March-April 2014
Now that Prezi is cooperating, here is a video presentation that summarizes my final project on public discourse ethics, specifically public accountability, within The X-Files.
And if you’re really diggin’ it, you can read my full paper here.
Trust no one! COMM 616 ladies, have a GREAT long weekend!
My 9-year-old daughter, B, is extraordinary in many ways. Most notably – and to my sheer delight – she is a natural born leader. Speaking with poise and confidence, B initiates introductions and then games with casual self-assurance and can hold remarkably insightful adult conversations with equal measure. Regardless of their gender or age, other children always follow her. It’s incredible to watch. I don’t know exactly how she does it, but if she could bottle her technique and sell it she’d have a way to pay for college. I cannot wait to see where this gift takes her in life. Unfortunately, she must first traverse the murky waters of adolescence.
Our move to Arkansas threw her into a school environment where most children have known each other since kindergarten. Undaunted and never one to have a problem making friends, B came home from her first day having already learned most of her classmates’ names and who was friends with who. She enjoyed a honeymoon of New Girl status when everybody wanted to be around her. Then a few weeks ago, the honeymoon ended and Real Fourth Grade Life set in. She has officially entered Tween Girl Society, a world full of what author Rosalind Wiseman calls “queen bees and wannabes” (Wiseman, 2009).
(Photo credit mygasolinerainbow.blogspot.com)
Watching her enter this world fills me with both excitement and heartache. I am thrilled to see her become a young woman who speaks her Truth with confidence, and I mourn for the halcyon days of her childhood that were free from hierarchies and social agendas. (Don’t we all?) After school she talks to me about her day. In true B style, she does so with a detached pragmatism. A recent conversation went like this:
“Mom, I’ve been wondering. Sometimes when I say things people say that I’m mean, but I’m not being mean. I’m just telling them. How do I say things so that I don’t sound mean?”
I think for a moment. “Well, sometimes when you tell somebody something that’s true, or give them directions, it might sound bossy. But offense is taken, not given, which means that you might not intend to sound mean or bossy but they feel like you are. Sometimes it’s not about what you’re saying but how you’re saying it. Does that make sense?”
She nods. Whether my answer actually made sense remains to be seen.
Then I think to myself: what a succinct definition for communication ethics. It’s not what you say but how you say it.
Arnett, Fritz, and Bell (2009) summarize communication ethics in our postmodern era as defined by the acknowledgement that “like it or not, multiple views of the good exist and contend for attention in the ongoing postmodern marketplace of ideas” (p. 211). Not only do we miss opportunities by refusing to engage in dialogue about this difference in goods, or values, but our postmodern circumstances require us to learn about this difference. We need to “learn and engage information that we do not know and would not even care to know” (p. 221). And although dialogue can help us to understand the good of the Other while simultaneously bringing our own good into focus, we should “not expect the Other necessarily to endorse [our] understanding of the good” (p. 214). Just as there is no one set of values that take universal precedence over others, there is no particular communication ethic to “govern all communicative life” (p. 214). I yearn to use my newfound understanding of communication ethics to fight for social justice, to encourage the next generation of leaders, and to further social causes that I feel passionately about. But through my recent conversations with B I realize that there is no place more perfect for applying communication ethics than in these moments with her.
(Photo credit iheartinspiration.com)
I cherish the fact that she confides in me about her daily goings-on. I know that I must create and maintain a receptive dialogic space for her or I could lose that communicative relationship as she grows. I remind myself to speak without telling, to consciously acknowledge my goods as well as hers, and to try and understand her young narrative and her standpoint. This is difficult work as a parent. ‘Telling’ our own Truth to our children is easier than removing ourselves from the equation and offering gentle advice.
Not only is the dialogic space between my daughter and I important but so is the way in which she engages with her peers, whose influence will soon eclipse mine. Being a teenager is fraught with challenges and I want nothing more for my daughter than for her to be true to herself. As our conversations continue I plan to encourage her to be empathetic and understanding to her peers yet strong in her convictions; otherwise, “the notion of dialectic morphs into relativism, the view that anything goes or that all goods are equally valuable in human life” (Arnett, Fritz, and Bell, 2009, p. 222). Acknowledging why her peers may make the choices they do yet being able to make the best choices for herself – this is a gift I hope I can give her.
