The word integrity has been so thoroughly co-opted
by technologists that its use in ordinary language has almost ceased.
That's a shame, because it's an important word, one that has no precise
equivalent in the English language. According to OED, it means something undivided; an integral whole. The condition of having no part or element taken away. Soundness. The term comes from the Latin word meaning complete.
The opposite of integrity, etymologically, is privation, deprivation, depravity, perversion, rupture, destruction, corruption. That
which takes away from the whole entity or system or organ, from
wholeness, wholesomeness, holism, soundness, sanity, ecology, cohesion,
idealism, interconnectedness. In other words, breakdown.
The term can be applied in the moral, rational, or physical domains of
human endeavor. Moral integrity refers to a cohesive set of principles,
rational integrity to a cohesive logic, and physical integrity to a
cohesive physical structure. In each sense integrity means wholeness,
soundness, consistency, coherence.
So when we say something lacks integrity we mean, literally, it is
falling apart. It has lost the critical elements, balance,
connectedness that kept it together. It has come unglued.
When we say our government
lacks integrity we mean they say one thing and do another. They lie.
They use the ends to justify any means. They corrupt terms like
'freedom' and 'patriotism', and the entire moral framework under which
they presume to operate crumbles.
When we say our electoral system
lacks integrity we mean it has been so perverted by political
partisanship, gerrymandering, unreliable and insecure voting systems
and ad hominem attacks
designed to confuse and mislead a dumbed-down electorate, that it is no
longer capable of reliably reflecting the will of the people.
When we say big business
lacks integrity we mean they use pursuit of profit and the
'maximization of shareholder value' as an excuse to distort the facts,
lie to their customers, cheat and gouge their customers, sue their
customers, screw and extort concessions from their front-line
employees, wreck the environment, cripple the holistic economies of the
communities and countries in which they operate, pervert constitutions
to obtain 'rights' that trump the rights and freedoms of individuals,
bribe public officials for favours, fraudulently obtain concessions and
subsidies -- all in controvention of critical but forgotten clauses of
the corporate charters that we the people granted them as a privilege.
When we say the legal system
lacks integrity we mean it allows millionaires to commit murder and
fraud with impunity but condemns the poor to death even on falsified or
inadequate evidence, it substitutes the rule of man for the rule of
law, it allows judges to make laws instead of upholding them, it metes
out wildly different sentences for the same crime, or for no crime at
all, just the mere suspicion of some bureaucrat, and it allows and even
encourages abrogation of fundamental constitutional rights and freedoms
out of extremist political zeal or expediency.
When we say the media
lack integrity we mean they slough off their responsibility to inform,
sacrifice balance and fairness for ratings, dumb down and pander to
their audience because it's cheap and profitable, pass off propaganda
and unsubstantiated information from governments and corporate sponsors
as fact out of lazyness and greed, and buy up and shut down smaller
competitors that were doing the job they're supposed to be doing.
I could go on and talk about the education system, the health system, drugs and bribery in the amateur sports system, and many other examples, but I think you get the idea.
It is not surprising that when our public institutions, the very fabric
of our democracy and constitutional liberalism, lack integrity, and
corporations also lack integrity, we as individuals start to do the
same. If the government lies to achieve its own ends, why shouldn't
we? If Enron execs steal millions and defraud the government, why
shouldn't we? If the legal system allows immigration officers and
security forces total discretion to take the law into their own hands,
why shouldn't we? If corporations can use their oligopoly power to fix
prices at exorbitant levels, why shouldn't we use whatever means are at
our disposal to get their stuff free? If the voting system is rigged,
why bother to vote or even learn about the issues?
This is third world logic, the logic that says 'trust no one', the
insane logic that only applies when rights, freedoms, justice, the rule
of law, and democracy are all pipedreams, perpetually subverted to
money and power. Alas, integrity, like the democracy and constitutional
liberalism it underpins, takes time and struggle to build, but is
fragile and easy to destroy. We have taken for granted all the
structures that are built on integrity, and we are losing them. The
lack of integrity of our leaders -- of all major political parties, and
in entertainment, sports, business, every field where there is fame,
power and money to be had -- is causing us to give up hope, faith and
trust in the institutions they represent.
There is an answer, but it's not an easy one. We need first to
understand that the way we choose to live as individuals is a
reflection of our self-respect, and that personal integrity is all
about taking personal responsibility for our future, our actions, our
decisions, the way we live and, to the extent we can, for the whole
world in which we live. It is all about not leaving this up to god, or the fates, or the government, not 'buying off' that responsibility with whatever money or power we might have, and not
blaming others in order to shrug off that responsibility. We are each
one-six-billionth responsible for every baby born addicted to crack,
for every child working in slave labour, for every woman stoned to
death for infidelity, for every man dying of AIDS, for every political
prisoner's torture, for every animal who lives in perpetual agony until
he is butchered for food, for every asthma death caused by industrial
pollution. It's time foreach of us to take that responsibility.
We need to learn a lot more, now and quickly and continually, than we
ever learned in school or on the job. We need to understand the current
state, to learn what can be done, and what needs to be done, and how
and by whom it needs to be done. And then we need to take that
responsibility and that knowledge and act on it.
And we need to identify and put forward leaders who have that same
personal integrity, and who will use the power that comes with
leadership to act on their responsibility and to rebuild the integrity
of public institutions, while we at the same time, in our roles as
citizens and employees and consumers, do what we can to help in the
rebuilding, and hold those institutions to account until the job is
done.
This is the antithesis of the 'I give up' approach of libertarians and
the Bush Administration, who seem to believe that rather than restoring
the integrity of public institutions, the answer is to dismantle them.
It's a naive and nihilistic approach (though understandable in this age
of boundless cynicism and oversimplification). Such an approach merely
redistributes power from public institutions that lack integrity but
have a public mandate, to private institutions that lack integrity and
are responsible only to themselves. Such a dismantling is the ultimate
abdication of responsibility, the dis-integration of our very society.
No, no, no, I hear you
saying. We can't change it. It's inexorable. It's fate. It's not our
responsibility. It's not our fault. It's too big a task. I don't have
time to do anything more. Life is too short for me to take on this
terrible responsibility, to learn all these unbearable facts. We can't
do anything about it anyway. It's in god's hands now. I can't handle
this. I'm just a little guy. Damn you, don't tell me that if I'm not
part of the solution I'm part of the problem. I do my best. Others are
much worse. I don't want to hear this.
I hear you saying these things because I've said them all to myself,
and to others that have tried to shake me out of my lethargy. I'm
finally waking up, and it's awful, and I have to do something. I don't
want people to remember me, in a cataclysmic future, as a guy who had
some good ideas but never got around to doing anything about them. If
I've disturbed you before you're ready to get up and do something, I'm
sorry. If you think I'm full of shit, please go and bother someone else
-- I'm too busy to argue with you anymore. We've got a world to save.
Next week I'll be publishing
the How to Save the World Action Plan -- pulling together the various
ideas -- social & educational reforms, new technologies,
innovations, political, economic and legal reforms, new collaborative
business models and new economy concepts, plus the personal 'radical
simplicity' component -- that I've talked about on these pages this
year. Starting next month you'll see more progress reports -- what's
working and what isn't -- and more exhortations to you to help out with
specific collaborative projects, in this blog. The time for just
talking, as they say, is over.
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MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
