Abby Panders to Ghost Beliefs

In today’s Dear Abby newspaper advice column, Topic Numero Uno was a woman’s fear that ghosts of her deceased loved ones were lurking around her and watching her doing things like going to the bathroom and making love with her husband. She wanted to know whether she was crazy about her lack of privacy due to said ghosts.

Jeanne Phillips (“Abby”) could have just gone straight to the point, agreeably replied “Yes, you’re crazy”, and moved on to the next letter. But no, she instead decided to do something that I term “pandering to another’s narrative” in order to offer some emotional comfort. Phillips flat-out stated as fact that “the departed sometimes ‘visit’ those with whom their souls were intertwined, but usually it’s to offer strength, solace and reassurance during difficult times.” How could she know that? No, all Phillips did was to size up the frightened woman’s belief system, which she realized wasn’t going to change by just saying that ghosts weren’t real. Instead, she made up her own narrative, which naturally affirmed the existence of ghosts, to soften that writer’s fears of privacy invasion. Is this ethical?

I have done this in the past as well, although not with ghosts. I would be with someone whose beliefs were difficult for me to digest, but who still seemed so entrenched in them that the only way I would be able to effectively communicate with them would be to temporarily presume the truth of their underlying narrative, “for the sake of argument”. I would always afterward find this type of experience to be distasteful and that I had somehow debased myself in the process.

More and more, I have become more resistant to what “Abby” did: playing along with another’s absurd notions in order to reason with or comfort them. After all, I don’t notice others bending over backward to accommodate MY beliefs!

Then again, maybe Jeanne Phillips truly does believe in ghosts and how they supposedly “behave” according to some kind of ethical code. Ouch! Say you’re more savvy, Abby!