(Photo credit tamingthegoblin.com)
Parenting provides an unparalleled opportunity to intimately learn from the perspective of the Other. If I’m smart, I will learn as much as I can from B and from all of my children as they grow while helping them learn to define their own Truths. Hopefully I don’t mess them up too much in the process.
Arnett, R.C., Fritz, J.M.H., and Bell, L.M. (2009). Communication ethics literacy: Dialogue and difference. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.
Wiseman, R. (2009). Queen bees and wannabes: Helping your daughter survive cliques, gossip, boyfriends, and the new realities of girl world. New York, NY: Harmony.
I have a contentious relationship with my pancreas. No, strike that — I have no relationship with my pancreas. When I was 18 it decided to jump ship and let me fend for myself. Two months later my thyroid ran off with it in some sort of twisted lover’s plot, leaving me confused and deathly ill, forced to adjust to life as an insulin-dependent diabetic with a thyroid condition. I handle my condition as nonchalantly as most people handle brushing their teeth, but it wasn’t always so. In my fifteen years as a diabetic I have encountered my fair share of people both professionally and personally who all profess to have my best interest at heart, who have tried to “help” me in their own way. How each of them define my best interest varies and often runs counter to my own definition. Well-intentioned as some of them may have been, I have experienced apathy, shaming, and blatant cruelty at the hands of such “concerned” individuals. The discourse between a patient and their support network can help or hinder that patient’s care and recovery, something I’ve experienced first-hand. Ethical communication within the health care field is a crucial part of patient care and its importance cannot be overemphasized, and the dialogue a patient has within themselves about their own illness helps sets the stage for ethical communication to take place.
(It’s so annoying when that happens. Photo credit pinterest.com)
Arnett, Fritz, and Bell (2009) discuss the idea of responsiveness in health care communication. Responsiveness refers to “ways to respond to the illness in the larger context of a life, not just for answers to ‘fix’ ill health” (p. 195). Ethical discourse between a patient and their support network relies upon this responsiveness. The responsiveness stems from what Arnett et al. (2009) refer to as the “why” and the “how” in a patient’s approach to their own care – in other words, when a patient has a “why”, a reason to care for themselves, they can bear any “how” in order to do so. I had this dialogic negotiation within myself as I learned to navigate a diabetic life. I was young and goal-oriented and had no desire to change my path. My attitude was, and has always been, how do I keep doing what I’m doing without becoming “a diabetic”? While I am not ashamed or ignorant of my condition, I don’t embrace it either. I don’t identify with it or center my life on it. As a result I rarely talk about it outside of a clinical setting. A care provider truly operating with my “best interest” in mind would honor my minimalist perspective, offering suggestion without judgment, and demonstrating respect for the challenges living with diabetes can bring. But all too often their definition of my “best interest” is to pore over numbers, analyze and calculate me to death, and attempt to “tell” me about my life from what they read in books. It’s frustrating at best, dehumanizing at worst.
(Yeah thanks for that. Photo credit schedule.sxsw.com)
As anybody who has undergone a similar transformation will tell you, adjusting to a diabetic lifestyle is not easy. The learning curve is enormous. You learn to test your blood sugar several times a day, then to inject insulin several times a day, and then a final transition to wearing an insulin pump. On top of all this you must learn to eat again, which is far more overwhelming than any of the medical training. Food becomes units of carbohydrates. Meals become calculated portions of nutrients. Eat this, not that, never these. Eating becomes a matter of survival, a mathematical equation. I remember staring into our pantry in those first few weeks and sobbing like somebody had died. I don’t know how to eat anymore.
(I wear one of these bad boys, a Minimed 722 Paradigm pump. Photo credit harmanlaw.com)
This all sounds rather intense and dramatic, and I suppose it was at the time. I have had a few emergencies that brought me to the ER but I am fortunate that I can count fifteen years’ worth on one hand. I consider myself fortunate that I had the luxury of a normal childhood, never having to forgo my Halloween candy for diabetic-approved ‘treats’ (which are never very good). I’m not going to wax poetic about all of the life lessons I’ve learned from my condition because frankly I find it embarrassing when people do that. It goes without saying that my paradigm has shifted and that I’ve learned to do things a little differently, but again, I choose to honor my life and my path apart from the diabetes. It’s like a buzzing fly that occasionally lands.
