Some good comes from socializing if only as a concession to our ineluctable social nature. Only a beast or a god could live without it. But even I do too much of it. In society one is apt to talk too much about too little. Review the previous day's unnecessary conversations. On balance, did they profit you or not? Did they enhance your peace of mind, or damage it?
You might think that intellectual talk is better than talking about the weather. But it can be as bad as mundane trivial talk, an empty posturing, a vain showmanship without roots or results. But worse still is ‘spiritual talk’ which can distract us from both action and (what is better) contemplative inaction.
There is a deep paradox here. It is speech that elevates man above the animals and makes him god-like. And yet it is speech by which he debases himself in a way no animal could, not that the above examples are the most debasing.
Compare MT 12:36, "But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment." (KJV)
Whether or not Christ was God, he was one of humanity's great teachers. One does well to ponder the above verse, and in particular, its harshness. Just why should every idle word get one in trouble with the Moral Authority of the universe?
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