(To read Part I go here.)
The Impact of How We Are Seen:
“Cha bhi fios aire math an tobair gus an tr’igh e. (The value of the well is not known until it goes dry).” - Scottish Gaelic Proverb
One rarely knows the value of one’s good reputation until it’s been well and truly lost or tarnished.
When it does, the consequences are immediate and visceral. All of the new age aphorisms about ‘choosing how we feel’ and how ‘no one can make you feel anything’ fall apart when one is one the receiving end of that gaze, guided by what they believe about us, of disapproval or disgust, or when the gaze ceases to register us at all but, instead, looks right through us as if we were not there.
The Irish discovered this gaze, that came to be known as The Liverpool Mirror (the way in which the Irish were reflected back in the eyes of the British). The enslaved Africans and Native Americans and their descendants have come to know it, and know it still, in modern day North America. And, in little ways, we’ve all come to know the consequence of how we are seen by others.
This is so well known that public punishments were “phased out in 1837 in the United Kingdom and in 1839 in the United States.” (Ronson) Public shaming was too terrible in its consequence and it was ended.
Consider this excerpt from an editorial in the New York Times in 1867.
If it has previously existed in [the convicted person’s] bosom a spark of self-respect this exposure to public shame utterly extinguishes it. Without the hope that springs eternal in the human breast, without some desire to reform and become a good citizen, and the feeling that such a thing is possible, no criminal can ever return to honorable courses. They boy of eighteen who is whipped in New Castle [a Delaware whipping post] for larceny is in nine cases out of ten ruined. With his self-respect destroyed and the taunt and sneer of public disgrace branded upon his forehead, he feels himself lost and abandoned by his fellows.” (Red Hannah: Delaware’s Whipping Post, Robert Graham Caldwell)
It’s not that punishment has been eliminated, but that public shaming has. It’s why we have laws around libel and defamation of character. Perhaps it’s why not ‘bearing false witness’ is one of the ten commandments.
If one’s reputation is impacted it can have devastating results to one’s career, relationships and self-esteem.
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The Impact of Reputation on How We See Others:
The story we have in our mind about people shapes how we hear and experience them. Their reputation, should it reach us before they do, will filter everything they say and do. Imagine you have heard that someone is a good person but, when you meet them, they are gruff with you. You might think to yourself, “Ah. They’re having a bad day.”
Imagine you meet someone who you’ve heard is a lying, cheating and conniving sack of shit and they are really nice to you and bring you gifts. You will immediately think, “What do they want?”
Reputation trumps generosity and good intentions.
Someone might meet you, love you and be incredibly impressed and then hear enough rumours about your reputation and begin to see all of your past interaction through that lense.
Reputation can be retroactive.
Gaming The System: On The Perils of the Short Cut & Trying to Be Trusted Without Being Trustworthy
Reputation is everything.
I’ve seen it over and over again in marketing.
People using marketing and selling tactics that don’t feel good to them because they believe there is no alternative. They have to do it. Even though they feel uneasy about what they’re doing, they also feel emboldened at the thought of getting what they want, a sale, and so they press ahead, unconvinced that their conscience’s attempts to slow us down or stop us have any friendly intent beyond stopping us from getting way we want.
And sometimes we are desperate indeed.
We are in a drought and we see water and we’ll do almost anything to get it.
And there are many who would convince us that we can get what we want immediately, without the hard work of cultivating the requisite skill and reputation.
In this modern world full of strategies and tactics to get people to say ‘yes’ to our advances, be they business or personal, to win every argument or at least win friends while we influence people, a time when there always seems to be some new approach to overcoming any objection that anybody might have to doing what we want them to do, be that buying from us, sleeping with us or marrying us, we have woefully lost sight of, or perhaps never been properly instructed in, the fundamental nature of reputation.
Reputation may be one of the most influential forces in human culture.
It determines who is trusted and who isn’t.
When those we trust tell us that another is untrustworthy, our trust in that other diminishes or evaporates entirely.
This all happens silently, behind the scenes. And this can’t be manufactured.
Reputation is made by our actions. It is made, in the long-term, by what we do and do not do. Too much of what I’ve come across in the literature of sales and marketing neglects this realization: that delivering and over-delivering on our promises, over time, is how a name is made.
We are not told this.
And, if we are told, this is not insisted upon as a core understanding.