As a diabetic, my communication experiences in the health care field had a fabulous beginning. The diabetes management clinic that first treated me set the bar high enough that most have paled in comparison. Larry was my first diabetic educator. She was relatively young, sweet, and spoke uncomfortable truths with a kind voice. She was insulin dependent herself and had learned to draw up her own insulin injections when she was only four. She approached her diabetes with a casual pragmatism, combining the serious with the mundane. Larry had a level of understanding that surpassed any other professional I’ve worked with precisely because she knew what it was like to live as a diabetic. She understood, and her words reflected that. She modeled what Baker-Ohler (as cited by Arnett, Fritz, and Bell, 2009, p. 200) termed “labor of care” – a combination of labor, work, and action that embodied the human element of caregiving at its finest. Larry was sensitive to my needs, I was open to her knowledge, and we were able to engage in a successful ethical communication dialogue.
(Photo credit bmhvt.org)
Most other providers I’ve encountered since were polite but clinical. Write everything down, calculate when and what kind of exercise you’ll do and adjust your insulin and food intake accordingly. Half of this, plus two, carry the nine, and four ounces of orange juice at precisely this time o’clock. Report back to us with your food diary and your blood sugar log so we can pick it apart, look for patterns, and scold you for eating that piece of birthday cake. And by the way, how are you feeling? While done with good intention, my life, my outlook, was an afterthought. I was a set of lab results and not much else.
The darkest end of the spectrum came with a high-risk OBGYN during my third pregnancy. All of my pregnancies were high risk but this one was particularly awful – a toxic combination of intense stressors elsewhere in my life made it especially difficult to control my blood sugar. High blood sugar during a pregnancy can negatively impact fetal development, and every crazy blood sugar I had wracked me with guilt and fear. Toward the end of my pregnancy I saw a provider that was not my usual OB. This man declined to check my chart, inquire about my endocrinologist’s findings, or attempt to understand my situation. He asked me about my blood sugar readings in passing and immediately scoffed at my answers. He lectured me condescendingly for a few minutes, looked at my huge belly, and declared, “I’m surprised you haven’t killed that baby yet.” He concluded his visit and I sobbed all the way home, utterly dumbfounded that a physician could have said something so hateful to his own patient.
(Photo credit angels-and-you.blogspot.com)
Arnett, Fritz, and Bell (2009) mention the role energy plays in communication. “Human beings find the reason to respond from many sources, each giving a sense of energy” (p. 202). This doctor oozed disdain, apathy, and disinterest from the moment he walked into the exam room. Arnett et al. (2009) argue that “it takes the engagement of the labor of care to admit illness and then to take proper action” (p. 201). If this doctor was truly interested in my well-being and that of my child, he should have made an effort to engage in ethical communication with me – to display a combination of labor, work, and action that demonstrated what he felt was in my best interest (in this case, to control my blood sugars). Once that door was open, I could respond in kind by expressing my efforts and challenges. Unfortunately he declined to open that door. I’m sure he spends much of his life closed off from many things, including himself, but I hope for the sake of other patients that he makes an effort to open the door in the future.
Arnett, R.C., Fritz, J.M.H., and Bell, L.M. (2009). Communication ethics literacy: Dialogue and difference. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/02/us/fort-hood-shooter-profile/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
I’m not sure what’s more disappointing: reading the comments section of a CNN article about the recent shooting in Ft. Hood and finding the use of the phrase “retarded cowboy” in the debate (referring to former President Bush of course, who is completely unrelated to the article of course), or being not at all surprised to find somebody using the phrase “retarded cowboy” in the comments section. Theoretically this story could be expected to generate conversation about VA services, PTSD, the complications of mental illness, perhaps an analysis of our military subculture – all subjects that could use a dose of constructive dialogue. That’s the dream, right?
(“Guess what I was doing this week? Not being involved in the Ft. Hood shooting.”)
