Integrity
What is integrity and what does it mean to have it and protect it?
The quality of being honest and having strong moral principles.
“A gentleman of complete integrity”
The state of being whole and undivided
"Upholding territorial integrity and national sovereignty"
I’ve been thinking about what integrity means. The above are the definitions you’ll get if you chuck the word into Google. I think the first one is what most people would say sums up integrity for them, personal integrity. Honesty is a quality held extremely highly and valued in our society. To describe someone as being dishonest can easily undermine all other character traits. It leads us to think of that person as being untrustworthy, manipulative and corrupt in some way. We wouldn’t seek out someone like that to have as a friend or associate, and if we discovered that someone we saw in that way had been dishonest, we would feel deceived, disappointed, maybe angry and potentially question our own judgement. We feel so strongly as a society about integrity and the actions that we link to the lack of it, that we send people to prison for them.
So why is it we value integrity so highly?
In a practical sense we value it because it provides a solid ground truth for us to work with. We evolved in tribes where reliance on the other members was essential for survival. We needed to trust that when our hunting partner said there was prey on the other side of that mountain that would feed the tribe, he was telling the truth. Expending the energy to climb the mountain only to find out he was exaggerating or lying could be fatal. Nothing has changed today. If the information we are using to make decisions is incorrect, our likelihood of success in any endeavour relying on it, reduces dramatically. Many of us will have experienced poor information being fatal.
We connect integrity and leadership; the kind of leadership you want to follow, not simply a figure head. These leaders are typically characterised as having integrity and as being authentic. They are the rock that those who follow them use to keep themselves stable in turbulent times. They are that solid ground personified and often they provide an example of what others seek to emulate. This doesn’t mean they are good examples in every sense, none of us are. But by being authentically themselves regardless of the other flaws they have, these leaders inspire trust and provide consistency of action that people can depend on and that society needs to function. A snake is fine if you know what a snake is, you can depend on it to bite you in particular circumstances. That is infinitely better than a wolf in sheep’s clothing or someone who changes with the wind.
People with integrity are often described as having a strong moral ethic and adherence to a code of conduct. This is where it gets more difficult, because despite an overlap in many areas, the humans on this planet have drastically differing ideas of what is moral, right or wrong. This is fine, as long as we remain aware of it. Cultures and groups are fiercely defensive of what they believe to be right and wrong. Modern society plays this out everyday to the clattering of keys, clicks and pound signs online.
We also value integrity because we know how hard it is and recognise that it is essentially impossible to live every moment of your life in this manner. Those who we feel have managed this well are held in high regard. Human life is messy and in some circumstances we recognise that absolute honesty is not what’s required. We often associate absence of this recognition with lack of empathy. Wives will tell their husbands ‘it’s not small’, husbands will tell their wives ‘your bum doesn’t look big’ and we will all thank someone enthusiastically for a gift we hate. So through these shared experiences we understand there has to be flexibility and we intuitively know where we’re comfortable with it. We notice when people are going beyond this understanding into unnecessary untruths, we know when they should be telling the truth but aren’t, taking liberties with our trust. There are only so many times we will stand for this before our opinion of them changes, they lose credibility. Trust is something almost impossible to get back completely once it’s squandered. We see this problem currently in our institutions. Governments and mainstream media are haemorrhaging trust through poor decision making, incompetence, and lack of respect for the position of authority we lend them. An increasing proportion of the public believe they have shown lack of integrity too often. For society this is dangerous as its structural integrity is jeopardised.
The second example of the definition above talks about ‘territorial integrity and sovereignty’ in a national sense, but lets talk about this in personal terms. Territory being your body, sovereignty being your authority over yourself, your thoughts and actions. What would become of someone attempting to live their life with integrity if they are expected to repeat something they believe to be untrue as if it was true? To act in a manner or follow behaviours they believe to be harmful, or based on inaccurate information? Or to accept personal sleight as if it were fact? We might reasonably expect that we could brush this off and move on dependant on the seriousness of the situation. Or maybe just get through it uncomfortably and try to forget about it. But what if the circumstances were serious, repeated and of real consequence?
Even when the circumstance is trivial we feel the act of saying something we don’t believe or doing something we think to be wrong. It’s like a paper cut, an irritation we can walk off. But repeat this small injury and we become slightly lesser each time. Infection sets in and we cease to be healthy, we cease to be ourselves externally and damage ourselves internally.
So what can we do?
There’s a famous phrase in the film ‘Kingdom of Heaven’ where Liam Neeson as Godfrey of Ibelin is making Orlando Bloom as Balian de Ibelin, a Knight.
“..Speak the truth always, even if it leads to your death”.
We hear something like that and it inspires us, we like to think we could live up to an ideal like that, were the circumstances of vital importance, if it really mattered. But the circumstances are irrelevant, saying what you believe to be true is the only way to keep your personal integrity intact, it always matters. Whether it is life and death, or you think something at work is a bad idea, the act of saying what you believe to be true is the same. I think for our needs I would change the phrase to ‘speak the truth always, or it will lead to your death’; a slow death of a thousand cuts as you become just another yes man, a shell of your former self.
It is incredibly difficult in the modern age to know what truth is, it has become relative. We are bombarded with arbiters of truth one day after the next that contradict and obfuscate, it keeps us unbalanced. So I’m not suggesting that we live our lives arrogantly proclaiming to all that our beliefs are truth and ignoring any consequences just so we can be ‘based’. More that we understand the consequences and responsibility of what we say and do and choose accordingly. We should know sometimes though we have a responsibility to speak. If our beliefs change and we know we are wrong we should make it known without fear.
Of most importance is to not knowingly repeat or act in accordance with what we believe to be untrue or wrong. This is vital, it is example, leadership, character and it inspires others, even if it is at your cost. But that cost is the price of your personal integrity, it is valuable and we should not allow it to be stolen or damaged.
The hero in a story who stands confidently alone and says ‘no’ while all others say ‘yes’, is someone we typically respect and admire.
You have the chance to be that person more than you think.