Gossip.
I recently visited Switzerland and caught-up with old friends and family.What do you do these days?, was a common question. As this blog takes up a lot of my spare time, I mentioned it as one of my activities. The next question was, why do you have a blog??
It forced me to think about it and to come up with an answer. Pondering over the reason of the Holland Blog's existence, I realized that blogs are a substitute for healthy gossip.
In the past the grapevine branched out through almost every social group and it functioned, in part, to keep politicians and people from straying too far outside of the community's rules, written and unwritten.
We lost that healthy gossip with our increasingly isolated way of living. The majority lost the connection to the community; they are no longer in the loop. Hence, our politicians can pursue their self-serving agendas and get away with their lies.
Studies show that lack of gossip puts a community at risk. “Gossip appears to be a very sophisticated, multifunctional interaction which is important in policing behaviors in a group and defining group membership,” said David Sloan Wilson, a professor of biology and anthropology at the State University of New York at Binghamton and the author of “Darwin's Cathedral,” a book on evolution and group behavior.
Today’s newspapers and some of the judges sitting on the bench these days are not of any help either.
The Holland Blog changed that in little ways by creating awareness about issues affecting everybody. There is an interest in getting the latest information; daily traffic to the Holland Blog proves it.
Be part of it, email me your story, or gossip, by leaving comments; I’m sure many out there have something to say...
Peter Frei
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