Why are you looking at me that way? Haven't you ever met a man named "Hilaire"?

I’ve just finished reading Hilaire Belloc’s The Servile State. His main argument is that Capitalism is an unstable economic structure which must, sooner or later, settle into a more stable economic structure. The two possibilities for stable structures are slavery and property, and the one we are rapidly descending toward is slavery.

I’m not 100% on board with his argument on the necessary development of capitalism, but I find that anyone who tries to predict the future is very lucky to get even one thing right, and he does a great job of describing the development of such systems as minimum wages, social security, and some dynamics between “labor” and “capital” that had not yet begun in 1912 when he published his book.

The very best part of the book is the beginning where Belloc defines his terms. And the best distinction he makes, or the one most eye-opening to me anyway, is the distinction between political and economic freedom.

Political and economic freedom

Political freedom is what we usually mean when we talk about, well, freedom in the political realm. It’s the freedom to take part in government. It includes such things as freedom of speech, some sort of franchise such as the ability to vote or to serve in public office, and freedom to bring one’s case to court for a fair trial.

Economic freedom is the ability to buy or sell without constraint. This includes both buying and selling products and services, so it includes selling one’s labor. That is, it includes the freedom to hire oneself out – or to not hire oneself out.

Now, the freedom to not hire yourself out depends on the ability to go into business for yourself. That is to say, you have to possess the means to produce some good or provide some service directly, on your own behalf, rather than contributing to someone else’s products or services. As Belloc puts it, you must have either land or capital or both.

If you have land, you can plant your own crops and feed yourself, theoretically, without dependence on anyone else. If everybody did this we would lose most of what we call “civilization,” but we would certainly not have to worry about unemployment or political strife.

If you have tools – and today, tools could include anything from your own forge, hammer, and anvil to your own computer and printer – you are able, theoretically, to produce good products for your own use or for sale, again without dependence on anybody else.

If you lack land or capital, that is, if you lack the means to produce goods, then you lack economic freedom. “Wage slavery” is more than a catchy phrase: it describes your actual condition. You are not free to withhold your labor from another or to use it according to your own judgment.

Capitalism, according to Belloc

Now, by Belloc’s definition, “Capitalism” is that state of affairs where a few members of society own most of the means of production, and a large portion of society are dispossessed of the means of production and therefore must hire themselves to the owners. This would seem to be a fair description of America at the beginning of the 21st century: most of us work for a company or corporation, and the assumption is that you will earn your bread as an employee rather than as an independent producer.

That is why the political mantra has been “Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!” rather than “Work! Work! Work!” We are assuming that we need somebody to hire and pay us for our labor, because our labor is about the only thing we have to sell.

Now, I don’t think that Belloc is saying that hiring oneself out to another is necessarily a bad thing – so long as you are free to choose whether and to whom you hire yourself. And one of the many problems with our economic system is that people are reduced to saying, “I’ll take any job I can get.” We are forced to place ourselves on the auction block and beg people to bid on us. We could almost be called “productivity prostitutes” as much as “wage slaves.”

The solution that brings human freedom, usually called distributism, is for more people to own their own means of production. That is, that you have something to contribute to society, by which you can put food on your own table and clothes on your own children, without being forced to work for somebody else. This would be a world full of entrepreneurs and small-business owners. Belloc notes that, until the sixteenth century, most of Europe was structured this way; but that world is nearly lost.

I don’t see things as quite so desperate as does Belloc. For example, many people are responding to the current economic crisis by starting their own business, by re-acquiring their own means of production. But it’s true that this is still a small movement in a very large society. And it will be quite an uphill battle to move from our current system to one where most people are free to work for themselves if they should so choose.

I’m still thinking about what practical steps to take, but I’m increasingly convinced by the distributist ideal. At the very least, it seems to be an attempt to see government and the market at the service of the human person, rather than the other way around.

I’m worried about an FBI team who contacts an isolated individual who’s failing to make contact with jihadist radicals, teaches him how to make a bomb, helps him to plan and carry out an attack, and chooses a large and public venue to arrest him.

I’m worried about an Attorney General who claims “that if Mohamud hadn’t come in contact with the FBI, he ‘would have made his plans tragically real.’”

And I’m worried about mass media outlets that just repeat the line that this is a plot that has been “thwarted” or “foiled.”

For the record, it sounds to me like this Mohamud fellow may actually have become a threat on his own someday. He very well may have warranted observation by the FBI. But the way the Bureau pursued this investigation sounds very much like entrapment for Mohamud and fear-mongering for the rest of us.

