Monday 9 November 2015

Is that all you know about "living", to talk behind others?

In informal conversations when the subject of talking about others arise, a lot of people quote Roosevelt when he said : "Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people."  

I was dealing with the idea for few months, examining the possible reasons that a person or a group of people (regardless of their gender) tend to make stories about someone behind her/his back. It seems like that defaming, verbally abusing and badmouthing a person is interesting to some people even in the second half of the 21st century. 

There is a long history of slander making, gossiping and creating rumors behind people's back in modern societies (Rosnow, 2001; Sharpe, 1980; Zhu, Zhi, 2012). These studies explain that there are multiple reasons that lead to creating rumors. Jealousy, lack of self confidence, having distrust of others, dissatisfaction of life are possible reasons that some people create rumors behind some others who are absent. 

Some of these researchers focused on different feelings people have when encountering others. For example Clanton (2015) examines jealousy and its origins in modern people's lives that is highly related to lack of confidence in oneself or low self esteem.  This low self esteem and lack of confidence can be one of the  most common reasons for starting a rumor or badmouthing some one behind his back. The low self esteem might be related to financial situation, social status, or simply being uncertain about who they are.  Sometimes a person is just jealous of you because you put in action your abilities and they simply don't. The jealousy is also triggered when a person is extremely unhappy for what ever reason and he/she sees his/her friends and acquaintances who are happy with what they have and are happy regardless of the difficulties of the everyday life. Sometimes being too happy might make people jealous of you. 

When a rumor and a false story about an absent person spreads, there are plenty of reasons creating it. Sometimes a misunderstanding between two or more people begins a story that might end well if all the people involve try to fix it by honestly talking to each other. But when the distrust exists between them, it doesn't matter whose privacy is invaded and ignored, a story is made based on some facts and true things about the absent person and it becomes a huge pain to everyone. 
This will lead other people to the picture who are not even slightly related to the problem.

Thus a huge mess made by some people who has been hurt from a misunderstanding and some other who are not even related to the matter (but they seem to enjoy the fights and struggles of others and sometimes they even add more false stories to the whole mess). 

A set of misunderstandings, distrust and jealousy shape a false story and the sick minds of some other people out of the problem who just enjoy making people fight, would create a rumor behind someone who is not even there to speak for her/him self. To my understanding thes is the most unethical and inhuman thing that anyone of us can possibly do to other peoples' lives.

What ever the origin of the madness is, it seriously needs to be stopped. 

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