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                           %TRUSTING SELF INTEGRITY 860701

     The  community  which leads its  members  to distrust
their  own integrity, thereby  sows  the seeds of its  own
disintegration.   The community which leads its members to
respect  their  own  integrity  as a means for helping  to
build  the integrity  of  the community, thereby  sows the
seeds of its own integration.

     People of integrity challenge perverse tendencies  in
community.    How are such challenges to be  distinguished
from perverse behaviors of people who lack integrity? Both
entail  conflict.    In  one instance  there  is  conflict
between people who embody integrity and those who do  not.
In  the  second instance there is conflict between members
of the community who embody integrity and a member of  the
community who threatens integrity.   How are the two to be
distinguished?

     People  who embody integrity do not try to  get ahead 
at the expense of others.  Integrative  behavior  is  self
sacrificial  in  the service  of  others,   but  not  self
deprecating; humble with healthy self esteem.  Those  true 
people  who embody  integrity  do  not engender rebellion,
resentment,   excommunications,   etc.  with indifference,
callousness, and/or calculated emotional detachment. Their
behavior is not guided by purely technical considerations;
not even the  purely  technical considerations of the most
perfect   moral/ethical   system  for   promoting   proper
conformity.

     The perverse behaviors of individuals and communities
may be  differentiated  from:    integrative challenges of
the integrative attitudes  of  integrative   people,    by
considering the above criteria  for recognizing people  of
integrity.  Integrative people are not pretentious.   They
are not compulsively concerned with their appearances, and
the  technologies for conforming to rewarded  appearances.
The are authentic, not clever in their self presentations.
They can be recognized for what they are by simple people,
e.g.,   children  who have  not  yet  joined   pretentious
collusions.   Thus children can lead perverse  communities
back to integrity, if they are given the opportunity.

     Children  need  to  be  taught  to  trust  their  own
integrity,  and to promote integrity in others.   That  is
the responsibility  of  true educators,  to educe personal
integrity.
                                                                                                                               
                         (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in      
                    (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy)  
                                                                                                                               
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