“Look!” says the FBI & co., “here’s a home-grown terrorist you should be afraid of! It could be anybody! What’s a little inappropriate pat-down compared to the risk of being bombed while lighting a Christmas Tree? What’s a little warrantless wiretapping or email surveillance next to, you know, a west coast 9-11?”

What would have been wrong with just watching this kid, and seeing what he does on his own? At least then, he might have actually led investigators to a real terrorist cell, and could have led to some genuine intelligence of real plots to commit terrorist acts. And, when arrested, he might have been guilty of a real crime.

As it is, he’s just become the solitary target of an FBI plot to … to what? boost their own ratings? I hope not. To foil and thwart terrorist attacks? Not very effectively.

I want good security and I want active intelligence gathering on terrorist activities. But that’s not what this was. At best, this was a colossal mistake. If anyone in the FBI is reading this, please, don’t make the same mistake again.

My mother, drunk or sober

Here in Washington State, we have a “Find Your Legislator” feature on the website, as well as contact info for our elected officials. I happen to live in north Seattle, which is Washington’s 46th Legislative District (for state offices) and 7th Congressional District (for federal offices). That means the people I’ll be looking up are:

• U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell
• U.S. Senator Patty Murray
• U.S. Representative Jim McDermott
• U.S. President Barack Obama
• Washington Senator Scott White
• Washington Representative David Frockt
• Washington Representative Phyllis Gutierrez Kenney
• Washington Governor Christine Gregoire

These are all Democrats, so I expect most of my comments will end up directed toward the Democratic Party’s platform. I expect to have plenty of criticism, both of the party and of these individuals’ particular votes and speeches. However, I hope that it is clear that my being against (or for) something held by Democrats is not to be taken as being for (or against) anything held by Republicans. I have seen plenty of reprehensible behavior from members of both major parties, and I do hope to discover at least some noble behavior from my own elected officials. I hope to have my native cynicism about politics softened by real encounters with real public officials.

I plan to post my letters here on the blog. Should I receive responses to my letters, I will post them in their entirety. I hope it will encourage others to also write regularly to their elected officials. If you like what I say, or how I say it, feel free to copy any of my language and use it in your own letters. If you think I’m off base, don’t hesitate to tell me so. A democratic republic requires open and lively dialogue to remain free and true to itself.

More than that, I hope that doing a little research every week will build a solid foundation of knowledge for being a better citizen. Then, when the next election comes around in a couple years, I won’t have to scramble so much to figure out who and what to vote for.

You've got to love a man who loves his mother

So, as I mentioned in the comments below, I’m an economic and political ignoramus, and I’m essentially live-blogging my self-education. So, of course, Adam Smith’s classic The Wealth of Nations is on my reading list; I’m working through it now.

Now, I’ve been told that Smith isn’t quite the die-hard laissez faire 100% regulation free super-capitalist my mother warned me about. I’m advised that he’s quite a moral guy, and sees an important role for government regulation in the marketplace, but that those parts come later in the book. I’m happy to keep reading.

But there are a few major red flags popping up in the first few chapters, and I thought I’d mention them because they all have one thing in common: they put things ahead of people.

Unwarranted assumptions

Smith makes a number of assertions at the beginning of his work, assertions that have been taken for granted by pretty much all economists since. The first of them is that labor is the source of wealth.

Now, there is no denying that labor is one of the sources of wealth; but Smith treats it as if it is the sole and entire source of wealth. He claims that “The abundance or scantiness of this supply [of goods], too, seems to depend” on the productivity of the laborers. While it is true that there is no wealth without labor, it is equally true that labor must have some thing to labor upon to generate a valuable product. Wealth, or value, is not disconnected from the real stuff of the world; it is not created ex nihilo.

He then demonstrates by multiple examples how a division of labor leads to an increase in productivity. This gives him opportunity to reveal a couple other assumptions that disturb me. Consider the following sentence:

First, the improvement of the dexterity of the workman necessarily increases the quantity of work he can perform; and the division of labour, by reducing every man’s business to some one simple operation, and by making this operation the sole employment of his life, necessarily increases very much the dexterity of the workman.

Now, I’m a homebody: I don’t get out much and am perfectly happy to ignore the parts of the world I’m not too interested in. This is not one of my virtues. But even left to my vicious insularity, I want something more than “one simple operation” to fill up the “employment of my life.” I have no desire to be “reduced” to such mechanical production.

