The Greeks believed to be an orator you need to be morally good? I do agree that an orator, public speaker, should be morally good in their speech especially if they want their audience to trust them. This of course is not always the case but who is to decide if someone is being “morally good”? Everyone perceives each idea and topic different from one another and just because someone may give a totally different speech as someone else on the same topic, how do we decide who the morally good one is especially if they have two opposite views. With being a public speaker you do have a huge obligation and you are someone who can persuade your audience in one way or another so in an ideal world you want to make sure you provide them with all the right facts and information but this doesn’t always happen. For example, politicians hold a great power over the people. We look to them to be morally good in what they tell use, the facts they present and even their opinions but they may not always provide us with the right information because their job is to win our vote, over the next person. But again even though we may find out that they don’t follow through with what information they presented, that politician may still feel he was being morally good in his judgments. Another example is celebrities because people hold them to a high standard and expect them to use their “celebrity” for good and to be morally good in what they talk to the world about but I don’t believe that they have to. They are people to and have the freedom to say what they want even if they are not being morally good. We would just like to see them use their power for good.
Is there a connection between goodness, truth and public communication? Well I would like to say that yes there is a connection but that would be if everyone who was a public speaker spoke the whole truth with only facts and knowledge then they would bring goodness to public speaking. These days people will say what the audience wants to hear, there isn’t always truth in what they are saying because they know that they need to only state information that with sway people to believe them. Not all people are this way and as I said before people should speak with truth, goodness and be morally good because people are putting trust in these orators, but you don’t have to do these things and still be a great public speaker.
I find your argument to be very concrete. In my post I touched on the same area. I can understand the confusion that comes from one individual deciding the morality of another or even, in your argument, deciding which orator is and is not morally good when both orators relay the same speech with two separate points of view. In regards to you discussion on the connection between goodness, truth and public communication, I would also like to support that with one disagreement. Your response seems to sidetrack on the discussion of whether or not an individual can or should obtain all three areas as if they are all qualities. The topic "public communication" is a topic not a characteristic. So yes, in my opinion there is a connection between the three concepts, but are goodness and truth always relayed through public communication? No.
ReplyDeleteI also agree with what you said about everyone living by a different moral. Everyone has their own standard to which they attempt to live up to. For me, that's the beauty of communication, it allows us to see and learn from the many different perceptions there are on different topics. The hope is that the one who is covering a specific topic, communicates their belief honestly. Furthermore, when it comes to persuading, they present information that is objective rather than allowing their passion and emotion distort that. That's where things commonly get twisted. I enjoyed your post, being morally good can be subjective, but telling the truth is objective and I personally think that should be the number one thing a public speaker should live up to.
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