This is http://www.essayz.com/a8809031.htm Previous-Essay <== This-Essay ==> Following-Essay Click HERE on this line to find essays via Your-Key-Words. {Most frequent wordstarts of each essay will be put here.} ========================================================== %DISINTEGRATIVE CONSEQUENCE OF COLLUSIVE BEHAVIOR 880903 Dishonesty is central to collusive behavior. Each dishonest act has its own consequences because of its own specific violence to truth. Yet, the more serious disintegrative consequences do not have to do with the specific violence done to truth. It is not the specific lie or misleading behavior which has the most serious consequences. The most serious consequences come from collusive efforts to cloth dishonest and misleading behavior in respectable clothing. Collusive behavior does not stop at using dishonestly and misleading behavior to get ahead. Collusive behavior does not stop at getting others to accept dishonest and misleading behavior as o.k. because it is necessary to survive, or because everybody is doing it. Collusive behavior does not stop at regarding dishonesty and misleading behavior as risky behavior, but worth the risk because of the personal advantages it offers. Collusions are not so limited in their behaviors! It is essential to collusions to make dishonest and misleading behavior to appear honest and worthy of the highest respect. Collusion do not really tolerate dishonesty and misleading behavior. Participants in collusions consciously believe that they should be honest and should avoid misleading behavior. The violence which participants in collusions do to truth is far greater than that which is done by people who for selfish reasons engage in dishonest and misleading behaviors. Participants in collusions go farther and blur the distinction between dishonest/misleading behavior, and honest/integrative behavior. Collusions do violence to the distinction between honesty and dishonesty, and lead people to be unable to tell the difference. Such violence is far greater than the violence of people who are knowingly dishonest and misleading. Yet, participants in collusions are usually respected far more than are selfish people who use dishonesty and misleading behavior for personal advantage. Some people behave in immoral ways and violate the integrity of others for selfish reasons. They do not pretend to have high ethical principles; they are just trying to get ahead as best they can without getting caught. They have friends who admire them and encourage them to go for it. They do not pretend that they are honorable people, they regard themselves and are regarded by others as just successful people, worthy of respect for how well they get ahead. Such people are a threat to the integrity of others and of their community. But participants in collusions constitute an even greater threat to integrity. Participants in collusions are a greater threat blur the distinction between disintegrative and integrative behaviors. They seduce others to join them in confusion in which participants can not tell the difference between disintegrative and integrative ideals/values. Participants in collusions undermine integrity far more viciously than do people who are disintegrative in their selfish efforts to get ahead without regard for the welfare of others. Participants in collusions blur differences between integrity and forms of conventional respectability where appearances are equated to realities. Leading participants in collusions are far more of a threat to communal integrity than are leading mobsters who are recognized as such. Leading participants in collusions are likely to be respectable leading citizens who are looked up to by most members of the disintegrating community. They are likely to be practicing addicts of one form or another, and be admired for their addictive behaviors. They may, on the other hand, be practicing codependents who are supporting many practicing addicts, and are respected for the support which the offer to respectable addicts. When you are a respectable participating member in a collusion it is hard to tell when your behaviors violate personal and communal integrity. Questions of integrity are raised only in terms of respectability which is defined in terms of conformal patterns of behavior. The root meaning of integrity is unknown, and is not discussed by scholars, professors, teachers, parents, students or children. Only the most immature young people have a magical childlike intuitive insight into the nature of personal and communal integrity. As they are educated, that insight is blinded so that it will not threaten the appearance of the propriety of the collusive "community". Participants in collusions may enter into personal relationships which conform to their conceptions of propriety and respectability; i.e., relationships which are ideal and conform to the values of the community. Yet such conformal personal relationships lack the joy, hope and fulfillment of integrative personal relationships which are not as sophisticated and respectable. The lack of joy, hope in respected relationships and fulfillment is confusing. Participants in collusion are likely to recognize that less respectable relationships bring more joy, hope and fulfillment to those involved; yet such participants in collusions can not tell the difference between integrative personal relationships and disintegrative personal relationships. Collusions obscure such distinctions as part of the process of protecting the dishonest and misleading behaviors which are essential to the collusion. Colluders have eyes to see but cannot see, ears to hear but can not hear, minds to think, but can not perceive distinctions which are essential to real living. They grope as blind men who are deaf and indistinct in their thought patterns. They are utterly codependent upon each other, but are utterly unreliable to each other. In their addictions to conventional truths, they have lost track of the most elementary forms of personal and communal integrity. (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy) ==========================================================