More than that, I find Smith has a very low opinion of work. He separates work entirely from leisure and sets the two in utter mortal enmity with each other. For Smith, labor is something to be exchanged rather begrudgingly for the “necessaries, conveniences, and amusements of human life.” Its value is only in that I’d rather not do it, and will pay money to have somebody else do it for me. In other words, there’s no possibility that I might have a life’s work, some labor of love to which I dedicate myself and which gives meaning and value to my days.

Yet another assertion:

As it is the power of exchanging that gives occasion to the division of labour, so the extent of this division must always be limited by the extent of that power, or, in other words, by the extent of the market.

I have trouble with the ideas that the “power of exchanging” is an equivalent phrase to “the extent of the market.” I think there is a great deal more involved with the “power of exchanging” than simply how many people are interested in making exchanges, or even how many different kinds of exchanges there can be. For example, the power to exchange is limited also by what I have that I am willing or able to exchange, and by my responsibilities to my family and community.

It’s not all bad

It’s easy to be critical, and I don’t have a better theory of economics to propose – not yet, at least. As I said, I’m still educating myself. But I wanted to note an excellent distinction Smith makes, which is easy to forget or overlook.

The word value, it is to be observed, has two different meanings, and sometimes expresses the utility of some particular object, and sometimes the power of purchasing other goods which the possession of that object conveys. The one may be called “value in use;” the other, “value in exchange.”

It seems to me that many problems arise because we confuse these two distinct kinds of value, or because we treat “exchange value” as the real value of a thing, when it is largely dependent on “use value.”

More thoughts to come, as I continue reading. If you have any insights or recommendations, I heartily welcome them!

For me? Aw, you shouldn't have!

I had one of those “a-ha” moments over the weekend. I was thinking about words, as I often do, and I was trying to find a way to articulate the difference between recognizing life (or a friend or a privilege or whatever) as a gift and taking life for granted. And I realized, the phrases look roughly identical.

A grant, after all, is a kind of gift. It is something given to me by someone else.

So I started exploring whether there are any words we use for that sense of entitlement we call “taking something for granted” that don’t in fact refer to receiving something from someone else. Even the word “entitlement” refers to the granting of “title” or ownership of something by whomever has the authority to give it. The only words I could think of are words like “possession” or “ownership”, which really don’t convey the kind of presumptuous attitude I’m trying to describe.

Maybe presumption is itself the word I’m looking for. It literally means “taking something before,” that is, before it is given. It is taking something as if it had been granted, even when it has not. And that’s where the problematic attitude lies: it’s a lack of recognition that something is genuinely a gift. It’s the idea that I am completely and independently capable of getting everything I want or need entirely on my own without any help from anyone else ever. Ultimately, that attitude is founded on falsehood.

Gratitude: recognition of my need for others

I’m concerned about this attitude because it’s one I struggle with all the time myself. I remember as a child needing to be told to say “thank you” at Christmas or on my birthday, and thinking that I didn’t really feel grateful. I felt like I deserved the toys, or maybe even deserved better loot than I’d got. So I went through the motions and held onto presumption in my heart.

But that led me to a bitter and lonely place. I alienated many of my friends. And then something rather odd happened: when a friend did show a kindness to me, even a tiny one, I found myself utterly overwhelmed with gratitude far out of proportion to their act. It was as if all that repressed recognition of others’ gifts to me came bursting out at once. So then I had friends saying, “Enough thank yous, already! It was really nothing!”

Well, it wasn’t nothing. But it also wasn’t the thing I was most grateful for: I was most grateful for the ability to acknowledge my dependence on other people.

My illusion of fierce independence had been (and still is, in parts of my life) a kind of cage that kept me from the real world as it actually is, and from connecting to the real people who live in it. So finding a way to relate – simply by acknowledging the relationship – was a tremendous good that I could never have simply acquired for myself. I am glad my mother taught me how to say “thank you” all those years ago.

Gratitude and justice

It’s interesting that Thomas Aquinas lists gratitude as part of the virtue of justice, while generosity or giving gifts is part of the virtue of charity or love. That is, even though gifts are given freely, the acknowledgment of the gift is something owed by duty.

At first, this seems odd, and a little bit like extortion. But my own experience shows me why it’s a matter of justice. To refuse to acknowledge the gift and the giver is to deny the reality that I have received something I could not have without that other person.

I could not have received life without my parents. I could not have received friendship without my friends. Even in relationships where there is a “business” aspect, there also is a gift; I could not have received my education without my teachers’ willingness to give what they also had received. Gratitude, giving thanks for what has been granted, is simply a matter of seeing reality for what it is.