So much in this culture whispers to us a more seductive story; that we can apply less effort, game the system and achieve the same results as if we had worked hard. Why study when you can cheat? Why have integrity when you can, more easily, seem to have integrity? Why admire from a distance when you can get close and prey upon those weaker than you?
What we are not told is that, in the long-term, reputation beats charm.
Reputation is everything.
Reputation will trump law of reciprocation. You might be the most generous person in the world and gift magnificent gifts to people but, should they hear untoward things about you from someone they trust more than you, they will slowly back away and vanish from your life.
There is a law of social acceptability and, should your reputation become too tainted, it might cost others too much to be associated with you. This is a hard but important thing to come to know. And we often don't know it until it's too late. They might really like you personally but they also know that they could lose status... and most won’t be willing to do that. Most won't tell you they’re leaving. You find out by waking up one day, the sunlight streaming into your room, to see them gone. You will walk into a room and see them and, instead of them running over to see you, full of excitement, there will be nothing. It might be too much work to engage in a conversation with you about something they so fundamentally have issues with. After all, they have no guarantee you'd even be open to hearing their concerns. It can be easier to just walk away. And most do.
Over the years, I’ve endorsed people who my clients have thanked me for introducing them to. And I’ve endorsed people who have cost me the trust of those on my list because of their less than ethical behaviour. And I've had to distance myself even though I like them personally.
You can hide the truth for a while, but people talk. Eventually they will hear it. The only rule of confidentiality in a community is that, if it’s juicy, you can be confident they will talk about it.
Reputation is everything.
And, once it is set, it is very, very hard to change.
Anonymity, The One-Night Stand and The Cold Approach:
Most of the literature in sales & marketing and the world of pick up & dating (both of which I was seduced by and am more familiar with than I wish I was most days) relies on the existence of a certain anonymity and the high-effort model of one of sales or, in this age of Tinder, the one-night stand.
It relies on big cities or vast online markets in which you can meet prospects or approach women who, because you live in some vast metropolis, you are unlikely to every meeting again. And so, reputation can't be used (they've never heard of you) and no reputation is ever earned (because you may never see them or their friends again). Every approach is a cold approach and likely the only interaction you will ever have. This basic orientation - one off interactions from a cold approach - is the 'great unspoken' in many of these approaches.
An example of this kind of approach is the application of social proof. So a business owner might get pictures of themselves with other respected people in their field and, perhaps, charm a testimonial from them. A man might enter a bar surrounded by attractive female friends to indicate to the other women that he is safe.
When there is substance there, there is no problem. But when this is used as artifice, as a way to trick people, as a way to cover up for something that isn't there, it becomes a problem and people get hurt because you're pretending to be more together than you are. You are posturing.
When these tactics and strategies are applied in a smaller community or scene, the kind most of us operate in, the results are often disastrous because the truth comes out faster because the anonymity required for them to work isn't there.
Words spreads.
“They’re slimy as fuck,” people say.
“They’re so pushy,” people whisper to each other as you walk by.
"They're so fake," the warn each other.
You don’t even know it’s happening but all of a sudden, the well of trust people have for you begins to dry up.
By trying to game the system, you’ve earned yourself a name and it isn’t good. You find out it’s happened after the fact.
Reputation is a Filter:
We all have friends who, when they recommend a band to us, we know that we would love it because they have a reputation as someone who has a taste in music we enjoy. The same goes for movies, books, art etc.
They have become our filters. If they say it’s good, it’s good.
I often ask people who come to my workshops to raise their hands if they read the entire sales letter for the workshop. Very few hands go up. How could this be? Why would they come to spend a day or even a weekend with me without knowing what they were getting into?
The answer comes when I ask the second question, “Raise your hand if someone you respect told you to come.” Almost every hand goes up. And then I ask, “Raise your hand if you’ve heard about my work from more than three people.” In cities like Toronto that I’ve visited a lot, a surprising number of hands go up.
My marketing was done for me all those other people.
Word of mouth is how marketing happens.
At the end of the day, word of mouth is the force that determines is a business succeeds or fails.
And reputation is at the heart of word of mouth.
So, how does one get a good reputation? And how does one avoid a bad one?
*
As Jason Connell pointed out in his article Why I’ve Lost Faith in Tony Robbins (And Most Life Coaches)
"The biggest problem in personal development is that most people who work in the space, really shouldn’t. Instead of giving life advice to the masses, they should be talking to a therapist in private."
It’s something I explore in my eBook Who Am I To Teach And Charge For It?. People will often express their doubts about their qualifications to do what they’re doing and I’m always so grateful to hear it when they do. Because there is every chance that they are not ready at all.
