A person’s integrity is encompassed by the consideration of his or her personal values, and that person’s upholding of those values as they relate to his or her personal actions. Very many people are weakly integral due to their failure on one or both of these counts: they do not consider in the first place what their personal values are, or their actions are contradictory to the decisions they have already made.
Integrity is not a socially molded construct. Its incipience and maintenance in a person’s character is not influenced by wealth, social standing, race, or upbringing. It results, instead, from an individual’s personal recognition of the degree to which his or her own actions, and also the actions of others, coincide with his or her values.
It is the responsibility of each person to recognize this, notwithstanding what may be said about the roles of government or personal relationships. In other words, failure to have integrity cannot rightly be blamed on the government for generating or preventing certain conditions, or on the many others with whom a person interacts. It can only be blamed on the individual.
Those who lack integrity refuse to pay attention to their surroundings and insist upon rejecting opportunities for personal development which are presented naturally throughout every life. This group accounts easily for the vast majority of people on earth now and throughout history, for otherwise suffering – in all its multitudes of shades – would be unheard of.
But the notion of integrity does not inherently suggest any specific values. The particular values that a person has, unlike the presence of integrity itself, may be socially constructed. The values may be imparted unto a person by parents or other community members, they may be specific to certain cultures or traditions, or they may alternatively dwell within a single person.
Whatever the sources of my personal integral values, identifying them is a worthwhile venture because it aids me in cultivating integrity in myself and recognizing it in others. The following outline describes the values I consider most relevant to a discussion of integrity. Since these are specific values, they are not universally shared across individuals or cultures.
(1) Truthfulness is behavior that reflects what one believes to be true. This means telling the truth, and in all other ways communicating to others only true things. In this sense, truth is a matter of genuine belief, and not a matter of fact. If a person believes, for instance, that spiders are types of insects, then it is not being untruthful for the person to say so even though spiders are in fact arachnids, not insects.
Telling the truth, as one believes it to be, is not by itself enough to satisfy being truthful. A person must not deceive or mislead, even though his or her speech may be technically true. For example, let’s say a homeless man asks me if I can spare some change and I respond, “Sorry, man. I don’t have any change,” knowing full well that I have plenty of bills in my wallet, but no coins. In this case, I am not stating an outright lie because it is true that I have no coins, which is a common interpretation of change. But in this context, the homeless man is not really restricting his request to coins, though he may know from experience that I am unlikely to give him anything besides, if anything at all.
He is in fact asking for money, which is obvious, but I choose to feign interpretation of change as meaning coins to avoid feeling like a liar. Change, after all, does not necessarily imply coins, as $14 in bills may be given as change for a $6 purchase with a $20 bill. Ambiguous circumstances arise all the time in normal conversation, and if only one of the conversers recognizes and monopolizes on the ambiguity, then this is unintegral.
Truthfulness, moreover, cannot be selective without losing integrity. It should be exhibited all the time, in all situations, and with all people, including oneself. It should be spontaneous and habitual, but this does not mean that a person should go around divulging sensitive information without prudence. People must know that when they have been told something in confidence, or when they are under interrogation, they must often take care and be truthful cautiously. There are respectable ways to avoid giving information without being untruthful, for example: “I’m sorry, but I am not currently disposed to discuss that matter,” or, “I would prefer to consult my spouse before answering that question.”
Similarly, being truthful does not mean that a person offers his or her opinion in any situation, especially if it is unsolicited. The drive to be truthful should not manifest as a drive to speak one’s mind, albeit truthfully, at any opportunity; but whatever is said, should be said with truthfulness.
(2) Civility is resistance to violence in words, acts, and thoughts. It is the property of a person that makes him or her civil, and also that makes him or her civilized. Civility in thoughts is the birthplace of civility in general. By refusing to think violently, violent words and acts rarely fruit, unless by accident or habit. Violent thoughts include not only thoughts of violence, but also the entertainment of emotions that come about violently, such as rage.
People who are inclined to think violently can train themselves to tame their thinking. By being alert and paying attention to one’s emotions and internal processes, it is possible to recognize a violent thought at its first formation. This recognition is a critical step in preventing the thought from developing into words or acts, and considering the factors that lead to the thought can aid the person in cultivating his or her resistance to violence. Ideally, however, the thought itself should be prevented, and it can only be hoped that with practice, a person will become less inclined to generate the thought in the first place.
