The credo will not be helpful to tyrants, a police state, the close-minded, those who already know the truth that never changes and the truth that may not be challenged. Communication involves choice making, conscious and unconscious, thoughtfully and painfully deliberated or habitual and unthinking. Whenever choices are made that affect other human beings, there is an ethical dimension. Any dimension may be more or less relevant, have more or less valence, but it is there. Until we accept responsibility for our choices, we cannot function as moral beings.
People inevitably play a variety of ever changing and evolving roles in communication.
We are speakers and listeners, writer and readers. We choose to participate, we are accidental participants, we refuse to participate. The culture, society, group, family, and couple are affected by our shared and individual communication ethics. In our communication we are simultaneous utilizing and negotiating our communication ethic albeit usually implicitly and tacitly rather than overtly. In one sense the Greek rhetor addressed all those with power when he spoke in the Senate.