For the record, I’m very much of the “Subsidiarity means the right action taken by the right authority as close to the problem as possible” school. I think the “Subsidiarity = smaller government, but bigger private enterprise is okay” school misses the point. The point is, subsidiarity is a principle that guards against any kind of collectivization – public or private – in order to keep the focus of society where it belongs: on actual human beings.

I’ve mentioned before some of the principles I wish were more prevalent in political conversation. Here’s the list again, for those who hate clicking on links:

• Common good
• Subsidiarity
• Interdependence, aka, Solidarity

Many more good things worth talking about certainly belong on the list, but this is as far as I’ve gotten in trying to articulate some essential political principles.

However, while I generally like to focus on the positive, it’s important to recognize the genuine evils out there which undermine any possibility of real human life, liberty, and community.

Recognizing evil

A quick reminder: evil is not any thing in itself. Evil is the distortion or destruction of something good. So when my anger starts rising up, I have to remind myself to look for the good that’s being distorted. I have to remind myself that whoever is committing or supporting evil is actually trying to accomplish something good, albeit in a twisted way.

In other words, if there’s a way to achieve the good without distortion, then I have made my enemy into my friend.

A good thing, like a virtue, can be distorted in at least two ways: too much (excess) or too little (defect). There may be other dimensions of distortion out there, but I’m not wise enough to talk about the much. In any case, a good always falls into the category of evil if either A) there’s just not enough to actually be the good it’s trying to be, or B) it so overextends itself that it ceases to actually be that good thing.

An example: the dignity of the human person is perhaps the fundamental good that government exists to protect.

It is evil when the government fails to actually protect that good, in cases like physician assisted suicide or unjust war, or even in less clear cases like lack of enforcement of environmental or food health regulations.

It is also evil when the government extends the protections of human dignity beyond the human person, for example giving corporations “rights” under the First and Fourteenth Amendments, or giving teachers greater rights than parents over the education of children.

Support an imperfect good, but never support evil

Now, no law is perfect, just as no individual person is perfect. We all make mistakes. We disagree about what the best course of action is.

Thomas Aquinas notes that the moral obligation is to seek the good, not necessarily to seek the best. The best isn’t always possible, and the best isn’t always clear. But it usually is clear when a good is so minimized or so distorted that it ceases to be good anymore.

My friend Mark notes that “10% less evil than the other leading party” is still evil, and therefore not worthy of a vote or any other form of support. He writes in a candidate if both the major party candidates take positions in support of some evil: for example, a Democrat may support unlimited access to abortion while the Republican opponent may support the torture of prisoners. Both positions are distorted at their core: they reject the good of human dignity in favor of some lesser or dependent good – say, convenience or security; so these core distortions are called “intrinsic evils”. Therefore, he won’t consider voting for either of those candidates, and will seek someone who at least does not support some intrinsic evil, even if there’s not much else to agree on.

It’s the least we can ask of our public officials, that they do not promote anything intrinsically evil.

My evil list of evil

I’m putting out here a list of things that are absolute deal-breakers for me. These are things so obviously and intrinsically evil that, if a politician is in favor of them – or even not opposed to them – I cannot in good conscience lend them any support. Sadly, this leaves me with almost nobody in the major parties today that I can vote for. Like Mark, I fear I’ll be writing in most of the candidates I’m voting for this election.

• Abortion – it’s murder, and I can’t condone it; this includes IVF, and any research that takes a human life
• Physician-assisted suicide, aka, euthanasia – again, murder is unjustifiable, for any reason
• Unjust war – I follow the basic criteria laid out by Thomas Aquinas and others; the Iraq invasion was manifestly unjust; the current Afghanistan situation has only the slenderest chance of meeting Just War criteria
• Torture – they’re human beings, even if they’re our enemies

Again, this list is incomplete, but it’s as far as I’ve sorted out at this time. Feel free to add your own thoughts in the comments.

Classical virtue - very classy

I was talking with a friend this weekend, and she said that she was a little confused when she first visited my blog because it wasn’t clear what kind of virtue I was talking about. So I took another look at the page, and I realize that the words “classical” and “cardinal” are entirely missing from the page.

I’ll rectify that soon, but in the meantime I realized that it never hurts to take another look at the big picture.

The classical virtues

The main reason I’m writing this blog is as a kind of public self-improvement exercise. I’ve found that the classical philosophy of virtue describes my strengths, my faults, and my potential. It also gives a very practical structure to work on overcoming my weaknesses and to work toward my potential.

