not talking about catty office gossip. That I don't like and will not participate in. It undermines and takes people out of integrity. It is done with the intention of being malicious... to people and the environment that they share.

I am talking about someone sharing their experience in a situation or with a particular person that could potentially be harmful with me. I will still make my own decisions but appreciate the heads up. I feel a sense of responsibility to do that.

Several people knew about my husband's affair ... I wish just one of those people who 'cared about me sooo much' would have had the courage to say "you might want to ask your husband some question". I would not have viewed that as gossip but as a heads-up to protect yourself or at least to pay attention.

Like you said Alex, it is about examining motives for me. If I come down on the side of the highest good, I can live with that. If something bad happened and I kept my silence thinking it was not my place to say anything... that I would have a harder time living with.

Intention and integrity ... if they are in line then I can live with that.

Petty catty stuff I don't wanna know about, hear about it I could care less about it..no time for drama bs...didn't do it in high school not doin it now.

Like Sherrie, if its advice or something that relates to a situation I am going through I will listen and make my own choice.

Other than that I so could care less, I got better things to do with my time and life. There are words to write, flowers to plant and smell, nieces and nephews to play with...way better than boring old gossip.

Gossip by its nature is wrong. There are unintended consequences everywhere - in everything we do and say. Gossip comes from Pandora's Box. It can never be stuffed back inside.

Who knows what is in someone else's heart? No one.

Have I gossiped? I have. I have regretted it. So, respect each other as much as you can, advise and support your friends, but without judgement of others and let each come to their own conclusions. And so, I sum up:

"Beware ye Gods who dare to better the lot of mankind,
Yours is the fate of Prometheus."

I always recommend the book "Words that Hurt, Words that Heal"
by Telushkin. When I read it, it changed the way I thought and spoke.

A blatantly important subject especially here!

one and all

now further and more straight questions would be:
is there gossip on JSH?
how much do we contribute to it?
or do we really care about the people here?
call me crazy. and I guess i'm going off topic.
but these are things that I wonder.
because this place seems like a happy fantasy land, but I always wonder what's going on underneath the threads.

TLW

That's what i feel as well.... and i interviewed the girls here ,..hehheehee

and they all said they would want to know, still to do what they would, but hands down, each would certainly say something and want to be told.


and i said how many times before ya give up...they said once.



made sense to me.

it is subversion and sedition everywhere...
there are SPIES

If something is true...I don't consider it gossip as long as it's not mixed with mistruth thrown in for good measure...I also don't consider warning someone with the truth gossip either...Just added info for them to take a look at and make an informed decision!!!!!!!!!!

Wikipedia:
Gossip consists of casual or idle talk of any sort, usually slanderous and/or devoted to discussing others. Compare backbiting.

While gossip forms one of the oldest and (still) the most common means of spreading and sharing facts and views, it also has a reputation for the introduction of errors and other variations into the information thus transmitted. The term also carries implications that the news so transmitted (usually) has a personal or trivial nature. Compare conversation.

Some people commonly understand gossip as meaning the spreading of rumor and misinformation, as (for example) through excited discussion of scandals. Some newspapers carry "gossip columns" which retail the social and personal lives of celebrities or of élite members of certain communities.

Gossip has recently come into the academy as a fruitful avenue of study, particularly in light of its relationship to both overt and implicit power structures. Compare discourse.



I think that people by their very nature are concerned with their curcle of friends and family and yes, they do talk. I it is malicious then it should be addressed. Example: Say I had a friend over for a weekend and we had nutual friends, would we discuss our friends? Yes. If I saw the potential for one of the friends in question to be hurt by another friend should I speak up? Yes. Is there a possibility for repercussions? Yes. My friends mean more to me than the fear of tomorrow. "Friend" is not a superficial description for me. I see no hypocrisy whether it is there or not. I see people that are close to me struggling with their own crap as I am with mine. I see all the emotions they see even the unspoken ones and I understand. My friends all know that they are my friends for life and as a result I have MANY friends. Should I have an issue or a concern with any one of them I would bringit up immediately. I recently had afriend of mine walk away from a problem. It bothers me that he thinks that I am so shallow as to have not forgotten about it already. I miss my pal. Like I said. My friends are life long. They leave by their own choosing. I don't know the answer Alex. I'm not real smart but I do know that you are a friend of mine and would be there whenever you needed me to be for you. Don't know if I answered anything but I sure have managed to confuse myself.

slander


A type of defamation. Slander is an untruthful oral (spoken) statement about a person that harms the person's reputation or standing in the community. Because slander is a tort (a civil wrong), the injured person can bring a lawsuit against the person who made the false statement. If the statement is made via broadcast media -- for example, over the radio or on TV -- it is considered libel, rather than slander, because the statement has the potential to reach a very wide audience.


be careful guys!!!

my gramma told me often...." believe nothing of what you hear and half of what you see"

does this apply to the voices???

in this world of internet where we cannot always have the advantage of visual expression and touch and smell we are in a way being sensorily robbed and everything we would normally filter thru ALL these senses, is concentrated thru the mental and emotional fragments of our psyche without their benefits or information.

what does that mean?

how do we process?

we make an image of what is presented and build from there colouring according to an unconscious predetermined constitutional ground of being, who that person will be to us. sometimes it doesn't even remotely look like what is in front of us!!

how do i know this? because i have been on both sides..like we all have i guess.

Truth is no defense. Many extremely hurtful but true things are said everyday. And these things can ruin friendships and
even lives - matters little if it is the truth. Often times these things are said with no knowledge at all that they could even be hurtful!

That is a provocative statement!!

what is truth? what is fact.?


in context to this thread and the kinds of gossip that go on here, maybe ....90% of the time i would go with you...but what of the 10%?

given certain parameters and criteria... it is irresponsible not to say something.

alex
i think that the main issue is how objective we are.
i agree with u in this cyber world we don't have our senses that helps us to identify the truth.
I have feelings in my heart and thoughts in my brain.
I always try to use my brain to think, and just my brain. And through my brain and only my brain, I take most of the decisions in my life.
I'm gonna sound mean, but I always try to love people with my brain first. ANd later only later, I'll put my heart littkle by little.
I know it sounds stupid because I said that I have feelings in my heart. I guess I'm just trying to protect myselfd.

Speak Out. By all means. Use the utmost caution.
Do not speak judgementally of others.

Act out. Loudly, your outrageousness! LOUDER.

But not about others. You provoke me!
(i like that)

How about this then:

You find out someone is married and yet leading people to believe they aren't...One of your friends is now involved with this person...

This the kind of truth I speak of...Would you JUST NOT say anything and let your friend get hurt?????


HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

totally off topic, but just to remark a patern here.
You see when somebody posts a serious topic like this. Always few people are the ones who join it. And pretty much always are the same few people.
I just wonder why?

for me
truth must be said plain and straight regardless how much does it hurt.
some people call me a rough person

it does not sound stupid Miguel it sounds human, ..lol

i am a professional left brainer..ugh...hahhahaaaaa

but with all senses available we have a different process.
sometimes we are protected by that!! sometimes not.


but to sit face to face to see how one lives in one's body....is valuable.
we are offering ourselves in pieces a little more here and there, maybe finally voice, then visual... not all at once here i am!!

in some kind of weird way we are fragmented into the little pictures we all have of each other....and we are weaving.... and we want to understand, but we want control, one hand beckons and the other says stop.

how do we talk about it?