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About: Integrity advanced search - Stanford Philosophy Encyclopedia

    For Government to be transparent in my life I need to be able from time to time to grant such Government my trust (formally this is voting).  Such is accessed only through group & personal integrity of all members & at levels of government. For now without explanation I will say that such is defined as honoring my word as my self - defined well in the paper here. A re-digest would not do it justice.  It covers keeping one’s word (& time) as well as honoring such by cleaning up any messes which show up if you are unable to do so. It covers self-self, self-leaders, leaders-group relationships & so on in multiple contexts such as business & personal. One important aspect is standing for something & expectations both spoken & unspoken. It is a bit dry & repetitive, & almost lawyerly in parts. I shall take it upon myself as a task to mentograph it in some form, possibly in a webbrain if this project gets some traction. 
    For Government to earn my trust it’s operation must be transparent. I need to look away & know that everything is going as was stated under the integrity concept & distinction.  I need to be able to find information quickly & as a whole know where the money is going & what projects it is supporting. Part of the integrity of government is to provide this all online. The rest of governmental integrity is staffing governments at all levels with people who subscribe to these notions of integrity.   The excuses that there is just too much should be a guide to the right-sizing of government.  If the government can’t be accountable because it is just too big then the right-size is to make it smaller. The idea of a politician who has integrity may seem like an oxymoron, but then We the People have the vote & we can reclaim our integrity.
  Integrity & authenticity are nearly the same ontology. The latter is from the point of view outside & the former from within, imho.

The notion of integrity has intrigued us for a long, long time. It never stops being relevant—whether we hear about it in monarchies, politics, financial practices, scientific research, or ancient mythology. Thousands of books are written on the subject, millions of web searches take place. Integrity was ranked as the most looked-up word on the web at one point. The notion of integrity usually comes with a lot of associations—there’s something that the word already means or doesn’t mean to us, some reaction or point of view we have about it. Many people think of integrity as synonymous with morality—being ethical, a good person, an upstanding citizen, or doing the right thing. Each understanding has a certain validity and an important and central place in personal, professional, and societal life. Yet the potential power of each word (integrity, morality, ethics, goodness) can be lessened when meanings are collapsed and mushed together with other meanings. Integrity is actually a phenomenon in and of itself—one that goes beyond what we might mean by morality or ethics. It’s one that has more to do with authenticity—being true to ourselves—and it is the foundation for power and effectiveness.
- Mark Spirtos  (LEC) 

Tags

  1. integrity
  2. authenticity
  3. FofBW
  4. FearOfBlackAndWhite
  5. WhatIf

Comments


Mark de LA says
For the sake of counterpoint I offer the following:
From Emerson's essay on Self Reliance :

But why should you keep your head over your shoulder? Why drag about this corpse of your memory, lest you contradict somewhat you have stated in this or that public place? Suppose you should contradict yourself; what then? It seems to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on your memory alone, scarcely even in acts of pure memory, but to bring the past for judgment into the thousand-eyed present, and live ever in a new day. In your metaphysics you have denied personality to the Deity: yet when the devout motions of the soul come, yield to them heart and life, though they should clothe God with shape and color. Leave your theory, as Joseph his coat in the hand of the harlot, and flee.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.

I suppose no man can violate his nature. All the sallies of his will are rounded in by the law of his being, as the inequalities of Andes and Himmaleh are insignificant in the curve of the sphere. Nor does it matter how you gauge and try him. A character is like an acrostic or Alexandrian stanza; — read it forward, backward, or across, it still spells the same thing. In this pleasing, contrite wood-life which God allows me, let me record day by day my honest thought without prospect or retrospect, and, I cannot doubt, it will be found symmetrical, though I mean it not, and see it not. My book should smell of pines and resound with the hum of insects. The swallow over my window should interweave that thread or straw he carries in his bill into my web also. We pass for what we are. Character teaches above our wills. Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment.


... Is he saying sacrifice the past for the present? Perhaps, a conscious choice of what that character might be is the point of integrity.
Quite a beautiful essay!


Mark de LA says
From the article in LILIPOH (ISSUE 60 VOL. 15, Summer 2010 ): Help Me to Change the World by Don Miguel Ruiz And Don Jose Ruiz with Janet Mills.
 

Seth says
Well not sure why these are being coded as "agreements", but they certainly are virtuous behaviors.  But  the "black white" way they have been specified here does not match with the way i would code them to myself.  For example ...
  •  To "say only what you mean" assumes that you always know what your mean and even "knowing what you mean" can ever be sufficiently defined.
  • To "not take things personally" is usually a good idea ... but it is not always the case.  I think people can do things to each other that are very certainly meant to be personal ... i don't want to just exclude those from my vocabulary.
  • To always do your best is certainly an ideal ... but i have not been able to sustain that level of attention in my life.  I wonder if anyone can.
  • Being skeptical is certainly a useful way to be.  But "Don't believe yourself or anybody else" ... give me a break!

Mark de LA says
Integrity goes beyond the mere practical, pragmatic & survival skills to the very core of a man's identity as a human being. An agreement gives something to measure one's integrity with. It can be with oneself or another or even a group (see the basic references forth this item). Even if you hold that this life is all you have you may appreciate that different human beings will evolve out of the present & that we here & now are like an unfinished product. Integrity now will show up as more integrity in others in a future.  Your integrity now will show up in your children's future. It is the ultimate future beckoning us to move towards it - the carrot on the end of the stick.  To anyone who would argue with the Golden Rule however, these thoughts are probably a waste of time.
 you can subscribe to Lilipoh, or buy their book at Amazon (even in kindle format) for a better explanation.


Mark de LA says
Werner Erhard on integrity in today's facebook:
ibid: ...
If you’ve left some problems unsolved in your life – and a problem unsolved in your life is one that keeps coming up – you can handle it by expanding your purposes to include solving it. All of a sudden, what was a problem ceases to be a problem. It becomes a part of the solution. For the most part, simply acknowledging to the person that you made an agreement that you didn’t keep, or that you did something to them, would be enough to clean it up. Essentially, what you do is to expand your purposes – which are to make your life work – to include making their life work.
...


Mark de LA says
Integrity out of the mouth of Werner Erhard: 
http://wernererhardvideo.com/werner-erhard-integrity-honoring-your-word/


Mark de LA says
null I wonder if there is a #FofBW → #FearOfBlackAndWhite .  What if haggling & argumentation & warfare were set aside for the sake of clarity & cooperation?  
#WhatIf ? 

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