Post 6: What would Socrates say?
Philosopher William David Ross pointed out there is often more than one value competing for preeminence in our decisions. He outlined six life principles, calling them “duties” and said no one is more important than the others. When people work and think ethically they have to balance and decide between them regularly. This Ross list includes Justice, Beneficence, Doing No Harm, Fidelity and Reparation, Self-Improvement and Gratitude.
Good professional communicators work as well as they can to appropriately address these competing values, a difficult task that has been ramped up significantly by technological change.
The more our commitment is divided, the harder it is to see a clear path to satisfying conflicting duties. In a world of accelerating change and the ability to instantly connect with a potential audience of 1.3 billion (and growing), with the added demand of producing information 24/7 and shrinking budget lines with which to accomplish all that, we’re now expected to address additional stresses competing for our attention and balance them as well.
The first forms of communication from one to many were non-verbal and oral. While ethics came into play at that time there weren’t too many other distractions interfering with getting information from Point A to Point B.
Then came a game-changing technology – the invention of written language systems and the ability to convey the written word in a portable document format: markings on papyrus, much more convenient than cave paintings or chiseled stone for getting your message out. Plato wrote of Socrates’ fear (expressed in “Phaedrus” in 370 B.C.E.) that the new media technology of the day would mess things up.
Plato said Socrates told him that people:
“… will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.”
Socrates didn’t have a clue about what was going to happen next.
Of course today’s new media technologies have become exponentially more complicated, so when a person is tasked with delivering a message to an audience it is simultaneously easier and more difficult to package the message because of the new tools in play. The ease of message delivery and the preponderance of amazing tools now available at a low price have ramped up the complexity of doing communications work because individual communicators are expected to do so much more so much more quickly.
The ethical values communicators must balance are placed under stress by commonly found “feed-the-beast” and “post-immediately” corporate news mantras and the demands for content production in multiple formats. Nearly a decade ago I worked on an ethics research project in the early days of online editions (http://facstaff.elon.edu/andersj/summary.html). Online news managers of the time (prior to the video explosion and other new demands) said small staff sizes and the need for speed and scoops erode standards.
Life hasn’t gotten any easier in the past decade.
Communicators once juggled two or three balls in the air, considering the needs of the public good, the audience and an employer while balancing ethical values and obtaining information in a basic format that allowed processing time. Two or three balls in the air we could handle. Today’s “new media” demands have tossed in a few swords (expanded responsibilities tied to ramped up video, audio and interactive production) and a chainsaw (the ability to “publish” instantly from anywhere, wirelessly).
And we’re supposed to just keep juggling without missing a beat.
Our loyalties and our attention are divided more than ever before. How many duties can we keep airborne without fumbling? Sometimes things are going to fall and we’ll just have to assess the damage, pick up the pieces and start over again.
What would Socrates say?
