The danger in talking past each other

Tabish Khair in The Hindu






Gossip plays a crucial role in one of our greatest epics. I am talking of the Ramayana, and what Sita has to undergo as a consequence of, yes, gossip after she has been rescued by Rama. Of course, distrust of gossip is also stressed by other religions, including Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Islam goes so far as to consider gossip to be the moral equivalent of sibling cannibalism.

The more things change

But, alas, we seem to have forgotten – and new technical developments have encouraged us to forget. Because if there is something that social media reminds me of most, it is not conversation, not discussion, not even argument; it is gossip.

Conversations, discussions, even arguments are basically reciprocal. You know who is talking and who is listening. You know where the words are coming from, and hence you know what they are intended for, or can at least guess. Being reciprocal, they have limits, both temporal and spatial. But gossip is not reciprocal; it circulates endlessly. It mutates and infects like a virus; it is alive and dead at the same time. In this, again, it resembles social media.

Gossip has no fixed source or end. There are no limits to gossip; the more outrageous it is, the more it tends to spread. In this again, it is like ‘information’ on social media. Actually, given the way in which Twitter and Facebook work, it pays to be outrageous and polemical. The more people you offend, the more visible your posts get — the more your ‘gossip’ circulates. So-called polarisation is inevitable in such a situation. Gossip is also embedded in polarisation of the sort that social media basically enables — because it can be faceless and highly mobile, two essential characteristics of gossip.

There is a convincing argument, which I have made in my column earlier, that digitalised communication makes it easier to evade difference, and to stereotype and ridicule it. In other words, it is easier to avoid facing the other on computers. At its simplest, this can be explained with reference to an ordinary conversation: in a conversation (unlike in gossip), one faces the other, and this face-to-face interaction often modulates both the positions despite differences. Healthy politics depends on such conversations, which include but also absorb arguments. When polarised arguments end the conversation, we move from politics to war: one can argue that countries can exist in this state of war internally too.

Disturbingly, in digitalised interactions one need not engage with the other; one can simply ‘unfriend’ a person one disagrees with (as Donald Trump regularly does) — or only accept Facebook friends one agrees with. Once again, this aids political polarisation, which is not really a serious and respectful engagement with differences but a kind of gossiping about it. More so because one does not really read social media postings much of the time, given the non-contemplative and distracting nature of the medium. Like gossip, one repeats it or ignores it depending on what one already believes.

Lost engagement

If reading was just a mechanical act — which is what it appears to be much of the time on social media — then perhaps political polarisation would be the inevitable state of human communication. But that is not so. Reading involves the kind of personal investment and deep attention that goes beyond the mechanical. It calls for time and effort. It forces the reader to enter other – different – spaces. Hence, Facebook, Twitter and other digital media posts (and responses to them) are not acts of reading: these are incredibly flat activities. They lack depth. They do not enable a conversation. At best, they resemble gossip: talking in a one-sided, flat manner about someone who is not present and, hence, cannot engage you in a discussion.

Real conversation requires depth, consideration and contemplation. It sets out to accomplish an understanding – and hence a change on both (all) sides. That is also what real reading does. Reading on social media — and much of digitalised reading – does not resemble a conversation. It resembles gossip — and is just as superficial, incidental and shallow.

It is true that gossiping is considered to serve at least three crucial purposes. Scholars often define these in terms of social bonding, the creation of cooperative reputation, and indirect reciprocity. But here again, a degree of nuance is necessary. Gossip creates social bonding in terms of innuendo, prejudice, prejudgment (which is etymologically the source of ‘prejudice’), etc. Such ‘social bonding’ is negative – and definitely detrimental to democracy. Something similar can be said of ‘cooperative reputation’ – the words ‘cooperative’ can be replaced by ‘coercive’ in the context of gossiping. And ‘indirect reciprocity’ in the case of gossip is not an engagement with the other; it is a framing and dismissing of the other. Gossip, by its very nature, takes place behind the victim’s back.

In all these respects, much of what exists on social media is not conversation or even argument. It is sheer gossip — in content, context and structure. We ignore this aspect of social media when it fits our prejudices, even though we know that gossip, especially when it is not recognised as gossip, can cause much damage. Or at least we Indians should know this: we have the latter part of the Ramayana.

We can all learn from Gwyneth Paltrow

Terence Blacker in The Independent Friday, 9 September 2011





The scavengers who live off the scraps of celebrity scandal will be paying particular attention to the marriage of Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin over the next few weeks. Not only are the couple blessed with talent, looks and success – provocation in itself – but she has just made a statement which has caused considerable outrage in some quarters.





