Lashon Hara and the IQ/MQ Filter
Ancient Speech Ethics for the Digital Public Sphere
From the essay
While reading Tazria, it became difficult to ignore how forcefully the old Jewish prohibition of Lashon Hara speaks to one of the newest problems of modern life: the degradation of human communication in the age of social media. Human speech is not neutral. It does not pass through the world like harmless air. It shapes relationships, reputations, trust, memory, and emotional climate. Lashon Hara and the IQ/MQ Filter do not come from the same world. One disciplines the tongue. The other tries to discipline the timeline. One begins in conscience. The other begins in informational architecture.