Civility of words means resistance to using words violently. Violent words may take the form of empty or real threats, using words to incite violent thoughts or acts, speaking in a violent manner during bouts of anger, or employing tone and intonation that is hurtful to others. The range of violent words is potentially very large, from name-calling to sarcasm, but context is crucial in making the distinction. A lawyer, for example, may describe to a jury the violent crimes of an accused murderer. If the lawyer is part of the prosecution, he or she may select words that paint a particularly gruesome picture of the acts committed, and may be anatomically explicit. He or she might employ adjectives that appeal to the jury’s morbid imagination, such as hideous, depraved, insidious, cold-hearted, or even evil. These are all instances of using violent words.
Alternatively, the same murder can be described civilly, using civil language. A professor, for instance, giving a lecture on criminal psychology, might select words that have no intention of persuading the audience to feel one way or another about the perpetrator. His or her verbal account would be calm, composed, and matter-of-fact, lacking the rigmarole and theatrics of the court room. The professor would still be obliged to detail the crime: the perpetrator did such-and-such to the victim, police investigators found this-and-that part in the refrigerator, and so on. This description may in fact conjure violent scenes in the minds of the students. The difference is that the professor’s words are not delivered in a violent way and their purpose is not to strike the listeners’ attention violently; the purpose is to discuss the facts frankly and civilly.
Violent acts are the most obvious violation of civility. They entail the use of the body to inflict harm unto another or oneself. The body unaided, or the body operating some external mechanism, is equally accountable for violent action. Thus a person may punch, kick, bite, chop, scratch, head-butt, or strangle during a violent act, but may also shoot, stab, bludgeon, impale, explode, run over, or hang during just as violent of an act. Guns, knives, clubs, swords, bombs, cars, and ropes are not violent things by themselves; they require human action to facilitate violence.
People who resist violence in all three categories – thoughts, words, and acts – maintain civility, and at least a fraction of integrity. Only if all people were so civil, the culture could rightly be called a civilization.
(3) Consideration is not, as many assume it to be, tritely defined as being considerate. Rather, it is the act of considering. Considering is the general tendency to think about things. This means having the social aptitude to recognize which issues are deserving of consideration, and thinking about them. The issues that might fall into this category are hugely many and will vary tremendously between societies and individuals. The identities of such issues are not nearly as important as a person’s ability to recognize at least some of them, and treat them with consideration.
In considering a topic, a person will do well to take into account all of the opinions on that topic that a he or she encounters. Depending on a person’s interest or investment in an issue, he or she may actively seek out varieties of opinions, or may come across them inadvertently. Regardless of the manner, these opinions, whether treated as radical sentiments or solid facts, should be considered.
In addition, the act of consideration involves comparing observations that relate to the topic at hand. There is no science to this; it cannot be laid forth in a mechanistic way. Crucially, a person must pay acute attention to his or her surroundings and must carefully observe causation in human relations. In other words, a person should keep a mental inventory of how people respond to various situations, how people behave socially and individually, and the range of diversity in human behavior. The act of consideration as a whole will utilize these observations and factor in the range of opinions on a topic to which the person has been exposed.
There is no inherent necessity for conclusion in consideration; considering is enough. For many topics, gathering sufficient information to form a conclusion would be a daunting task for a single person, unless he or she is a specialist in that field. But it is often possible to at least generate an opinion on an issue, as long as it is understood that as new information comes along, this must too be considered and may alter the opinion.
(4) Self-improvement is the desire and the action to change oneself for the better. This implies that a person has some idea of his or her current and desired statuses. In order to understand these, one must have spent some time under self-analysis. Meditation, introspection, and self-observation are but a few of the ways self-analysis can be achieved. The method is not important: the understanding of oneself is.
Once a person has done the analysis required to understand, at least in part, elements of oneself and how those elements may be improved, it is a great matter of integrity to put into action a plan for improvement. Depending on what is to be bettered, the action may be quite easy or very difficult. It might, for instance, entail a simple reminder to floss regularly. Alternatively, it may relate to a deeper seated trait that requires constant effort to overcome, such as the telling of so-called white lies, or the consumption of drugs.
Opportunities for gradual self-improvement are continually available through a person’s life. Alert people, who have decided on an area for improvement, will notice them with little effort. Such opportunities will take the form of instances that furnish the behavior to be changed; it is up to the person to decide whether to fall into old habits or take the initiative to improve.
For example, an alcoholic who desires to consume less alcohol is presented with an opportunity at each craving for a drink, and at each invitation by friends to visit the bar. A violent person is given an opportunity at each moment he or she is angered or provoked. A liar is supplied with an opportunity during each conversation that prompts the usual manipulation of the truth. The person must realize in the moment that the opportunity has been made available, and that he or she must seize it, or not improve.
