Gossiping is good

Gossip is casual or unconstrained conversation or reports about other people, typically involving details which are not confirmed as true. Gossip is also defined as the unsanctioned evaluative talk about people who aren’t present. We all enjoy the pleasures of talking about other people. Word on the street is that gossip is the worst. Gossip was once characterized as “the faceless demon that breaks hearts and ruins careers.” It was described as a “three-pronged tongue” that kills three people: the teller, the listener, and the person being gossiped about. An observation was that “if people really knew what others said about them, there would not be four friends left in the world.” Convincing as these indictments seem, research suggests that gossip may in fact be healthy. 

• Talking behind other people's backs may not always be nice, but sometimes it can help promote cooperation and self-improvement.
• Gossip can play the role of protecting others from being exploited by passing on information about bad behavior to warn others.
• Gossip is a good thing since it is pervasive. Despite its dodgy reputation, only 3-4% is actually malicious.
• If two people share negative feelings about a third person, they are likely to feel closer to each other than they would if they both felt positively about him or her.
• We can trade information with third parties about people who aren’t around in order to learn from other people’s experiences.
• In organizations, management becomes defensively tight lipped at a time of impending crisis. Nature abhors a vacuum and the gossip rushes to fill it.
• Gossip may even make us better people. Gossip about others made research subjects more reflective. Positive gossip inspired self-improvement efforts, and negative gossip made people prouder of themselves.
• Many people felt upon hearing a piece of negative gossip, are likely to say they had learned a lesson from it.
• Negative gossip can also have a pro-social effect on those who are gossiped about. Once people who were ostracized from a group due to reputed selfishness had reformed their ways in an attempt to regain the approval of the people they had alienated.
• Leaders and politicians have to be reminded that openness costs less than the impact of false stories and the time it takes to rub out the stain they leave. It requires a community of trust for gossip to be good for all of us.

So the next time you are tempted to dish the dirt, fear not. You may actually be promoting cooperation, boosting others’ self-esteem, and performing the essential task of the human family. 

Small people talk about other people, 
mediocre people talk about things and great people talk about ideas.
Gossip is when you hear something you like about someone you don't ... Earl Wilson

Gossip is what no one claims to like, but everybody enjoys ... Joseph Conrad

Women are more skilled than men at making gossip entertaining ... Kate Fox

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Although some benefits exist for gossip, it is basically negative trait. But it is part & parcels of the fundamental rights of citizens and can't be accused of any crime. The problem with gossip is that it is based on little facts, fiction or hearsay. That's what makes it fun, but people take it as the truth, turn it around, and throw it in your face. However, it is better to stay away from gossiping as it serves little purpose and ruins our character.

Competition or Cooperation?

Which works better, competition or cooperation? 
The answer, without equivocation, is cooperation.

• Yet big business, the educational system, the health-care community, and most parents continue to encourage competition, almost totally neglecting the power of cooperation. 
• Unabated competition may be costing billions of dollars in sales and overall decreases in human achievement. 
• Too much competition may cause poor health. 
• We continue to hold the belief that competition is the royal road to success.
• While competition brings out the "beast" in us, cooperation brings out the "best" in us. 
• Cooperative scientists tend to have published more articles than their competitive colleagues. Cooperative business people have higher salaries. Cooperative students have higher grade point averages. Cooperation increases creativity. Unfortunately, most people are not taught cooperative skills. 
• A classroom teacher indirectly fosters competition. Yet people learn best when they work cooperatively with each other. Children who experience this type of learning at an early age carry it with them as they mature.
• More students feel good about themselves as learners when they cooperate. Their self-esteem goes up, they have a better sense of community, belonging, and acceptance. 
• Too much unsupported emphasis is placed on competition. The means by which individuals once learned cooperative skills are eroding.
• There are a lot of reasons to worry.  Some of the standard ways that people once learned to cooperate are not operating as they did a generation ago. Teaching young people how to cooperate does not receive the appropriate level of interest. As a result, competition breeds unabated. Few are teaching, practicing, or promoting a better idea.
• It is preferable to work with the school system. That way the next business generation could be taught how to be cooperative and influence corporate's. Once people experience cooperation, they find out that it's a better, even easier way.
• Cooperation has an impact on individuals working together in several key areas. It create a more fluid leadership and allows everyone to participate actively without fear of censure. Cooperation also has an impact on an individual's perception of the work environment. 
• Cooperation does much more than help people get along. Cooperative individuals adjust better, psychologically and physically healthier than their more competitive colleagues. 
• Competition, or the constant feeling that you have to work against something, has unhealthy physical side effects. Cooperation, and other pro-social/unselfish behaviors, tend to have positive side effects.
• Evidence suggests that cooperation generates a type of "runner's high." Like those individuals who exercise regularly, people who are cooperative and help others also experience a type of "high," which might better be described as calmness or sense of freedom from stress. This cooperation, not competition, is preferred. 
• Individuals who develop a cooperative stance feel more in control of their lives and do not live for approval from others. They tend to feel good in sharp contrast to the constant intensity of the competitive individual.
• Too much of a good thing can be a problem. In the case of cooperation, too much can lead to group-think, yes-man syndrome, or inappropriate conformity. 
• Caught up in cooperation they lose a critical respect for the issue, they can all decide to do the wrong thing unanimously. 
• Although a cooperative environment increases the number of ideas, improves the quality of the outcome, and facilitates a better working environment, cooperation must be done in such a way as to protect the integrity of the project at hand. Simply put, cooperation is the rule, but objectivity must be maintained. 