And if you go out into the marketplace making promises implied or explicit that you can’t keep, you will disappoint people at best and hurt them at worst. And you will destroy your reputation.
Being a better marketer is not the answer. You’ll only end up destroying your reputation faster.
And the consequences of destroying your reputation might be bigger than you imagined.
Earning Yourself a Name:
Author and storyteller, Martin Shaw points out that, even if you want your name to be Sweetgrass Woman, if you show up late to pick up your kids from school every, single day, that will be your name.
*
His name was Tits.
Well. That wasn’t hit full name but it was a name he earned during his childhood in the Gaelic community in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.
Even when he was older, people could be heard to call out, “Is Tits here?” at events.
He was four years old, and was one of many people on the Island with the same name. There were a lot of Mary MacDonald or James McIsaac’s around, for example, as people tended to named for their forebears (the first son for his father and the second for his grandfather).
This, of course, created a lot of confusion. What if you had three Emily Rankin’s in your community? And so nicknames were developed.
Michael Newton speaks of this in his fine book Warrior of the Word,
“To distinguish between all of these individuals of the same name adjectives were often added to their first name. These adjectives could refer to hair colour (such as ‘Raibeart Ruadh’ for ‘Red Robert’), relative age to distinguish between generations (such as ‘Aonghus Òg’ for ‘Young Angus’ or ‘Domnhall Beag’ for ‘Little Donald.’), distinctive features (such as ‘Ailean Breac’ for ‘Pock Marked Allan’ or ‘Ruaridh Dall’ for ‘Blind Rory’), occupation (such as ‘Niall Gobha’ for ‘Neil the Smith’) or the place of origin or fosterage (such as ‘Iain Mùideartach’ for ‘Ian of Moydart’ or ‘Raghnall Gallda’ for ‘Foreign Ranald’). A nickname (frith-ainm, far-ainm or leas-ainm) serves to identify a person uniquely and often eclipses the given first name of a person for life. It typically refers to a childhood anecdote, a distinguishing characteristic, or a memorable event. It is used most often within a community, but sometimes travels with the individual outside of his home area.”
And well, Tits, at the age of four, was in class and the teacher asked, “What is it that a cow has four of that a human only has two of?”
His answer branded him for life.
How We Know Things: Truth & Trust in Traditional Cultures
"Mas fhiach an teachdaire, ‘s fhiach an gnothach (If the messenger be worthy, the business is)." - Scottish Gaelic Proverb
In many indigenous cultures, the truth of a story was determined, not by written down records, but by who told the story. Certain people had a reputation for knowing their history well and others did not.
In Myth & Memory, Keith Thor Carlson writes,
“Among the Coast Salish, history is a serious matter. It continues to be used to validate social and political status, as well as personal and collective identity. The upper-class (which Wayne Suttles argues made up the majority of the population at first contact) is known in the Halq’eméylem language as smela:th - literally ‘worthy people’. When asked to define the meaning of worthy people, fluent elders typically explain that it refers to ‘people who know their history.’ Lower-class people, by way of contrast, are called s’texem, a term translated as ‘worthless people,’ because they have ‘lost or forgotten their history’.”
In 1992, during his eight-month contract with the Stö:lõ Tribal Council, a matter of contention arose as one community member was making a claim to have discovered an old Spanish Fort. The claim was not trusted by the rest of the tribe, despite evidence he claimed to have. In the end, this fellow, who was referred to as John Doe, was wrong.
“Significantly, for the purpose of comparison with Western historical methods, the various indigenous critiques of John Doe’s history did not necessarily involve the checking of his evidence. Initially, at least, none of his Coast Salish critics seems to have asked him to share his twelve-generation genealogy, to provide details about the Spanish fort (such as where it was located or when it was established), or to take people to the archaeological sites and cave. Instead, they generally asked, ‘Well, who did he get that stuff [information] from? I never heard that before. Who told him that?’ John Doe’s evidence was deemed unreliable not because he had failed to produce the physical evidence, but because he had consistently failed to use adequate oral footnotes to validate the manner in which he had acquired the knowledge. In other words, he was being discredited because he failed to trace his knowledge through recognized experts or authorities, and in this was proving himself ‘unworthy’ in some eyes. As one widely respected elder observed, ‘A ‘good person’ would tell us how he knows that stuff; who told it to him.”
The Etymology of Truth:
So much of trust works in this way.
