Chapter 4: "Loyalty: Choosing Between Competing Allegiances"

February 10th, 2014

The concept of loyalty is often over-simplified, yet it's hard not to ask, "Well, why can't it be simple?" It seems straightforward and easy to identify, which in some instances it is, but when put into different contexts, it creates a whole world of questions - and a whole world of ethical dilemmas. Before reading this chapter, I thought of loyalty as a sort of "desired responsibility", in which we usually wanted to be responsible to someone or for something because we had emotional ties that connected us to them. Yet what I did not take into account was the fact that loyalty is not always happy-go-lucky, we don't always desire it when making ethical decisions because it comes with innate power, power that can serve as a double-edged sword. This power can take many forms: it can come as betrayal when one betrays (either purposefully or unintentionally) a cause by being loyal to another one; it can come as bias or prejudice by being loyal to something that does not stand for fair values; and it can cloud our vision by having to choose between competing loyalties. A couple of these issues were brought up in Chapter 4 and I was struck by how much I had glossed over these specificities before. I truly realized how sticky loyalty can get in the communications world (and in general, really) when I read the ethical dilemmas presented at the end of the chapter, especially Cases 4-A and 4-G. It's hard to separate and prioritize your loyalties when you're juggling a large amount of them and they can effect your life in various degrees. The chapter gave a concise line of advice that I really appreciated: "When making ethical choices, it is important to consider what your loyalties are and how you arrived at those loyalties." I think this is so important because not many people, including myself, know why they are loyal to something or someone; they just go along without fully understanding why certain loyalties are present in their lives. I think this aspect is a big issue when it comes to making ethical decisions; after all, loyalty plays an enormous role in our personal conclusions and can effect others to a larger degree than we ever could've imagined.