Prepare to be shocked. "The more I live my life, the more I learn not to judge people for what they do," Gwyneth has said, quite openly and without apology. "I think we're all trying to do our best but life is complicated." As if that were not controversial enough, she added: "I know people I respect and admire and look up to who have had extra-marital affairs."



The response to these dangerous and reckless remarks has been predictable. There has been clammy speculation about the state of Paltrow's marriage. Seven years of married life, and suddenly she's relaxed about infidelity. What could be going on there? Then, naturally, there have been gusts of moral disapproval from the media. Famous people who express sane, reasonable views are instinctively mistrusted – we expect our celebrities to be out of touch and entertaining – and sneering reference has been made to Paltrow's "latest flirtation with controversy", not to mention her "superhuman compassion".



Paltrow is, though, making a worthwhile point. It is a very contemporary habit, the need to stand in judgment over every little muddle in which a public figure finds herself or himself and draw sorrowful conclusions from them, as a vicar does in a sermon. Scandal and misadventure have always been part of the media, but the busy drawing of moral lessons, the pious scolding from the sidelines, is something new. Disapproval is to the 21st century what primness was to the Victorians.



Both, to a large extent, are propelled by sexual frustration. Prurience, today as over a century ago, tends to disguise itself as moral concern – we need to know every excitingly shocking little detail, in order to condemn it. When a photograph was published recently of a uniformed American cop having sex with a woman on the hood of her car, it was published around the world – it was funny and played to some well-worn erotic fantasies. The story accompanying the picture, though, was the scandal, the abuse of power, the controversy. The randy cop was quickly fired.



It is worth remembering who is doing the judging on these occasions. Unlike the Victorians, today's wet-lipped moralists are not eminent politicians or churchmen. They are journalists.



Such is the hypocrisy when it comes to public misbehaviour that it is now taken for granted. When MPs were being pilloried for taking liberties with their allowances, the moral outrage was orchestrated by those who belonged to a profession in which, over the previous decades, the large-scale fiddling of expenses was a matter of competitive pride. Nor, for all their shrill moralising when a celebrity is caught in the wrong bed, are those who work in the media famous for their high standards of sobriety or sexual fidelity.



Here, perhaps, is the truth behind the new need to judge. Commentators scold, and readers allow themselves to be whipped into a state of excited disapproval, for reasons of guilt about their own less-than-perfect lives.



As Gwyneth Paltrow says, life can indeed be complicated. Taking the high moral ground is only worthwhile when something truly bad has been done. It is fine to be interested and excited by scandal, but why do we have to condemn quite so much? Since when have we all become so sanctimonious?



Few lives would bear the closest scrutiny day by day. Indeed, in a world more full of temptation and dodgy role-models than ever before, a bit of complication along the way may simply be a sign that you are living it to the full.

EIGHT CLUES TO HAPPINESS

KHUSHWANT SINGH

Having lived a reasonably contented life, I was musing over what a person should strive for to achieve happiness. I drew up a list of a few essentials which I put forward for the readers' appraisal.

1. First and foremost is GOOD HEALTH. If you do not enjoy good health you can never be happy. Any ailment, however trivial, will deduct from your happiness.

2. Second, a HEALTHY BANK BALANCE. It need not run into crores but should be enough to provide for creature comforts and something to spare for recreation, like eating out, going to the pictures, travelling or going on holidays on the hills or by the sea. Shortage of money can be only demoralizing. Living on credit or borrowing is demeaning and lowers one in one's own eyes.

3. Third, a HOME OF YOUR OWN. Rented premises can never give you the snug feeling of a nest which is yours for keeps that a home provides: if it has a garden space, all the better. Plant your own trees and flowers, see them grow and blossom, cultivate a sense of kinship with them.

4. Fourth, an UNDERSTANDING COMPANION, be it your spouse or a friend. If there are too many misunderstandings, they will rob you of your peace of mind. It is better to be divorced than to bicker all the time.

5. Fifth, LACK OF ENVY towards those who have done better than you in life; risen higher, made more money, or earned more fame. Envy can be very corroding; avoid comparing yourself with others.

6. Sixth, DO NOT ALLOW OTHER PEOPLE to descend on you for gup-shup (gossip). By the time you get rid of them, you will feel exhausted and poisoned by their gossip-mongering.

7. Seventh, CULTIVATE SOME HOBBIES which can bring you a sense of fulfilment, such as gardening, reading, writing, painting, playing or listening to music. Going to clubs or parties to get free drinks or to meet celebrities is criminal waste of time.

8. Eighth, every morning and evening, devote 15 minutes to INTROSPECTION. In the morning, 10 minutes should be spent on stilling the mind and then five in listing things you have to do that day. In the evening, five minutes to still the mind again, and ten to go over what you had undertaken to do.