Chapter 5

There were some interesting points in this chapter.  The theories of Hans Gadamer (stating that bias is a big part of human understanding stood out.  It is interesting that Gadamer says that we should not try to do away with bias when it has such a negative connotation in our society.  The book states that “[b]iases guide our unique insights and contributions to everyday life” and if we approach difference from Gadamer’s perspective, we will recognize our own biases and how they shape our views, and also recognize that the Other has biases as well.  The idea of learning from each other in order to deepen our understanding is something that resonated with me in this chapter.

Another part of Chapter 5 that stood out was the idea of “imposing dialogue on settings that do not authentically call forth dialogue” “forc[ing] a false sense of openness and attentiveness to another.”  The example that the book gives about the organization that prided itself on its familial attitude toward its employees which later laid many of these employees off is something that I have thought about at work.  A couple of years ago there were quite a few people laid off from the company that I work for.  When I found out about these layoffs, I thought about how this company stated numerous times that our organization was a close knit group, even describing us all as a “family.”  This is like what the book describes as “trying to make communicative structures intimate and friendly that live genuinely in the public sphere and are enriched by communicative distance.”  Organizations try to bring everyone together and create a sense of family but when people are laid off, the affected employees become disillusioned by how they were treated in contrast to how they were led to believe they were valued by the company.