Chapter 12; Communication Ethics Literacy & Difference

This chapter was a very interesting read and was a very nice way for the authors to wrap up the book. The concept of learning in connection to communication ethics is somewhat weaved throughout the entirety of the book and I find it to be a profound way of looking at communication ethics. In this chapter the connection between learning and discernment as well as difference are all very interesting connections that I would have never made without the insight from the text. According to the text the first step in a period of great amounts of difference is to learn about the difference of which we do not know and then to continue with good judgement, or discernment, from that of which we have learned (207-208). This person who teaches us, the Other, can be anyone. As a student I consider this person to be a teacher or professor specifically. The connections between these three concepts, learning, difference, and discernment, make me think of my Intercultural Communications class specifically. We learn so much about these other cultures and their customs and all of these different concepts and communication styles they use and what they consider to be the good. After we learn about this good etc. it is up to us to use our good judgement or discernment to decide what we do with the knowledge or information we aquire from the Other. Since people have different views of the good what we learn from the Other might not agree or align with our own personal sense of the good. Each individuals differing views of what they consider to be the good is where the concept of difference is born (212). Because of this we are able to think what we would like in relation to what we learn to be the good and what we think to be the good.