These virtues are traditionally grouped under the four “cardinal” virtues and the three “theological” virtues:

• Cardinal virtues
  • Prudence, AKA Wisdom
  • Justice
  • Fortitude, AKA Courage
  • Temperance, AKA Self-control
• Theological virtues
  • Faith
  • Hope
  • Charity, AKA Love

Each of these virtues describes a different way to achieve a certain excellence or fulfillment of human life. They are ways to become more human, and more humane.

Habits of life

A virtue is a habit of life, that is, it is an inclination to live and act easily and effectively. It’s not a “natural” inclination, in that no one is born with it. We acquire the virtues, mainly by practicing the kinds of actions associated with them. For example, I develop an inclination to courage by taking standing fast in the face of danger and difficulty, even when I am terrified; as I grow in courage, I find that facing danger is easier and less intimidating – if not actually less frightening. I grow in both confidence and ability.

On the other hand, a virtue is exactly a “natural” habit because it is fulfills my nature as a human person. It is part of human nature to grow, to develop, to learn, to interact with other people, and so on. Virtues are the habits of living a fully human life: wisely, justly, lovingly. Practicing virtue helps me to become more myself.

It is something like the habit of playing a musical instrument: at first, the actions don’t feel natural; but with practice, they become a kind of “second-nature”. Playing music becomes easy and enjoyable. Virtues are habits that apply, not just to a single activity like music, but to every aspect of life.

Vice

A vice is essentially a bad habit: it is an inclination to act less than human, or even contrary to human nature. We all have them. My own main vice (as far as I can tell) is sloth: I’m lazy, and I also tend to be skeptical about whether something is worth doing. It takes a lot to get me moving. This means that I spend a lot of time and energy complaining or looking for escapist entertainment rather than actually facing reality or doing something positive.

Generally speaking, every virtue has at least two vices: too much and too little. Taking courage as an example again, it’s possible to be too timid, or to be to rash. Courage is bold, but not brash; it’s cautious, but doesn’t hesitate.

Overcoming vice and growing in virtue go hand in hand.

That whole “theological” thing

The “cardinal” virtues were taken for granted by the ancient Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle, and it’s possible to find similar ideas in most ancient cultures. In the middle ages, Christian philosophers like Thomas Aquinas added three “theological” virtues mentioned in the Bible. These virtues are acquired, not only by practice, but by a gift from God.

I include them in this blog, not because I want to push a Christian agenda, but because I think there is a natural aspect to these virtues that fills out the cardinal virtues. Love resolves the conflict between justice and mercy, hope gives purpose to courage and temperane, faith extends rational prudence into deep relationships.

That said, I’m a practicing Catholic myself, and many of the people I read approach these virtues from a Christian point of view. It would be silly to try to hide that. My goal, though, is to propose rather than to impose, to share the wisdom I’m learning without expecting it to be the final word.

Land of the free? Home of the brave?

I’m trying to figure out who and what to vote for this November. I’m nowhere near being able to recommend particular candidates or ballot measures to other people, but I am getting closer to articulating some basic principles for making political decisions.

It seems to me that the American government has, for quite some time, been doing all sorts of things that a government has no business doing; meanwhile, it has neglected the very proper and necessary work of governing.

The purpose of government

It seems to me that government exists to defend and promote the common good of society.

What do I mean by “the common good”? I mean things that we all hold in common, things that belong to all of us and that cannot really belong to any of us except as a society. The common good involves symbols, such as standards of weights and measures, or the definition of money; it involves matters of law and morality, such as civil rights and justice; in a very few cases, it appears to involve physical goods, such as air or water – though I think what really is common in these things is our access, rather than the actual molecules or matter at hand. None of us “possesses” these things alone; we all possess them insofar as we are human, insofar as we are untied in a social community.

The government – any government, whether by king or by congress – exists to ensure that each individual continues to possess these common goods in the context of the community. A government which fails to protect and promote the common good fails in its fundamental task and in its very reason for existing.

Now, our current approach to government in the U.S.A. has lost sight of this basic mission. It still functions, and occasionally functions very well, but the idea of the common good seems to have been replaced by constituent interest, and the role of guaranteeing justice seems to have fallen to the zeal of promoting ideology.

The question at the front of most candidates minds appears to be, “How can I allocate resources to my constituents,” and by “constituents” they mean their contributors and supporters. This seems to me to be exactly backwards. Rather than an impartial administration, they are explicitly partial. Rather than pursuing the common good of the whole society, they chase after the particular good of the few who contribute to their campaigns.