[Photo credit http://www.riteblok.com]
The comments began pleasantly enough with qualified and open-minded statements from a few readers. But alas, in true social-media-debate fashion, it quickly spiraled into a junior-high-school-style argument about who the most ineffectual war-mongering President was and how stupid the GOP/Democrats are regarding war/the federal budget/foreign policy/Iraq/Afghanistan/Big Pharma/Obamacare/their own children/Bill Gates/campaign financing. Among these eloquent and forward-thinking participants in public discourse we find one who rides the short bus, another who is a sardonic genius, someone who apparently lives in a Fox News bubble, a few that need to grow up, and one unfortunate soul who is actually an empty person with no heart. That, friends, is what we call constructive debate these days.
Is this really what public discourse has come to? Has the internet and social media perverted our public sphere and inhibited our lack for healthy public debate, or does it merely immortalize Joe Citizen’s once-fleeting petulant comments and put them on a global stage?
(I’m curious if any of these gentlemen from this 18th century depiction of the beginnings of the public sphere “rode the short bus”.)
[Photo credit igoristic.com]
This type of insult – er, “debate” – is an example of “undue confidence and unsubstantiated opinion”. In other words, people opening their mouths without presenting their opinions in an educated way. Okay, so you think Bush was the worst President in the history of Presidents and that it somehow has bearing on the incident at Ft. Hood. How is that opinion applicable to this topic? What theories or facts do you have to contribute the ongoing momentum of this story that can help us analyze what factors may have contributed to the shooting or that can help us prevent one like it in the future? These aren’t accusations, they’re honest questions.
Public discourse requires several things to be effective, according to Arnett, Fritz, and Bell (2009). It requires a respect for the Other. It requires an understanding that we are all entitled to our unique opinions which are all of equal value; as such we should anticipate disagreement when participating in ethical public discourse. As Arnett et al. (2009) state, “the public arena is not a place of ideology where there is one idea; it is a robust place of multiple perspectives and ideas” (p. 103). It requires us to realize that some voices are marginalized and get unequal share of the public arena, but they mustn’t be dismissed as absent or unimportant. Lastly, ethical public discourse depends on the separation of the public and private spheres, something that social media has altered. The public sphere should be revered as a sacred space where we can come together in a respectful manner and constructively debate. When the public and private overlap, the public sphere is violated. Arnett et al. (2009) caution us that “when we attempt to make the public arena a private place of agreement, we move private commonplaces to a public form of banality, a form of extreme commonness, taking way their uniqueness and special nature” (p. 106). So many people #overshare the most banal details of their lives with an international audience, reinforcing the idea that every thought or opinion we have is worth sharing in any forum.
[Photo credit socialmediatoday.com]
One tactic that many social media pages employ is to utilize moderators. Comment moderation is a delicate balance between preventing destructive, unethical discourse and ensuring free speech, but could be helpful in protecting the sanctity of the public arena. Most of us have encountered trolls while perusing the internet – those that deliberately incite trouble in online forums. Moderators could assist by keeping conversations on track, posing questions to the readers, and blocking any trolls. They could help bring forth those voices missing from the conversation. In the Ft. Hood article, the most insightful comments came from current or former military members or those who were otherwise close to military life. In this instance a moderator could ask for comments from those who are in the mental health field or work with veterans – perhaps those who suffer from PTSD or who have been victims of shootings themselves, who could provide a more intimate insight into the situation but may be otherwise hesitant to contribute.
[Photo credit wisesloth.wordpress.com]
Now I’m not saying that private, small-group conversations that take place outside the public sphere should lack colorful opinions. This is America after all – if you think that Former President Bush is a retarded cowboy, by all means commiserate over the success/failure of his Administration over beer in your backyard, or go rant on your personal Facebook wall. And this isn’t to say that there should be no accountability either. Calling a spade a spade can be an honest criticism in the name of progress. Perhaps just don’t call the spade a “retarded cowboy”.
Arnett, R.C., Fritz, J.M.H., and Bell, L.M. (2009). Communication ethics literacy: Dialogue and difference. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications
My vlog presentation for COMM 616, Chapter 6.
