Urbane Sprawl

Yom Kippur is always an introspective time for me, however lacking I may be in observance. (Most Jews go to services and fast; I generally do one or the other, figuring either way I’ve got my atonement covered.)
 
As I ruminate on my moral failings from the preceding year, I’m always fascinated by how much more inclusive of sin is my religious moral sense than is my secular moral sense: behaviors that I wouldn’t normally think of as wrongdoing still set off my religious alarm as atonement-worthy.
 
Take gossip. During the year, my borderline-unhealthy obsession with ethics and etiquette keep me pretty primed to speech and actions I find objectionable. Still, I generally don’t have any qualms about talking about people behind their backs.
 
I’m of course more comfortable gossiping about people I don’t like than people I do, and I don’t like rumor-mongering or judging people too harshly without thinking deeply about their perspectives and circumstances. But, I think trading insights with friends about other friends and acquaintances is anthropologically interesting, socially bonding (and entertaining), and important for staying apprised of our friends’ emotional states and for strategizing collectively about how to help each other out.
 
At Yom Kippur, though, palpable guilt washes over me. Judaism strictly forbids gossip — in a prohibition called lashon hara — and though my secular ethics alarms aren’t set off by gossip, I’m always sure during atonement that G-d doesn’t want me to be talking about anyone behind their backs.
 
This dissonance raises an interesting point: is it morally okay to gossip? If not, why not?
 

Lying and Our Negative View of Gossip
 
The knee-jerk reaction is to say that, though we all do it all the time, gossip’s a vice we should try to curb — something to make resolutions about come New Year’s. For support of this position, we can see religious proscriptions like lashon hara.
 
The proscription is supported by our sensible distaste for lying, often tied up in gossip that entails propagating rumors we’re not sure are true. We are commanded religiously against bearing false witness; lying ranks as a top-ten sin, showing its select place as a more blameworthy subset of gossip more generally.
 
It’s clear even from a secularly ethical standpoint that slander is blameworthy. One’s good name is an essential part of his social identity — to sully someone’s name without giving him the opportunity to defend himself could be a violation of his sovereignty, just as scarring as a physical violation of his person. Both will cause pain and impair the victim’s ability to function successfully in the world.
 
We’ve institutionalized this idea in the law by requiring that defendants in civil and criminal trials be able to face their accusers (or, as the sixth amendment reads, the right
“to be confronted with the witnesses against him”). And we see it in reality shows every day when Hannah or Sheena demand that if you have something to say about them, you should say it to their face.
 
From an evolutionary standpoint, scientists have highlighted the importance of reputation for group cooperation. From a Times article describing Harvard studies of cooperation:
 
“People who gain a reputation for not cooperating tend to be shunned or punished by other players. Cooperative players get rewarded.”
 
We’ve evolved to help each other out rather than to only fend for ourselves — cooperation is essential to building complex societies; we can achieve more collectively than we ever could each on his own. And when working collectively, we need mechanisms to demonstrate to the community that we will not screw others over for personal gain when given the opportunity. It’s dangerous to have bad things said about you behind your back.

 
The Instrumental Importance of Gossip
 
 So, slandering someone’s reputation, lying about them, or generally charging them with fault without giving them the opportunity for rebuttal is bad — atonement-worthy. But, as I said above, slander is just a small slice of gossip. When my friends and I talk about a third party, we’re not spreading lies — we’re doing analysis. What do we think of this person? Are our judgments just? Why does he behave in a certain way? How should he behave?
 
In a sense, exchanging ideas about a person is the way we determine whether our personal conceptions about him or her hold up to scrutiny. It makes me think of a wonderful Louise Glück poem called “Birthday.” The key stanza reads:

That is the problem of silence:
one cannot test one’s ideas.
Because they are not ideas, they are the truth.

When we don’t share our ideas about people with others, when we keep our conceptions and judgments to ourselves, they are untested — we have to gossip to know whether or not to revise our opinions and to reach better ones.
 
Think of Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice. Gossip is instrumental in Elizabeth’s learning more about why Darcy behaves with such stoic coldness, and in her discovering why Wickham’s ostensible charm is not proof of an unblemished character.
 
Think also of Jürgen Habermas’s theory of communicative action. Habermas argues that the public sphere — where we discuss ideas and challenge each other’s ethical and political views — is essential to the maintenance of a successful society, because the testing of one paradigm against others (through communication) is how those paradigms are refined and brought closer to the truth.
 
If I have one opinion about X based on my interactions with her, and my friends A, B, an C have other opinions about X — each, of course, influenced by A, B, and C’s own prejudices and epistemological immodesties — coming together around a coffee shop table and talking about X is how we realize that our individual opinions are not monolithic.
 
Discussing this question earlier today with my good friend Kara, I was struck by a good point she made: usually, when we’re talking about X, we’re not just talking about X — we’re talking about our relationships with X. Whether X is a friend, family member, or significant other, we are implicated in this relationship ourselves. Isn’t it unreasonable to expect us not to openly discuss relationships of which we are a part? Are we violating X’s right to privacy in doing so?

And this begs the question, is talking about X a violation of his or her right to privacy? Or some other right? Let’s say John is talking to his friend Tom about his other friend Mary. Mary overhears and becomes offended — does she have grounding to be? Yes, Mary is being discussed behind her back, but in essence John is seeking advice from Tom about his own life, and naturally his life is bound up in his relationships with people like Mary.
 

 Gossip and Etiquette
 
Let’s step back from ethics. Is it rude to talk about someone, i.e. Mary, behind her back?
 
Etiquette, like religion, is more inclusive of wrongdoing than is a humanist ethics. It’s rude to ask an acquaintance his salary, but it’s not a moral wrong. It might be rude not to send a thank-you note after receiving a gift, but it’s not grounds for sanction.
 
The function of etiquette is indeed to avoid making other people feel uncomfortable. Though we lack a moral obligation to prevent discomfort — such an obligation would be impossible to uphold and would be unfairly contingent on each person’s idiosyncrasies of sensitivity — it’s nice and socially lubricating to prevent discomfort and to show each other respect, thus not asking about salaries and sending thank-you notes.
 
Indeed, etiquette is not about what forks to use — it’s Hippocratic: First do no harm. A gentleman, as Cardinal Newman said, is one who never inflicts pain. And, as Slate’s review of Laura Claridge’s new Emily Post biography reminds us said, Emily Post “often said etiquette had much more to do with ‘instinctive considerations for the feelings of others’ than with using the right fork, and she herself was famous for putting her elbows on the table.”
  
But talking about a friend behind her back doesn’t inflict pain or hurt anyone’s feelings. Indeed, the problem with John being overheard by Mary is not the speech — it’s the being heard. Being aware of being talked about makes Mary uncomfortable. It’s not ungentlemanly to talk about someone behind her back; it’s ungentlemanly to get caught.
 
Yes, it’s unpleasant to think of your friends or girlfriends/boyfriends talking about you behind your back, but can you blame them? Do you want them to leave their own lives unexamined? The unexamined life, we know, is not worth living.
 
Still, it’s a foggy question that leaves us ambivalent. Kathy Griffin says she’s uncomfortable when the subjects of her comedy tell her to say it to their faces. “I was raised right,” she says. “I talk about people behind their back. It’s called manners.” We laugh because we think she’s copping out, but a deeper analysis suggests that maybe she was raised right after all.