Overrunning reality, how interpersonal communication breaks down, and the story of my life

The parallels drawn in Chapter 7 between dialogic ethics praxis and concepts of interpersonal communication ethics are most applicable to my life with regard to what Martin Buber describes as "overrunning reality" (124). The book's authors shy away from describing "overrunning reality" as what we more popularly know it as: trying too hard. Attempts at real-world relationships are plagued with this phenomenon--a substantive good of "building relationships with desired people," or, "expanding one's friend network," and the accompanying subordinate goods of going out of your way to force that relationship to happen. We change our personalities and conversational tone to impress the other person. We recognize (imagine) an overabundance of opportunities to hang out and get to know each other, while other, more genuine, relationships go ignored. We try so hard to win the approval of those we admire, to earn the social status that comes with being their friend, to feel "included" in the culture and/or community that we believe surrounds them. As Arnett, et al. point out, "the form of the relationship is not subject to our demand or our . . . preference"; effectively, creating objectives and demanding a certain approach to interpersonal communication breaks dialogic ethics' first principle and shifts the format of conversation from dialogue to monologue.

To expand on this idea: Arnett and the authors state that "when the interaction no longer nourishes the relationship, interpersonal communication moves into another form of communicative interaction" (119). For the most part, the book's authors decline to comment on what these forms might be, but the authoritarian shift when demand breaks dialogic ethics offers clues. Organizational communication ethics is one possibility, with the rigors of a workplace, committee, or institution dictating a certain degree of faux-friendliness between all involved. This demand strips distance of its potential for fostering natural, organic relationships and makes caring for those relationships, the main good of interpersonal communication ethics, into a job. Another possibility for what interpersonal communication becomes when demand is introduced is business and professional communication ethics, with a codes, standards, and procedures approach. This would primarily apply to the overseers and bosses who create the demand for particular relationships in the workplace.

Finally, my own guilty instances of overrunning reality by placing demands on relationships often fall in a narrative approach to communication ethics. As a self-described romantic, one who sees events, circumstance, and relationships of life as elements of a grand story, or props on the stage of life, I find myself trying to tell the story of my life before it happens. Doing so places implicit, almost subconscious demands on my relationships, with the added negative of making me "difficult to teach, befriend, or advise" while I "lose perspective on what I do not know" by getting too ahead of myself in the story of life (124). Trying to conceptualize what forms of communication ethics arise when objectives are introduced and interpersonal communication falls apart may help me recognize these transitions in my own life, and thereby stop trying to tell the story of my life before it happens.