And, in exploring trust and reputation, it is well worth looking into how understandings of truth have changed in the English language over the past centuries.
It’s worth noting that trust and true both share the tru root and are clearly related etymologically.
The Barnhardt Dictionary of Etymology tells us that the word 'true'…
“Developed from the Old English (before 899), West Saxon triewth, Mercian tréowth faithfulness, from triewe, treowe… Faithful, loyal, trustworthy. It’s not until after 1200 when this becomes to mean ‘consistent with fact, agreeing with reality’. “The meaning of agreeing with a standard or rule, exact, accurate, correct (as in true north) is first recorded in about 1550. Old English triewe, treowe (from Proto-Germanic *trewwjaz) is cognate with Old Frissian and Old Saxon triuwi faithful, trustworthy, Middle Dutch ghetruwe (modern Duth getrouw), Old High German gitriuwi (modern German treu) faithful, Old Icelandic tryggr, trustworthy, safe (Danish tryg, Swedish and Norwegian Trygg safe, secure), and Gothic triggws faithful. Congnates outside of Germanic are found in Old Irish derb sure, Old Prussian druwis faith, Lithuanian drutas, strong, thick, and Sanskrit dhruvá-s, from Indo-European *drue-/dru-, *drewe/dru- hard, firm”
In The Origins of English Words by Joseph T. Shipley we find that the words 'trust' and 'truth' both has their roots in the word deru: “Solid; hence wood and associated ideas, as lasting, holding firm.”
Consider that the baby name Treowe means ‘loyal’ and that treowman would mean ‘a loyal man’.
Think of the layers and braided meanings here: faithful, loyal, trustworthy, safe, secure, sure, solid, strong, thick, hard, wood and firm.
It could be easy to imagine that what the words are describing are the facts, 'the truth'; that the 'truth' is solid and strong. And perhaps that's true. But there is another level, easy to forget in our modern culture. I would submit that these words refer primarily to the one speaking, that they were people who were solid and upon whom you could rely.
If we dig even deeper into the etymological roots we find something even more mysterious,
“In the mother tongue of Sanskrit, the idea of motion that ‘passes or goes beyond’ or that ‘crosses’ comes from the observation of the apparent motion of heavenly bodies in space. To wit, in Sanskrit, the root tr designates both ‘star’ and the act (with an extended r, tr) or ‘crossing’, the typical motion of heavenly bodies. In all likelihood, the consonants t and d originally had the same meaning: ‘light’... As a result, the tr group, made up of the consonants t and the verb r ‘to go’ or ‘to move toward’, initially had to indicate movement of a light toward a point and, subsequently, moving away from a point to arrive… at another point."
In Indo-European, the consonant d meant light… The roots dr speak of ‘the arrival [r] of light [d],’ ‘to take care of’, ‘to respect’ or ‘to honour’. The root dru means ‘wood’ or ‘any wooden implement. In the Indo-European verb roots that begin with dh-, such as dham, dhã, dhi, dhu, dhr [as in dhruvá-s} and dhyã, the consonant d served the function of revealing the origin and essence of a particular phenomenon related to ‘light’, such as ‘fire’, ‘energy’, ‘heat’, ‘spirit’, ‘thought’, ‘soul’, ‘religious meditation’, etc.”
“Tradition is not the worship of ashes but the preservation of fire.”- Gustav Mahler
And so, perhaps, we could imagine there might be nothing more steady and sure than the presence of the night sky, turning but never changing. Perhaps it spoke to the trustworthiness of this world and that we might come to rely on the way the world is; never using guile or artifice to seduce or fool us.
Perhaps it is also speaks to the relational nature of all of this; that the sharing of news, stories, revelation, the ‘fire in the head’ insight, the light of illumination, the warmth that people might share with each other each night (as fire itself comes from wood), this passing on of understanding, was something that moved from one person to another, passing on from generation we have never seen, across the horizon of our lives and onto future generations we will never see.
Perhaps it speaks to the way that certain people in our communities become, themselves, the bright stars of our communities. They become the solid oak tree around which the village gathers. They become the fixed and magic-filled firmament of our cultures understanding. They become our chord back to where things all began; the umbilicus of our people, the carriers of its soul, loyal to our peoples and to the larger world that feeds us all.
It was not until after the Middle Ages, that 'truth' became related to abstract and absolute notions of knowledge.
