I recently was invited to an aquaintances house for a girls day. This person said to me, when she called with the invitation, "Im having some people over and really want you to be there." That was it...no details about what we would be doing, even when asked. When some one presents you with an invitation of this kind be wary, their is a hidden agenda. I was excited, even though the invitation was vague. I havn't socialized with this person in months. So with happy anticipation I cleared my calander and made arrangements to drive, with another friend who was invited, 30 miles to this persons home. Upon arrival, surprise surprise, I was greeted with not one, but two people setting up for demonstations to sell things. I was disappointed, and probably should have left immediateley, but decided to make the best of the day. Free food and drink, new people to meet, it would be fine. All in all, dispite the distortion of what would actually be taking place that day, I had a good time and did meet a couple of interesting people who inhanced my life and I had a learning opportunity. On top of this person misleading me, I was also confronted with another social situation which got me to thinking.
While sitting in the kitchen and listening to a very nice woman talk about some great coffee I heard someone ask my aquaintance, while looking directly at me, "who is that?" This aquaintance started off politely saying my name. Then the woman asking whispered something, which they both laughed at, in a less than humorous way. Blah...While it doesn't bother me that they were more than likely saying somehting less than complimentary it does bother me that people seem to feel the need to behave this way? I mean why? What is the purpose? So, once again, I set out to answer my questons.
Gossip is to talk idly, especially about the affairs of others; to go about tattling. It is also light, familiar talk or writing; or a rumor. Tattle is to let out secrets. Secrets are done without the knowledge of others and should be kept by people who are considered to be faithful, or cautious, in keeping confidential matters. Finally, idle is not spent or filled with activity, it is doing nothing. Reading these deffinitions gossip should technically not be considered to be as damageing as it can be. It is practiced by people with nothing better to do and who are supposedly saying nothing of any real importance. So where does it go wrong?
It goes wrong when judgement is involved. Judgement is the ability to judge, make a decision, or form an opinion objectively, authoritatively, and wisely, especially in matters affecting action; good sense; and/or discretion. Aha! What if the gossiper has none of these? Better yet, what if the person on the recieving end of the gossip has none of these? Then the information being shared is percieved as biased and prejudiced. Someone has related information that is to cause partiality or favortism. The persons goal is to influence, selfishly and especially unfairly. They have perceived a difference. Perception is different from observation. Perception involves the senses. The senses can by altered and depending on what is altering them can become unreliable. Observation is watching someone or something. I don't think that either of these can work alone. Observation alone takes out individuality; and perception alone ends up not being factual.
I observed someone say my name, a whisper, than laughter of an unhumorous kind. The perception I held was that, for what ever reason, this stranger felt the need to say something derogratory about me. I sensed that, some how, I was a threat. I observed the looks on their faces, the rolling of eyes and the smirks. I could have reacted, I choose not to. I did not percieve this as a threat, only a nuisance. It gave me no feelings of anger or anxiety, only sorrow and pity. This party crasher did not and still doesn't know me. Because of my perception and observation the chances of myself having her get to know me, in the future, is slim to none. Worse yet, and saddly so, because of my aquaintances interaction in the whole thing she will never be anything more than an aquaintance.
The following is an article written on gossip that I think explains what I am trying to get across.
Facts Prove No Match for Gossip, It Seems
But now I wonder if we’ve leaped too far, and it’s not because I’ve been watching “Gossip Girl.” In a paper on gossip published yesterday, evolutionary biologists in Germany and Austria have identified a vulnerability that might be called the Chico Marx Paradox, for reasons that will be clear once you hear about this experiment.
The researchers set out to test the power of gossip, which has been exalted by theorists in recent decades. Language, according to the anthropologist Robin Dunbar, evolved because gossip is a more efficient version of the “social grooming” essential for animals to live in groups.
Apes and other creatures solidify their social bonds by cleaning and stroking one another, but the size of the group is limited because there’s not enough time in the day to groom a large number of animals.
Speech enabled humans to bond with lots of people while going about their hunting and gathering. Instead of spending hours untangling hair, they could bond with friendly conversation (“Your hair looks so unmatted today!”) or by picking apart someone else’s behavior (“Yeah, he was supposed to share the wildebeest, but I heard he kept both haunches”).
Gossip also told people whom to trust, and the prospect of a bad reputation discouraged them from acting selfishly, so large groups could peacefully cooperate. At least, that was the theory: gossip promoted the “indirect reciprocity” that made human society possible.
