This is http://www.essayz.com/a9501221.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.} ========================================================== %NATURE PERSONAL COMMUNAL INTEGRITY+950122 %OBJECTIVE REFLEXIVE 950122 We will do well to clarify the nature of personal and communal integrity; for, if we are not clear about their natures we will have difficulty working to encourage them and to avoid personal and communal disintegration. Personal and communal integrity entail objective integrity. People and communities ravaged by war, terrorists, crime, urban decay, fires, earthquakes, pestilences, diseases, violence, and their like are fragmented, disintegrated, dichotomize---and so lack both personal and communal integrity of the objective kinds. We will do well to be clear that personal and communal integrity also entail reflexive integrity; integrity with regards to personal relationships, perceptions, statements, dialogue, decisions and actions. People who are compulsively objective, exclusive of reflexive relationships; or who are compulsively reflexive, exclusive of objective considerations---lack personal and communal integrity by virtue of their exclusivity. They exclude aspects of having personal and communal integrity. Just as it was impossible for alchemists to discover oxygen when operating within the context of their four-element paradigm, so also people who are compulsively exclusive cannot discover what is lacking within their paradigm which demands exclusivity. The alchemists' paradigm regarded what are now regarded as compounds (of metals and oxygen) as the single element EARTH. EARTH was regarded by alchemists as an elementary substance, not a compound. All the different kinds of oxides were thus regarded as different manifestations of one elementary substance---which could not be divided into more elementary substances. Thus within the alchemists' paradigm it was impossible to look for, recognize and so discover oxygen---which is a more elementary constituent of EARTH than is EARTH itself. Within the paradigm of compulsive objectivists it is impossible for them to understand the nature of personal and communal integrity. The nature of personal and communal integrity involves in an essential way reflexive integrity; an element which objectivists through their collusive games of mutual self deception regard as unreal, impossible to exist, and/or as of no importance. To compulsive objectivists the essence of reality resides in elementary objective particles such as electrons, protons, neutrons, photons, mesons, and quarks; and their complex integrative relationships. There is no possible place within their paradigm for reflexive realities. Thus they find it impossible to work within their paradigm with integrity to clarify the nature of personal and communal integrity which entail both objective and reflexive integrity. If the element oxygen did not exist, then the oxide compounds and the alchemists' element EARTH could not exist. If reflexive integrity did not exist then personal and communal integrity could exist. Compulsive objectivists believe that reflexive integrity cannot exist; and so they reasonably believe and act as if personal and communal integrity cannot exist. We will do well to clarify the nature of personal and communal integrity; for, if we are not clear about their natures, we will have difficulty working to encourage them and be unable to avoid personal and communal disintegration. (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy) ==========================================================