#SuperInjunctions, Twitter, Hasidic tales, football and geo

Feathers in the wind. Thanks to Audrey Penven https://www.flickr.com/photos/audreypenven/

There is an old Hasidic tale (a Jewish folk tale) about a man in a small village who gossiped about his neighbours. When confronted by members of his community he claimed in his defence that what he was saying was true. Eventually one of the victims of the gossip appealed to the rabbi who spoke with the gossip explaining to the gossip how much hurt he was causing even if what he was saying was true (there are very strong laws within judaism against speaking badly of another person regardless of whether it is true or not). The man seeking forgiveness asked the rabbi what he could do to make amends. The rabbi told him to take a pillow to the top of the hill outside the village, cut it open and tip out all of the feathers and  then return to the rabbi’s house. The man did as he was told and then returned to the rabbi saying “I did as you instructed me rabbi” the rabbi responded “Now go and pick up every feather, make sure that you do not miss even one little feather”. In the tale the man learnt from this lesson and made his peace with those he had gossiped about and changed his ways.

The connections to my title should be fairly transparent, if not I don’t know where you have been for the last couple of days but start here. In the web world a story spreads much further than the feathers in my Hasidic tale and much faster.

I am not in any way supporting super injunctions, which are wrong and a tool that is only available to the wealthy and powerful but I am hesitant that anyone’s private life should be exposed to the spotlight of internet notoriety because they have tried to keep a misdeed private. I imagine that most of us have something that we would very much prefer not to share with the whole world. I know I have.