To test it, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology and the University of Vienna gave 10 Euros apiece to 126 students and had them play a game that put them in a dilemma. On each turn, the players would be paired off, and one of them was offered a chance to give 1.25 Euros to the other. If he agreed, the researchers added a bonus of .75 Euro so that the recipient ended up gaining 2 Euros.
If the first player refused to give the money, he’d save 1.25 Euros, but if others found out about his miserliness they might later withhold money from him. As the game progressed, with the players changing partners frequently and alternating between the donor and recipient roles, the players were given information about their partners’ past decisions.
Sometimes the donor was shown a record of what the partner had done previously while playing the donor role. The more generous this partner had earlier been toward other players, the more likely the donor was to give him something.
Sometimes the donor was shown gossip about the partner from another player. When the partner was paid a compliment like “spendabler spieler!” — generous player! — the donor was more likely to give money. But the donor turned stingy when he saw gossip like “übler geizkragen” — nasty miser.
So far, so good. As predicted, gossip promoted indirect reciprocity. The research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showed that most people passed on accurate gossip and used it for the common good. They rewarded cooperative behavior even when they themselves weren’t directly affected by the behavior.
If a cooperation game like this was played without consequences for the players’ reputations — as has been done in other experiments — most players would be miserly, and cooperation would collapse. In this experiment they were generous most of the time, and on average ended up with twice as much money as they had at the beginning of the game.
But here’s the disconcerting news from the experiment. In a couple of rounds, each donor was given both hard facts and gossip. He was given a record of how his partner had behaved previously as well as some gossip — positive gossip in one round, negative in another.
The donor was told that the source of the gossip didn’t have any extra information beyond what the donor could already see for himself. Yet the gossip, whether positive or negative, still had a big influence on the donors’ decisions, and it didn’t even matter if the source of the gossip had a good reputation himself. On average, cooperation increased by about 20 percent if the gossip was good, and fell by 20 percent if the gossip was negative.
Now, you might think the gossip mattered just in borderline cases — when the partner had a mixed record of generosity, and the donor welcomed outside guidance in making a tough decision. But the gossip had an impact in other situations, too. Even when a player saw that his partner had a record of consistent meanness, he could be swayed by positive gossip to reward the partner anyway. Or withhold help from a perfectly nice partner just on the basis of malicious buzz.
This result may come as no shock to fans of “Gossip Girl,” or to publicists trying to plant items in Page Six about the charitable works of despicable clients. But it seemed surprising to the researchers, according to the lead author, Ralf D. Sommerfeld of the Max Planck Institute.
“If you know you already have the full information about someone,” he said, “rationally you shouldn’t care so much what someone else says.”
So why do we? “It could be,” he suggested, “that we are just more adapted to listen to other information than to observe people, because most of the time we’re not able to observe how other people are behaving. Thus we might believe we have missed something.”
This makes a certain sense, but I still wonder if evolution has taken a Chico Marxist turn here. In “Duck Soup,” Chico tries to pass himself off as Groucho’s character, complete with moustache and cigar, but encounters a skeptical Margaret Dumont, who protests that she just saw Groucho leave the room.
“Well, who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?” Chico asks.
Now, at last, we know the answer.
I could go into detail now about the many different cultures, faiths, and races attending this gathering. But the pith of the matter is that once upon a time a gathering of this sorts would never have taken place and how much progress we have actually made as a society and culture. I am always shocked and saddened when I am confronted with someone who carry's around anger, hostility, and disregard for other humans. I think it shows a basic disrespect for themselves and a underlying lack of self confidence. I am also going to restate by usual rant. How much better life would be if we all tried just a little bit harder to say nice things to each other.
Being kind to people has been proven to reduce stress. Being optimistic has been proven to reduce stress. Being non-judgemental; but more importantly not feeling judged, has been proven to reduce stress. Perhaps we should, along with being more kind to ourselves and each other, should also take time to observe each other. I go to the library twice a week. On one of these visits a young, heavy set man came up and started talking to me about movies. What kind did I like? What did I mean by old and how old? At first my normal reaction was to be cautious and standoffish. But then I stopped myself. I looked at this young man closly and looked him right in the eyes. I remembered that he had been talking to many library patrons. He usually hangs out by the movies. He never met my eyes, he was shy, but was kind. When I did look in his eyes, at the structure of his face, and payed closer attention to his speech and words; it was clear that his developmental age was not the same as his chronological age. I spent a half hour talking with this young man and he helped me pick out some great movies, including the Green Hornet series, which I would not have found if it had not been for him. I left the library feeling very destressed and I hoped he did too. Judgement, perception, observation.
Now, "who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?"
No comments:
Post a Comment