The phenomenology of ghosting or why Congress should know better than to legislate against it

To be haunted by someone’s absence is the worst of all hauntings, more so when the pain of any shape and form of closure has all but disappeared.

A bill in Congress recently filed by a lawmaker aims to declare “ghosting” as “emotionally offensive,” sparking an outburst of verbal cookware from netizens of all sociopolitical temperaments. For many, it seems rather odd, and downright ridiculous, to legislate against an act too superfluous when met by larger problems the country is facing.

Some say the lawmaker may have been ghosted more times than his emotions could possibly bear. This leaves an image of an adult male much too emotionally infantile for his own good.

A beshie perhaps, or an inamorata slipping quietly into the horizon, never to be seen or heard from again? Surely, such a disappearing act can be deemed “offensive” but never criminally predisposed, more so by anyone who is merely a passing acquaintance, like Facebook “friends”. No obligations there.  

It makes little difference if one has done this deliberately to spite the other, or to simply escape the daily revulsion of being in the person’s face in more ways than one can endure.

There are also those who said that perhaps the lawmaker is simply out to garner media mileage, the sort of do-gooder who has an insatiable taste for the limelight. Whatever his reasons may be, the attempt more than simply backfired. It left a bite wound that would not easily be licked in a year or two, not when social media keeps receipts.

The problem with legislating ghosting is where to draw the parameters whereby one can judge an act to be “emotionally offensive” or not. People differ heavily in the ways they deal with frustrations. Narcissists make mountains out of mole hills. What some may find highly unpleasant, others may dismiss as laughable.  

It’s difficult as it is to draw the lines between murder and homicide, between rape and molestation. Between innocence and guilt without vetted evidence. To base what is “emotionally offensive” on something as erratic as one’s emotional maturity, or the lack of it, disenfranchises people’s rights to simply have nothing to do with other people.

Should a person decide to simply disappear, wouldn’t he or she have the right to do so? What if, for argument’s sake, I simply don’t want to have anything to do with a person that is too obnoxious to begin with? Would the said person even admit that he had been obnoxious in a court of law? No amount of emotional attachment justifies the need to stay if staying proves detrimental to one’s sanity. I don’t need Congress’ permission for that. 

I am not here placing in one silly basket those with serious, even legal responsibilities or obligations, like a father to his child, a husband to his wife. Disappearing and reneging such obligations are deemed criminal acts.  

A boss who flees without paying his or her employees the necessary wages is not ghosting. That’s called estafa or criminal fraud. One who cuts all communications from people he owes money to is called defaulting on arrears.  

A man who dissolves into the shadows after getting someone pregnant hardly qualifies as a ‘ghost” or an “emotional offender”. He’s a schmuck. There are already laws against this.

If a girlfriend decides to leave a young man without warning, there’s a pretty good chance the latter had been an unrepentant, self-absorbed malodorous jerk. The same can be true under differing gender classifications.

The problem with legislating against ghosting is this: it strips both parties of the chance to deal with their frustrations as humanly as possible. Dealing with frustrations is what being an adult is all about – aside from taxes and the laundry.

So, your “friend” disappears. If he hasn’t fallen off a cliff, languishing in a narrow crevice without means of getting out, or kidnapped and sold to the criminal underworld, then shouldn’t you be happy for the person? He's probably somewhere in Boracay taking a much-needed furlough, or working his butt off trying to write the next great Philippine novel.  

Unless there are legal and professional obligations between two people, there is no reason for anyone to keep others at beck and call. Friendships thrive in shared experience of freedom and understanding. You own stuff, not human beings. 

There is, however, the sort of “ghosting” that both houses of Congress should very well look into. Corruption is the kind of ghosting that runs off with the people’s money, only to be never retrieved again.  

Refusal to pay owed taxes that run in the millions and billions is ghosting of the serious kind, more so when the tax evader is a government official. Paying ghost employees their “wages” fall under the same category.

Government officials who couldn’t even lift a finger to help when natural disaster strikes, like a pandemic, a Category 5 hurricane, or the recent temblor in Abra, should be deemed guilty of a brutal sort of ghosting – indifference and lack of professionalism.

Impunity: that is ghosting on the level of Dante Alighieri’s Inferno, if you think about it. This deliberate and systematic absence of justice may well be the most dangerous of all ghostings, and it has been haunting us since I could remember. 

While these may not be considered emotionally offensive, although in truth they are, these are undoubtedly criminal offenses, an assault on human dignity and rights, sufficient to land the guilty in jail for a long time regardless of dynastic affiliations. 

We’ve all had friends, acquaintances, even colleagues who simply faded from the picture for whatever reason they may have at the time. Never once should we think of their absence as a reason to be emotionally offended. Resenting their choice to leave us is a waste of time and tears, not to mention legislative budget.  

Never think for one second that you don’t have space to love and care for another. Who knows? Maybe the next friend or inamorata will finally decide to stay.

Separation anxiety is when you lose your cat. In short, get a grip.