What with all the fiascos in banking, government, even personal life, there is one theme I have noticed. A serious lack of personal integrity.
There is the old story of porkbarrelling in politics, and that goes to even the city or village level. When someone in an office is more interested in buying friends and buying influence than becoming a good leader, the whole of society suffers. Add to that secrecy and you have a very volatile mix.
The most obvious examples are those of Idi Amin, George Bush, and many others who abused the office of leader. What most everyone forgets is that there are really NO secrets that will remain secret. The truth will always come out, somehow, somewhere. Perhaps it is revealed from simple, honest, and wondering curiousity, perhaps it comes from wanting to find that very truth.
There have been people who have lived openly, honestly, with few, if any secrets, and they find that integrity is easy, almost automatic. What most people who keep things secret find out is that telling someone, even a stranger, of the secret, will take away the power, the condemnation that the secret holder fears. Try it! When you reveal a secret, most of the time people will shrug, maybe be surprised, but there is also a feeling of release of the power of the secret to bind us up, make us fearful.
The contrast between two people can be very stark. We instinctively know when someone is NOT telling us the entire story, the real truth, and we become suspicious, less trusting and definitely want to know the truth. When we try to keep something secret, we develop a habit of keeping more and more of those secrets. Yes, we can do this from very good intentions, to avoid hurting someone we love, to avoid revealing the whereabouts of someone who can be killed (think of the Holocaust and Schindler) and sometimes those secrets have to be kept. BUT, unless there is a literal life and death situation, secrets can cause more problems than just being honest enough to reveal what we know.
Integrity means taking these chances, taking the risk that someone may just understand and learn a lot by us being honest enough, strong enough, to allow someone to know what we may THINK is the worst of us. Again, think of Schindler. After the war, his story was revealed, the truth did come out. So, again, the secrets do become revealed.
Now, think of someone like O.J. Simpson. The evidence, for me, gives compelling truth that he did kill. He may have been found, in a court, to be innocent, but the underlying instinct we all use makes us want to avoid him, to question every word he utters. Our instincts may be far more accurate than any jury, court, or other official institution.
Integrity is part of our human heritage. We rely on it when we go to buy a new car, find a flawed product and expect to have the product either taken back or replaced. We rely on integrity to form a basis of our personal relationships. So where do things to haywire? When we try too hard to please, perhaps our parents, or our bosses and let our own integrity fail. When it comes to things like politics and business, integrity is often ruined, denied, and the outcome is that we find out the truth and feel betrayed.
This may be the one lesson that the world needs right now. That huge, deep, painful sense of being betrayed by Wall Street hogs, presidential secrecy in several countries, and above all the betrayal of the very people we choose to stand up for us in our elections has become pandemic, or so it seems.
Leaders are rare, it seems. Leaders will be honest enough to tell what we need to know, even if it shows our own failings, or our own successes. Leaders will be the ones who LISTEN more than talk, and actually want to understand the situation from all points of view, then take the path of BEST choice, not necessarily the most expedient, the easiest, or even the most profitable.
Business needs LEADERS, people who work and demand integrity within and from those who work with them. The plumber who is known by the locals as being the best, the honest person, is often the busiest, yet we will wait. The food server who is good, honest, and works to the goals of doing the best they know how, with honesty and integrity, are the ones we ask for. The business man who stands by his company, who works to improve not only the bottom line, but the working conditions, the spirit of his company, the integrity that will be his own bottom line, we all want to work for. Why? Because THEY LISTEN! They grow and learn!
Now, to the dark side of this. Torture, no matter where or who does it, violates all of us in some way. It violates our sense of integrity, our sense of human being. When someone like Cheney or Bush or Idi Amin or anyone else chooses to use their power to try to keep things like this secret, we find out, one way or another. The ripples of this DO go out, tarnishing the countries, the people, and, like each individual in any relationship, we feel betrayed, soiled, and the instincts of others around the world become suspicious, mistrusting and the entire population of whatever country has tortured is lessened in integrity. Not fair, maybe, but that is the price of living with a democracy, with elected officials. Idi Amin being the exception here.
The dark side is less obvious when it comes to business, because we don’t elect those people, but rely on them to be honest. But the ripples STILL go out. We all mistrust a company that will pollute then keep that a secret. We feel betrayed by companies that will hide dangerous practices, such as hiding the dangerous chemicals they use on our food, our land and put into our water.
So, for each individual, no matter whether you are president, prime minister, premier, or the local farmer, truck driver, student, teacher or business owner, take the time to check on your integrity. Are we living up to the goal of being honest and open? Are we listening and learning?
We WANT to have the farmer who will NOT use hormones that screw up our health, we WANT the teacher who demands the best from themselves and us, we WANT the business owner to have a decent company that we can trust, we WANT leaders to be open with us, to LEAD, not be bought out because of some monetary rewards or status. we WANT integrity.
Ninemoonjupe's Weblog 