Sunday, September 25, 2011

Social Revolution Part 2: Gossip, Building Up, and Solidarity

Hello Readers,

In order for the world to change, we have to understand the importance of gossip and how much it contributes to a breakdown of society. To do this, we have to engage how societies are built on shame, how gossip binds cliques of people together, and finally how gossip gives us a hated other to build ourselves up. These three things though they feel good in the group setting do not contribute to an overall solidarity that embraces love of neighbor even those neighbors who are distant in any way (age, experience, etc). The end goal of this reflection is to engage the possibility of using language to build up the community and spread good rumors about people, and favorable parts of people's appearance (defined as the symbolic representation of the unseen self, and has physical, mental, and spiritual components.)

To start, we have to examine how societies are built on shame, both religious and political. Shame is a component of society because all societies have mores. Shame occurs when people are judgmental toward others who do not meet certain mores. For example, if someone does not follow a certain rule, such as not mowing your lawn in your boxers on a Thursday, then society will punish the person mowing the lawn by words, shunning, etc. It's important to note that shame while it can happen for laws, it moreso happens because people are different and do not follow unwritten rules of conduct. Examples would include someone who does not fit in a specific gender role set by society. Shame; therefore, is an important part of society for many people, because it tries to build and keep a status quo. However, shame cannot have a part in love, because it does not let people appear and be a mutual interface with each other in a communal experience.

Part of shame is gossip. Societies of people that have a status quo gossip about others who are not in their status quo. If I sit down on a bus and am not talking to anyone, most often I hear some form of gossip. For people in a society (read community), gossip is almost natural, because we either have to talk about the heretics and how they are destroying the world, or we have to talk about that weird stalker kid who looks creepy and might like me. We talk about the other so as to distance ourselves from the other. The other is the hated other who becomes the scapegoat for the clique to build themselves up. In this way, gossip builds community in a clique sense because common people that have a common status quo can spread bad rumors about people not in their clique. However, this is problematic as we don't learn from the other, and are not challenged by the other, if the other is not embraced in our arms, and loved like God loves all. The reason we need a larger community is because cliques break down, once the common theme of gossip is gone, and the community pleasure received from gossip is gone, these cliques break down unless something else happens to expand a friendship. In other words, the clique does not allow for an embrace of the unknown, and without the embrace of the unknown we can never truly love anyone, because we will only love their appearance as it is given before us.

So we see the problem before us. A clique and a status quo form because people like the appearance of a certain way of society and do not want to embrace the unknown. The opposite of this behavior is to have an openness to the other and seek to build up people and work to have solidarity with them. When we build up the other we are praising their appearance for the joy it brings us and the community. Positive talk of people's appearance is a good thing because it embraces a symbolic representation of an unknown and lets it flourish. For example, when we praise someone who has a strong appearance in caring or leadership, we're praising not just that role that a particular self/person (self keeps the mysterious quality I'm looking for in talking about this topic.) has in my life, but how that appearance extends into other relationships. In this way, praise offers gratitude to the other and elevates the other to inspire more service and love. Praise also puts us in solidarity with others because we are elevating others and embracing the unknown self. This allows our love of others to grow and helps us to grow past the clique and embrace real community as we can only love the unknown, otherwise we become too attached to appearances and our love becomes idolatrous and narcissistic.

In closing, we have to nuance our vision a little bit. There are people that do real harm to the common good, and to protect others from real danger is something we are morally obligated to do. But we have to discern the difference between real harm and existential discomfort. (Of course, these are not mutually exclusive necessarily but there is a difference between someone being weird and someone raping people.) Also, there are people that drive us crazy. Everyone has pet peeves and issues with others. We have to allow for outlets with close friends to help us engage people who drive us crazy. There's a difference between talking to a confidant about people driving you crazy and spreading rumors amongst a whole group of people where there is no expectation of silence. These things being said, our goal in solidarity should be to continue to grow more patient and more loving in the mutual interfacing we experience consistently with the world. When we love more and build up more, I think we'll find that less things drive us crazy, especially as we understand and gain solidarity with the people around us and far away...

Aristocrates.

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