IN PRAISE OF BACKBITING

I've found that this word is associated with simply speaking ill of someone. People may call it malicious gossip, scandal momgering, slander or détraction.

That's why we sometimes fall victim to the backbiting of our neighbors. We can ask the question: Why slander others? That's the question of the day.
Voltaire, long before us, said that "backbiting is the daughter of self-love and idleness".

I would add that it is cowardly. We can defend ourselves against hatred, but when it comes to bad feelings, it's hard to cope. What kind of morals do backbiters have?

A Magyar proverb goes so far as to tell us that "backbiting can light a great fire". There seems to be no bulwark against it. It's unfortunate, but backbiting is a mortal enemy that irritates people. The Iranian proverb, on the other hand, suggests "muzzle backbiting, otherwise the world is nothing but a nest of vipers.
How can we consider that backbiting has a link in our societies? It's more like an abyss. In fact, a certain Louis Bourdalou once said:

"One abyss attracts another abyss, and one backbiting attracts another backbiting. It was he who also said: "Backbiting is the deadliest enemy of charity".
That's why we sometimes fall victim to the backbiting of our neighbors. 

In spite of myself, I make an association between this word and the Hebrew words לשון הרע meaning bad or wicked tongue. This is why it's often advisable to speak and hear more, because it's a fact that an evil produced by the tongue is difficult to eliminate. And Machiavelli adds: "Backbiting irritates men and does not correct them.

Unfortunately, I found a word by Emile Augier that I didn't like. I insist on mentioning his name in case you'd like to slap him. Here's what he said: "When women no longer lend themselves to backbiting, they indulge in it". La Bruyère found a reason for it, and I wonder if he's right. He said: "All our evil comes from not being able to be alone: hence gambling, luxury, dissipation, wine, women, ignorance, backbiting, envy, forgetting oneself and God
Imagine what silence would be like if we can remove backbiting from the conversation. I'd love to conclude with these words: "Scandal and backbiting do not spare the purest intentions and the most honest procedures". To which I might add that backbiting is an unfortunate disease, even though it is often the cause of the disease.

Voltaire put it comically: "The supper was like most Parisian dinners: first silence, then a noise of words that were indistinguishable, then ....a little politics and a lot of backbiting". A curious fact, however, when half the world takes pleasure in backbiting, and the other half in believing the backbiting.

Finally, I sincerely believe that backbiting is the weapon of the weak. It reveals the inner fragility of those who use it. If a person lacks security, or is prey to envy, he or she will tend to disparage others to feel better about his or her own existence.