And if you haven’t seen The X-Files before, well, you’re welcome.
I was born to relatively freethinking Christians – a United Church lay minister father and a philosophy major mother who met while working on their respective Master’s degrees in theology. Before joining the church my father ran the spiritual gamut from tarot-card reading to dabbling as a hare Krishna. My mother, raised in a secular home, found meaning in the Christian church as a young girl and followed that path to graduate school. I’m convinced that I came into the world seized by an intense fascination with life and death because of this – the seeds for my obsession surely planted in utero and furthered by some personal compelling force that I have yet to explain. Curious as they were, my parents always encouraged my siblings and I to find our own path, a journey that has taken me on a long and winding road to a much unexpected place. Arnett, Fritz, and Bell (2009) define a narrative as “a story agreed upon by a group of people” (p. 37); we all participate in both creating and interpreting our communication by means of stories that help us “read and evaluate the texts of both life and literature” (p. 38). The spiritual narratives of my parents helped shape my own spiritual narrative, which continues to serve as the prevailing narrative influence in my life.
(Credit dakkadakka.com)
My search for meaning began modestly – if not morbidly – in rural New Brunswick. When I was three my mother taught me my alphabet off the gravestones near my father’s parish. Around that same time my first imaginary friend died in an unfortunate crucifixion incident, much to my parents’ amusement. By six years old my drawings were nothing but “R.I.P.” gravestones and chain-clad ghosts with black eyes. In Grade 2, a defining moment occurred in the local library: I found myself in the 133.1 section with a book of ghost stories in my hands. I rushed home and devoured it. And subsequently I had my first experience with sheer paralyzing terror, and although I cried myself to sleep and convinced my parents to keep the book in their room just in case I could not. stop. reading it. Ghost stories and paranormal studies have since preoccupied much of my intellectual pursuits. Not only do the stories (and the fear) provide me with a high of sorts, reading them is a safe way to face my own mortality. Is this what becomes of us?
(A purported photograph of the Brown Lady of Raynham Hall, c. 1936, the first ghost story I ever read. Credit wikipedia.org)
Layered with the life-and-death cycle study is the religious framework behind it. My childhood spiritual narrative was a compilation of ideas, or what Arnett, Fritz, and Bell (2009) refer to as “petite narratives” (p. 38): multiple understandings of our human experience. My petite narratives were liberal Christian traditions (predominantly United Church with a bit of Anglican for good measure) with a smattering of superstitious Maritime cultural beliefs. Growing up, my father was my intermediary – fiercely intelligent and compassionate in my eyes, revered by his parishioners, able to converse with the divine. Surely if he came to the Christian conclusion it must be correct. I spent years engaging my father in rhetoric, which Arnett et al. say is requisite for a world in which there are multiple conflicting narratives. I asked my father endless questions about Christianity but he failed to answer them to my satisfaction. I wanted to believe, I really did. Alas our rhetoric brought me to an agree-to-disagree fork in the road, so on I wandered.
(Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. Credit kalyan-city.blogspot.com )
I found different answers to different questions but all of the religious narratives I explored lacked definitive conclusions. Books on Wicca taught me reverence for nature; the Tao Te Ching gave me a beautiful understanding of a cyclical worldview, more meaningful to me than the linear Western perspective. Buddhist studies brought an innate sense of peace and interconnectedness. I minored in Religious Studies in college, taking classes on religious philosophy from a Reform Jew and studying biblical literature from a Roman Catholic. I went to Mormon testimony Sunday with a friend, to a youth group with another. Eventually, in my senior year of college, my watershed moment came in the form of a Sociology of Religion class. Sociology had completely altered my worldview in every other way, and the concept of religion as a socially constructed commodity was revolutionary to me. But finally, FINALLY, I had an answer: there was no answer. We don’t have the answers. Oh my god, there is no answer. It was as if I was seeing the universe as it really was for the first time.