As Empire, in its myriad forms, began to appear in these small villages in Europe with their sword-point imposition of 'the truth' (the one and only) that trumped the personal qualities of whoever might be speaking it, the standing of those respected and honoured ones, those treowemen in the community was made irrelevant. Once 'the truth' came in, village life, in all of its reliance on trust, relationship, mutual obligation and kinship came to an end. This notion of an independent, abstract truth was the crucifixion of a village-mindedness that depended on knowing the source of the story one had heard and whether or not it was reliable.
Reputation became nothing.
The Etymology of Reputation:
And so, we come back at last to 'reputation'.
And it’s worth digging into the etymology here as well.
The roots of reputation are ‘repute’. The re is a prefix which, in this case, means ‘repetition’, (as in rearrange, ‘to arrange again’).
What remains is the word pute.
In the Indo-European language family, the letter p relates strongly to purity (from the verb pu). It speaks of cleansing, making clear, and making luminous whereas puy and puteo is to stink and puter is rotten or putrid.
Peue means cut, strike, dig into, consider, think over, or prune. The Latin putare, putatum also, interestingly, relate to the word ‘account’ (which is another word for story just as the word ‘tally’ is intimately connected with another word for story - tale).
Curiously, the Latin puteus, which refers to a pit, well or cistern (a place where the purifying waters could gather).
The Barnhardt Dictionary of Etymology tells us that 'repute' speaks of:
“Suppose to be, consider, suppose. About 1399, reputen to believe; borrowed from Middle French reputer learned borrowing from Latin reputãre reflect upon, reckon (re- repeatedly putãre to reckon, consider… cleanse, trim, prune; also think.”
The putamen is the part of the brain associated with learning.
And so, perhaps, this word pute might, on one level, suggest something about meaning, story and account. It's good to remember, when we see a meaning like 'account' that, before numbers and accounting we had accounts of events. Before tallying ledgers, we had tales. We had stories to keep track of things (before we'd turned them into things, from relatives into resources). Reputation is about the stories we tell about one another about one another.
Consider these words that also share the root word pute.
Impute (im in or into + pute) means something in the order of attributing and ascribing giving credit or responsibility (often negatively) to someone or something for causing. To say it differently, it’s to press, attach or imprint a story or meaning onto a thing.
Dispute from Latin disputãre (dis apart, separately + putãre to count, consider). Another way of saying this is to say that you have different stories or meanings for the same thing.
Putative (pute + ative the active form of this verb, tending towards, relating or connecting to something, designed to do something, the manner of being it has). Putative means considered, or reputed to be. Another way of saying this: the story in action or the story one is inside. (e.g. he was the putative father, he was commonly regarded as the father, he was inside the story of being a father or playing out the story of being a father).
And so we see this forest of meanings: purity, cleansing, making clear, and making luminous (with their opposites) to stink, rotten or putrid. We also find: to cut, strike, trim or prune, to ‘account’, dig into, a pit, well or cistern, suppose to be, suppose, to believe, learned, reflect upon, reckon, think, and consider.
Reputation in the Gaelic World
In the Gaelic word, one’s reputation was everything and many of the seanfhaclan (proverbs - literally, ‘old words’) speak to this.
“Am fear a gheibh ainm na mocheirich, faodaidh e cadal anmoch gu meadhan latha (The man who is known as an early riser can sleep late).”
"Is fhasa deagh ainm a chall na chosnadh (It is easier to lose a good name than to gain one).”
Reputations could be made or broken by the poets, storytellers and bards who, in poetic form, might compose praise poetry about you or, should your behaviour cross the lines, poetry that would ridicule you. In an oral tradition culture where words mattered so deeply, the effect of this was immediate and profound.
Let's explore four of the core words used to speak of reputation in the Gaelic language: ainm, cliù, meas, alladh and teist.
Ainm is the word used above for reputation. It literally translates as ‘name’ but also means ‘character’. The Old Welsh version is anu. In Sanskrit, an means to breathe, to respire, to live. The Greek ánemos, a wind and the Latin animo - to give life to, to animate.
Another commonly used word for reputation is alladh which means some weaving of excellence, fame, greatness, renown, applause, report.
Cliù means fame (good or bad), good name, character, renown or rumour. In Old Irish clú. In Old Celtic: klevos, related to the Greek klevo, which means a sort of poetically preserved fame, report, this is cognate with the word ‘hear’.
The word meas is an interesting one. One often signs a letter le meas, which means something close to ‘with respect’. It can also mean regard, esteem, fame, opinion, and honour.
