The main takeaway, for me, from chapter two and chapter three is the idea of narratives, and how they play a role in communication ethics. Narratives, at their core, are simply “a story agreed upon by a group of people” (Arnett, 35). Everyone has their own narrative that helps guide them through the way they communicate with one another. As Arnett talks about, “Moral and ethical decision making and our understanding of the good dwell within narrative structures” (Arnett, 37). As we grow up, we differentiate ‘the good’ based upon our own narrative. I find this extremely interesting because our own narrative can be extremely different from one another, which makes communicating ethically very tricky. Our narratives come from the way that we were raised, including our family traditions and religious practices.
The first thing that I thought of, in relation to narratives, is political agendas. During elections, each political runner has their own agenda and narrative, and they sell it to the American people in hopes that they share the same narrative (i.e., President Biden pushed the narrative that he would be able to combat the coronavirus, unlike his opponent, Donald Trump). When someone shares the same narrative as the political runner, they tend to vote for them, and assume that the other runner is completely wrong. This effects the way that people communicate with one another, because they believe that they are the only 'good'. In my experience, the narratives of each political party makes communication almost impossible with one another.
Great points. I loved how you also used our political landscape as an example of pushing narratives and I think politicians and political parties are ultimately just a big fights for what they think "the good" is. Every politician needs a narrative, they set the scene of what they think needs fixing, why, and how they plan to fix it. Everyone's narratives differ, and it's our job as constituents to figure out what narrative we resonate more with. Arnett says "a narrative serves as such a dwelling place, working rhetorically to protect and promote a given sense of the good" (Arnett 36) which is a fancy way of buttoning up an agenda in a pretty package and telling the world this is the way it ought to be. Arnett also describes a mulitplicity of narratives as "generating rival understandings of virtues and competing views of the good" (Arnett 36). A multiplicity of narratives in the context of a political landscape really just means having more than one viewpoint or party to associate with which is the essence of a healthy democracy and is essential to protecting that right.
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