What is to be done?

This is a problem endemic to both major parties, so far as I can tell. The Tea Party movement seems to have given focus to a great deal of the anger and frustration people feel, but seems much more of a negative movement – saying what they don’t like – rather than a positive movement – saying what can be done.

I can sympathize. It’s not hard to spot a problem, but it’s often very hard to solve it. And often I don’t know if my solution will work till I try it out. Sometimes, my solution just makes the problem worse, despite my best efforts.

I’ve noted in a previous post that the idea of subsidiarity is part of the solution. That is, working with problems at the local level where the problem exists, with higher level organization acting as support for the local problem-solvers. This is a principle I think should be applied both in business and government.

I’m also reading up on Distributism, which proposes to avoid the centralizing and collectivizing tendencies of both the “right” and the “left”: it proposes that the independent ownership of property – especially ownership of productive property, like farmland or construction tools or other objects that allow a person to make or trade goods – is essential both to a healthy economy and a democratic government.

I find the Distributist argument to be compelling in many ways. But it seems to me, essentially, to be an economic system rather than a political system. In other words, something more than independent ownership of property is needed to reform our government.

The principle I think is missing is interdependence, or solidarity. This, it seems to me, is the proper goal of government: to promote a society in which each citizen recognizes his or her unique place in the whole. This is an organic vision, not a mechanical one: citizens are not cogs in a machine; they are not interchangeable. Rather, each has an irreplaceable contribution to make to the world, and the role of a government is to remove the obstacles and protect the forum for each to give his or her gift.

I’m still far too vague about what this would look like, practically – to say nothing of how to get from here to there. But I would like to start talking about the following three principles, at the very least:

• Common Good
• Subsidiarity
• Interdependence

Gossip is for the birds

The Harvard Business Review interviews Professor Joe Labianca about a study in which he found that gossip was neither counterproductive nor unprofessional.

This goes against conventional wisdom, and a number of managers have commented that the study is bosh. But it’s always good to give someone the benefit of the doubt till you know all the facts. So the first thing to ask is, what was the gossip they were looking at? How did they define it?

Prof. Labianca says:

Gossip is merely the exchange of information between two people about a third, absent person.

Now, given that definition, I can understand how he came to his findings. I doubt there are very many conversations that don’t, at some point, involve some absent person. I wonder if he included performance review discussions or anything said in the HR department as “gossip?”

In fact, what Prof. Labianca is talking about is a form of social networking (to use contemporary jargon), though he certainly will get more attention for calling it gossip. His findings indicate that people who engage in this sort of interaction are perceived as more influential, and also have a greater understanding of the social dynamics in the workplace. This seems to me about the same as saying that people who drink water quench their thirst.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing. After all, one of the great benefits of science is that it allows us a way to question conventional wisdom, to challenge our assumptions, and therefore to get at the truth.

My only problem, really, is with the word “gossip” being used to describe this broad area of interactions.

The dirt on gossip

Words do matter. “Gossip” – a wonderful Old English word that comes from the word for a godparent – has held the meaning of idle or frivolous talk since the sixteenth century, and specifically the meaning of baseless rumor since 1811. It is that “baseless rumor” sense that gives the word a negative connotation, and rightly so. Spreading rumors about others is an attack on their dignity, and is simply unjust.

In other words, gossip is always “unprofessional” because the distinguishing feature is injustice. What turns a conversation from “sharing” to “gossip” is when someone tells some unfounded opinion or story about someone else. The basis of gossip is exactly prejudice, judging a person before (pre-) knowing the truth about them.

Is gossip good?

Even so, it would not surprise me that people who engage in gossip – even according to my more restricted definition – are seen as more influential, or that they have a better sense of the social dynamics of the workplace. They may, in a strictly economic sense, be more efficient workers.

Why? Because their focus is on the various relationships in the workplace. They may be speculating without basis, but the very fact that they spend time thinking such things through gives them an insight into what’s going on. It also gives other people the impression that they know what’s going on, and therefore have greater influence.

But this insight and influence, even if it is genuine, comes at the cost of their humanity. It requires a basic disrespect for the reputation and dignity of whomever they are gossiping about. In the long term, the attempt to make connections by gossiping actually leads to an inability to relate honestly with other people.

In short, even the claim of efficiency is groundless. Gossip simply is a bad habit, a vice. And the solution is to practice treating other people with greater respect and honor, just as you would want them to treat you.