(Credit katie-ryn.deviantart.com)
And that, friends, is where I find myself. A self-described secular humanist/atheist, a huge proponent of the rational and the scientifically-minded narratives that aren’t afraid to admit error, that we don’t know everything, that for every question we find an answer to a thousand more questions arise. Mine is a set of narratives that is pragmatically focused both on the here and now and in the progress of our species. I now subscribe to a worldview in which morality and religious ideology are mutually exclusive, for which the fragility of the human experience and the awesome expanse of the universe that we find ourselves in are simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying. For all of the small tangible answers that this worldview provides, I am continually surprised to have found such comfort in the glaring absence of an Answer.
But I must admit, I still occasionally run down the hall after I flick the lights off. You know. Just in case.
(Credit solvemygirlproblems.com)
What religious narratives have influenced your life? Have you found yourself in a place you imagined you would?
Arnett, R.C., Fritz, J.M.H., and Bell, L.M. (2009). Communication ethics literacy: Dialogue and difference. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.
Explore my own interpretation of “the good” in my life in this time and in this place.
Arnett, Fritz, and Bell (2009) define the good as “the valued center of a given communications ethic – what is most important and held in highest regard” which “finds protection and promotion in our communicative practices” (p. 3). There are several aspects of my life that I consider part of my “good”: my children, husband, extended family and friends; my academic pursuits; my aspirations to improve some part of humanity in some tangible way. I’ve dwelled on each of these, only to arrive at cliché sound bites that I think sum up how most of us feel already. Then I got up to raid my fridge and walked through my new office and into my new kitchen, and my inner child clapped and squealed I love this house! for what feels like the umpteenth time since we moved here less than two months ago.
And that is what defines the pinnacle example of the good in my life, in this time and in this place: peace and security. Our new house, in this new town, is such a fitting example of what my husband and I spent so much of our recent lives working and struggling for. Our last year was riddled with military TDYs (temporary duties that take my husband out of town for extended periods), overlapping schedules for four little children, my return to school, and suffocating legal conflicts. It was exhausting. We craved a fresh start. When we received orders to Little Rock AFB last July we were thrilled; there’s nothing like a literal new beginning to encapsulate a symbolic one. We bought a house sight unseen and placed all of our proverbial eggs in its 1860 square foot basket, crossed our fingers and (cautiously, optimistically) drove off into the sunset.
Our little house on Pecan Lane has been everything I didn’t know I always wanted. It’s the first home my husband and I own together, and it provides a lovely sense of financial security. I didn’t realize how different it would be to own a home, a place in the world that’s ours, where we can do as we please. We’re grounded in this new place. A stillness has settled upon our family, only matched by the quietness in our new neighborhood. Slowly we integrate the soccer games and scouting events when we’re comfortable, instead just spending our time in our house with each other. The successful conclusion of our legal battles coupled with the geographic distance of the move brought with it a stunning silence for a situation that loomed like an enormous black cloud for so long. I’m filled with an airy optimism, encouraged and strengthened by the positive outcome that I worked so hard for. We aren’t constantly disrupted by excessive work schedules, meddlesome busybodies or over-scheduled children, and the hectic moving process is over with. We faithfully plant community roots while I plant dianthus in the backyard.
I am keenly aware that this peaceful security may not last. My toddler still climbs on the kitchen counter before anybody else is awake, trying to reach the oranges. My preschooler is endlessly blowing up bad guys with homemade lego guns. My seven and nine year olds are continually crashing in and out of the front door, forgetting homework or looking for sidewalk chalk, and I continually clean the floor behind them and/or drink coffee while my husband gets home late. Our family life itself is not always, if ever, calm and peaceful. Arnett, Fritz, and Bell (2009) stress the importance of just showing up in communication ethics. Physical absence means that learning opportunities are missed, an idea that expands beyond the classroom setting. Physically being present with people, approaching situations with an open mind and a desire to fight for the good is the best way to engage with others in a forward-moving dialogue that will hopefully take us all to a better place, whatever that place is. Being physically in this new place has helped us actualize our desires for our family in a way that would have been lacking had we stayed in Washington. I approach this next chapter with an open mind and an eagerness to see what I can learn and where I can help.
And I enjoy my morning coffee in stillness, if only for a moment.
Arnett, R.C., Fritz, J.M.H., and Bell, L.M. (2009). Communication ethics literacy: Dialogue and difference. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.
arwenmccaffrey 