By the practice of self-improvement does one realize the vanity and futility of comparison to others. Humility, sympathy, and empathy follow that one did not before realize were latent. This act is a service not only unto oneself, but unto people in general, and people who are also so observant, will see the change and value it.
(5) Personal responsibility is the recognition that individuals have duties, and that duties must be performed voluntarily. Specifically what these duties are cannot be stated expressly, because they are different for each person. People have personal, family, educational, occupational, environmental, and social duties that are de facto tailored to their individual lives. It is foremost the responsibility of each person to recognize what these duties are, and second to perform them.
Those who ignore their duties, or fail to notice them, are just as responsible as those who refuse to do them. People who shirk their duties, or rely without need on the generosity or obliviousness of others to assume their slack, place an undeserved burden on the rest of society. The total duty performed by each person on average is, therefore, disproportionately larger than it would be if each person performed exactly his or her duty.
Furthermore, the practice and employment of personal responsibility is the only way to avoid the culpability amaranth. The culpability amaranth is a type of paradox of blame that continually relinquishes responsibility to another party, like a hot potato. Let’s take the example of an imaginary fellow named Blim who has become addicted to methamphetamine. There were no doubt many people in Blim’s life who played some role in his slow addiction to the drug, and any of these people could be showered with blame.
The person who gave Blim his first (free) sample of meth clearly contributed. So did the many people who sold meth to Blim over the previous years, and the many more who purchased it from him, giving him the funds to feed his addiction. Blim’s friends, who all use meth themselves, surely encouraged his behavior and did not recommend that he seek help even after his frightening and dramatic hospitalization.
The manufacturers of meth undeniably contributed to Blim’s drug use. Following the chain further, the chemical suppliers who did not require background checks for the purchase of pseudoephedrine, phosphorus, and iodine must share some of the blame as well. And what about Blim’s family? What contributions did his parents make that caused him to become interested in drugs in the first place? His grandfather’s alcoholism is an obvious factor, since Blim must have inherited a genetic predisposition to substance abuse. Who knows how far that goes back in the family tree….
It is clear that this blame game can easily continue ad nauseum, and this is a classic example of the culpability amaranth. Ultimately, the only person who can rightly be blamed for Blim’s meth addiction is Blim. Blim was the last person in the chain of connected events: no matter what his childhood home life was like, no matter who made the drug, no matter who gave him the money for it, no matter who put the powdery line in front of his face, Blim was the one who sucked it into his nose.
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It is worth addressing a common concern in any discussion about integrity. The concern is whether there are any circumstances which may justify the breakdown of the values. Let’s say that a person who normally upholds the value of honesty suddenly finds him or herself in a situation which demands dishonesty, or else tragic consequences may occur. For instance, if this normally honest person, who happens to be a stout atheist, is held at gunpoint and told, “If you don’t believe in God, I’m going to shoot you in the head.” The gunperson then asks, “Do you believe in God?”
If the atheist responds, “No,” he or she may be killed, and if “Yes,” then he or she may live on, assuming the gunperson doesn’t question the response. But the answer of “yes” is a compromise of values for the sake of life. The answer of “no” is an upholding of values at the sacrifice of life. Is it worth dying for? What if the gunperson threatened to kill the atheist’s child based on the atheist’s answer: is it worth letting someone else die? To complicate things all the more, if the atheist’s honest answer results directly in violence, even if conducted by another, is this not a violation of civility in words?
Furthermore, if the theistic beliefs of the players were reversed such that the one held at gunpoint is a Christian literalist, and the gunperson is threatening to kill if he or she does believe in God, does the situation change? Is it more difficult to justify compromising values when devotion to God is in question? In other words, is it easier for an atheist to justify lying that he or she does believe in God to avoid death than it is for a theist to justify lying that he or she does not believe in God for the same? Is this not a matter of individual principle?
The same questions may be pondered regarding torture. Does a person lose integrity by being dishonest under torture? Everyone has a different tolerance for physical and psychological pressure. Does this mean that a person with a low pain threshold, who would be more likely to break down under torture, has less integrity than someone who can withstand more pain?
None of these questions, while hypothetically interesting, should bother a person of integrity. Integral people need not feel as though they must have a ready answer for every possible situation. The likelihood is very small, in any case, that the circumstances in which a person’s integrity is ultimately tested would be even remotely anticipated. Integral people trust that if and when the times comes for the life vs. values battle, or anything similar, that they will be capable of assessing the situation for what it is; that they will perceive the context of the battle and rightly judge at that time what the appropriate action is to be. Thus questions such as those above are of no practical use for people with integrity, and serve only to entertain, or to worry, those without it.