There are ways to facilitate cooperation, and they are the same no matter the environment, from big business to sports. 

• Focus on doing well. 
• Allow ample time. 
• Use similar language. 
• Share leadership. 
• Learn cooperative problem-solving tools. 
• Practice reciprocity.  
• Share resources and information. 
• Reinforce team efforts. 
• Act cooperatively. 
• For your health's sake, experience cooperation. 

Cooperation is a valuable commodity and works best when it is freely given and indirectly encouraged.  It promotes goodwill toward men and women, and is a gift that is always appropriate. And there's no better time to be cooperative.  After all, it is the season. 

Supporters of the current free-market economy argue that competition among producers ensures efficiency and keeps prices as low as possible. This argument sounds reasonable in theory, but in practice it sidelines workers and delivers much of the productive economy into the hands of a minority. The side effect is that while profits are privatized, risk is socialized while rich becomes richer and poor remains poor. On other hand, an economy based on cooperation will narrow the gap between rich and poor, and ultimately eradicate poverty.

Hostile cooperation is what exists between competitors who often cooperate with each other for greater rewards. A moderated desire to cooperate is natural and healthy. Those with non-cooperative natures would have very low survival rates. It is for this reason that people take a healthy enjoyment in belonging to a group, practicing teamwork, helping others, etc. War is an obvious example of deadly competition. In our competitive economy, those who lack the skills, education, talent or opportunity to compete will become poor. And the poor suffer from death rates that are at least six times higher than the rich. 

Most competitive situations are highly stressful; the possibility of failure creates agitation and anxiety. The fear or anger generated from being eliminated or losing often causes embarrassment, tension and hostility. Cooperative activities are non-threatening and non-judgmental. As a result, this creates an atmosphere for relaxation and well being, the foundation for more genuine, healthy and playful fun.

If lion runs slower than deer, lion will starve to death. 

If deer runs slower than lion, deer will get killed.

My View:
But imagine what it would be like to live in a society where each individual competes against everyone else, without any cooperation at all. In a perfectly competitive world, only the strongest or luckiest would survive. After killing off most of society, you would only find yourself among survivors who were highly competent killers themselves. And even if you emerged the final victor, the rewards would be slight. Society should never allow any one to grow and operative in no competition zone, under any circumstances.

Gandhi on providence and greed

• In a place like India, people affected by large-scale industrial projects like mining are told that they must pay the price for the nation to progress. Gandhi fundamentally rejected this as immoral.
• Co-operation, Gandhi argued, not competition, is the natural state of mankind. The same is true for our economic system.
• How you make your money in the first place is more important than how much you give away.
• Whatever you generate is never fully yours because it's going to be there long after you. In essence, you are only its caretaker. Clinging to material wealth is therefore a redundant pursuit.
• Not everyone has wealth-generating capabilities. Those that do are somehow better endowed, therefore, which means that they have more responsibility. It's directed to individual entrepreneurs, but the same could be said for companies too.
• Business produces wealth within a social, political and cultural context. All wealth is public in some essential way because it wasn't generated it in a vacuum. A very Gandhian idea.
• Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need but not for every man’s greed, said Gandhiji. So long as we cooperate with the cycle of life, the soil renews its fertility indefinitely and provides health, recreation, sustenance and peace to those who depend on it. But when the ‘predatory’ attitude prevails, nature’s balance is upset and there is an all-round bio-logical deterioration.
• Utilitarian precept of  “the greatest good of the greatest number” is a hopelessly unrealistic ideal since some people are incorrigibly greedy and we live in a dog-eat-dog world of scarce resources and the devil take the hindmost. 
• But the problem is that the Earth cannot provide for everyone’s greed and their needs, then there is a hope of solving the problem by enough people curtailing their greed enough, provided (a) no one else’s greed is infinite and (b) the number of people becomes reasonably stable (unlike in the last eighty years, when it has doubled every two or three generations).
• A man who is poor will continually examine himself and find out what are the superfluous things he keeps for himself, and, if you conduct yourself in a sportsman like spirit from day to day, you will be astounded at the fewness of things you require.
• Excessive greed for anything is the root of all evil.
• I cannot help the gnawing fear that the movement will fail if it does not touch the root of all evil – man’s greed. Will America, England etc continue to exploit the so-called uncivilized races and hope to attain peace that the whole world is pining for? Will Americans continue to engage in commercial rivalries and yet expect to dictate peace to the world?
• Peace can be precluded by intense commercial rivalries (for, say, access to raw materials) and by an aspiration of one nation to “dictate peace” to the others on terms favoring itself in the rivalries. These are hardly the only causes of war, but they are substantial.

Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need 

but not enough for every man’s greed ... Mahatma Gandhi

My View:

Gandhi's views even though appear logical and equitable but is a misfit in today's racing world. No one is willing to wait for others to catch up. Gandhian views have reportedly produced over 1000 PhD's in western world but are never practiced or adopted. In the words of Prof. Amartya Sen "Gandhi has relevance only in academics". If anybody talks about Gandhi's ideals he will be looked at as insane person and gets isolated. Like communism, Gandhism stands irrelevant today.