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%PERSONAL INTEGRITY CRITERIA TRUSTWORTHY LEADER 970815
Integrity is not about any form of conformity.
Integrity is not achieved through a high level of
conformity to any externally imposed set of prescriptions
and/or proscriptions. People of integrity fulfill the
legitimate goals of prescriptions and proscriptions by
transcending preoccupations with them and any alienative
judgements which are made in terms of them.
True personal integrity has to do with an internal
coherence within a person, a coherence which both promotes
and facilitates true communal integrity.
True communal integrity has to do with an internal
coherence within a community, a coherence which both
promotes and facilitates true personal integrity.
Open and honest communications are essential to both
personal and communal integrity --- both of which in turn
are essential to each other. Dishonesty, deception,
secrecy, coercion, violence, fear, excommunications,
alienation and estrangement --- all of these undermine
both personal and communal integrity ---by undermining
open and honest communications.
People and communities of integrity are not
necessarily like each other; rather, they are mutually
complimentary to each other in their differences. By
making creative use of their complimentary differences
they do what they could not do in the absence of their
differences.
Isolated injunctions, prescriptions & proscriptions
are inadequate guides to enjoying personal and communal
integrity --- for when isolated they do not deal
adequately with the importance of the integrity of all
that they point to. In the absence of any acknowledgement
of, and any understanding of the web of inter-connections
and inter-relationships which are the essence of both
personal and communal integrity --- no collection of
isolated injunctions, prescriptions and proscriptions will
give life to inter-personal relationships which are
otherwise dying, dead and/or deadly.
Personal and communal integrity depend upon the
integrity of personal and communal inter-connections and
inter-relationships; i.e., upon the vitality and
reliability of communications of all kind. When open and
honest communications are absent, confused, constrained,
resented, avoided and/or perverted --- we cannot enjoy
either personal or communal integrity. In the absence of
open and honest communications we cannot enjoy any other
good things. Yet neither personal integrity nor communal
integrity by itself is an adequate criterium for
recognizing which people merit our trust and support.
Of what use is personal integrity as a criterium to
help us recognize people who merit our trust and support
as community leaders? Personal integrity is not of much
use as such a criterium --- if it is considered in
isolation; apart from other complementary criteria. There
is virtually no criterium for discerning who is
trustworthy --- which is a reliable criterium, if it is
considered apart from other complementary criteria.
How then, can personal integrity be considered in
concert with other complementary criteria to to help us to
discern who is worthy of our trust and support as
community leaders? Consider an example:
Some people might be consistently dedicated to
"getting-ahead" as their goal in life --- apparently by
being dedicated in a coherent way. They might be single-
minded in trying to reach their goal. They might be
seeking to achieve their goal with their whole being---and
not waver in their efforts. In one sense we might say
that they had integrity in their purpose in life. Where
is the problem in this vision?
The problem is that any single-minded-dedication to
"getting-ahead" as an ultimate concern --- is bound to
lead to putting self-before-others. Quite often such
single-minded-dedication leads to attitudes, thoughts and
actions which threaten the integrity of other persons and
the integrity of the community.
One's own integrity and health ultimately depend
critically upon the integrity of one's own communities.
Anybody with integrity will admit this truth and take it
into account in trying to fulfill their primary mission in
life. To deny this truth is to be dishonest, and so to
lack integrity. Dishonesty is a sure sign of a lack of
integrity. When dishonesty is used as a tool to achieve
anything --- the people who so use dishonesty are abusive
and clearly lack integrity.
As with people who "with integrity" seek to "get-
ahead" --- so also it is with people who "with integrity":
1. Seek to be in control of other people.
2. Presume to manage other people's private lives.
3. Presume to be better than other people.
4. Seek to achieve some kind of perfection.
5. Seek to excel in accumulating wealth.
6. Seek to excel in accumulating knowledge.
7. Presume to know God's will and do it for Him.
8. Presume to predict the future of mankind.
9. Presume to use other people as tools/means.
10. Presume to transcend human finitude/limits.
In each instance, any consistent effort to achieve
the desired goal is bound to lead to patterns of
attitudes, thoughts and actions which undermine other
people's integrities, and undermine the integrities of the
communities within which the efforts are made. Such
efforts are bound to entail the use of dishonesty as a
tool which is inherently disintegrative because the
efforts undermine, pervert, confuse and repress inter-
personal communications.
The apparent coherence of a person's intentions is
not all that counts. If personal intentions cannot be
fulfilled within the real world with integrity --- the
intentions lack real integrity. Many personal
intentions, goals, ideals and values lack integrity
because efforts to fulfill them in reality usually
undermine the integrity of other persons and of
communities.
"Good" intentions, goals, ideals and values are often
disintegrative of persons and communities when they are
affirmed in isolation of each other; i.e., in ways which
lack over-all integrity. Affirmations which regularly
lead to personal and communal alienation and
disintegration --- lack integrity. To be helpful and
healthy --- all intentions, goals, ideals and values need
to be inter-related to each other in ways which are open
and honest; and so contribute positively to open and
honest dialogue. When they are affirmed in isolation from
each other --- all intentions, goals, ideals and values
are likely to be disintegrative.
Often fearful people seek to affirm their own
intentions, goals, ideals and values by denying other
people's intentions, goals, ideals and values --- out of
fear that they are inherently inconsistent with each
other. Fearful people fear that they cannot be right ---
unless other people are wrong. They fall into the
disintegrative traps of "either/or" attitudes, feelings,
and thinking.
All integrative intentions, goals, ideals and values
hang together in coherent people's cooperative ways ---
and help all different kinds of people to hang together in
coherent cooperative ways through open and honest
dialogue; dialogue which is free of manipulative threats
and promises. All work together to encourage and
facilitate the exchange of free gifts of the freedom to be
safely vulnerable in open and honest dialogue; dialogue
which is free of fear because of lovers' liberations and
healing.
(c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in
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(On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy)
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