Gossip

The most elemental reason for gossip: false witness comes naturally out of the depraved human heart. Gossip undoubtedly destroys friendships, marriages, business partnerships and sometimes causes people to kill themselves and others. But much of the time, the damage that is blamed on gossip more rightly belongs on people who have acted badly. Such people will blame gossip for holding them morally accountable for their behavior. If a man cheats on his wife, sometimes it is wrong to gossip about it and sometimes it is right. It depends on the circumstance. Sometimes it would be better for the wife to be informed and sometimes it would not. Gossip is as bad as water. Sometimes water can save a life and sometimes water can kill. While gossip forms one of the oldest and 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. We gossip, too, inasmuch as we are vindictive cowards who want to hurt someone without being held accountable for our assault. If we walked up to the person we wish to hurt and punched the person in the face, we'd be in jail for assault. Then how to assault without having to account for it? Then we Gossip. Gossip is the signature of the person who is vindictive and cowardly in equal measure. Some people commonly understand gossip as meaning the spreading of dirt and misinformation, as for example through excited discussion of scandals. Gossip is evil, and because of the corruption of the fallen human heart, it is a constant problem. A lot of what comes down the pike is downright false. And then there's the "telephone effect." Remember the children's game, telephone? You whisper something to the person next to you and then he or she whispers what he or she thinks you said to the next person, and so on. Then the last person in the chain says it aloud. The first person in the chain then repeats the original sentence which of course is quite different. If you had a great success at work or worked hard on a project, this is information you want to share. You never know who it'll reach. If someone has done something to irk you, you might consider mentioning this to someone who's likely to share it. Of course it's