The Indo-European root for M means ‘a substance with a limit’. Some of the central words that comes from this letter relate to mother, mater, matter. The mi refers to measurement.
But, if you dig deeper, you find that meas connects to the word ‘food’.
Middle English: from Old French mes ‘portion of food,’ from late Latin missum ‘something put on the table,’ past participle of mittere ‘send, put.’ The original sense was ‘a serving of food,’ also ‘a serving of liquid or pulpy food,’ later ‘liquid food for an animal’; this gave rise (early 19th century) to the senses ‘unappetizing concoction’ and ‘predicament,’ on which sense 1 is based. In late Middle English the term also denoted any of the small groups into which the company at a banquet was divided (who were served from the same dishes); hence, ‘a group of people who regularly eat together’ (recorded in military use from the mid 16th century). (Google)
Meas can mean, fish, salmon, fruit or acorn. The verb measach means ‘fruitful’, or ‘abounding in fruits’.
Meas can also mean measure, rod to measure graves, estimate, weigh, and calculate. It’s interesting to note, in terms of measurement that méter (closely resembling ‘meter’ a unit of measurement) is a variation of matter and mother. It is also connected to the Gothic mitan, measure and the English: mete, measure.
It can mean a weapon, point-edge, pair of shears that might be used for cutting and trimming which, should you be on the receiving end of defamation of your character, deserved or not, feels entirely accurate.
It can also mean wind (which brings us back to ainm).
Another level of it is: judgment, valuing, appraisement, consider, think, suppose, judge, impute, reckon, deem, and regard. The connected Latin root: meditari, means ‘think’ and the Greek médeõ - to look after, médõ - to worry about, to treat oneself (medically).
Teist has its roots in testimony, proof and witnesses.
Reputation is what we are known and renowned for (be that good or bad). It is given as a way of tending to the well-being of the community feeding the power of some and trimming back on the power of others. Reputation is the considered measure taken of our character. Reputation is a reminder of our substance and our deep consequentiality on the lives around us - that everything we do and do not do has some effect on those around us.
Reputation as a verb:
The prefix re suggests something that is happening repeatedly. And so, what is the putation that is being done over and over?
I want to, again, suggest that it has to do with determining the meaning and the storied nature of a thing.
I want to suggest that reputation is a nominalization, meaning a process that has been turned into a thing. If you couldn’t put it in a wheelbarrow (perhaps a very large one), it’s not a noun.
What this means is that reputation is never entirely fixed. By its nature, it’s always being reconsidered. Like breathing, which gives us life, it is never static. This means redemption is always possible.
New names can be earned and given. This is the re-putation in action.
Reputation: Feeding the Heart of The Village
Let's return to the letter p, related strongly to purity and the verb pu which speaks of cleansing, making clear, and making luminous whereas puy and puteo indicates stink and puter, rotten or putrid.
Perhaps reputation was a way that the well being of a community was cleansed and tended to; keeping it healthy by ensuring things were named properly so that we could know who to trust and who not to trust; a sort of cultural hygiene that when bad behaviour arose, corrected it with instruction (pruning) or, in the most serious of cases, met it with shunning or banishment (cutting).
Perhaps it speaks to the ways that our name is always under reconsideration, that meaning and story is constantly being reapplied to our name guided by our own actions. And, certainly, it is a reminder that our reputation is not us, but a story, the supposings of other people, that our stature in a community is not held inherently in ourselves but in the reckonings of everyone else in that community. A reputation is who others suppose or believe us to be and it is fashioned by the stories that others tell about us.
Perhaps those old ones knew how central self-esteem was to our health and how much of our self-esteem was derived from the people from whom we ourselves derive. Perhaps they knew, as deeply as the modern world has forgotten, how much we are made and unmade by each other.
If we return to what the Gaelic language tells us: reputation is the name (ainm) we gain from the testimony and witness of others (teist). It is a name that can animate or de-animate us. It can feed us or starve us (meas).
Resources Used:
The Comparative Etymological Dictionary of Classical Indo-European Languages.
The Barnhardt Dictionary of Etymology
The Origins of English Words by Joseph T. Shipley
Additional Reading:
The Poverty of Believing in Yourself
Admiration: The Deep and Practiced Courtesy of Appreciating From a Distance
Brilliant! I enjoyed reading this insightful piece.
Thank you for these two posts, Tad. I've learned a lot. Best wishes for your future work, which is fascinating.