Integrity and the Human Dilemma

It is rare that anyone doubts my integrity. Even at my most concealed, I am genuine in my interactions. It used to be that I did not lie, partly because I dispised dishonesty, partly because it made me feel badly. It just feels wrong. However, my line of work has provided impetus to learn to lie artfully, not about big things, but about the little things. Some days I hang up the phone and mutter to myself about how my company has taught me to lie. Other days, I am grateful for it.

In my personal life I rarely lie. It used to be just Grandmother I lied to, because the lie was more compassionate than the truth. Even with her, though, I often told the truth even when I felt it better to lie. And recently with Stephanie, I lied or omitted telling her things because I felt it was either none of her business, or that the probable explosive reaction to my honesty would not be worth the satisfaction of knowing I had resisted the temptation to lie. But she is really trying to moderate her emotional responses, and I am trying not to change things on her. But I am still not volunteering things, not much. When she wants to know, she will ask, and at that time, with compassion in my heart rather than fear in my mind, I will decide how much truth to dispense.

But I have been thinking about purpose and resolve, and the confidence needed to support that resolve, and how integrity fits in there, between the drive of the ego to survive, to thrive, to achieve, and the conscience which tells me that it is important not to hurt others in the process...

I recognize that my words, thoughts, deeds, and intentions create an environment that either supports or weakens my resolve. Whether it supports or weakens my resolve is dependent on my integrity, my ethics. I am not a religious person. I do not have a 'faith' which dictates my ethical integrity. I do not allow myself that luxury: faith does not confront the questions of existence and how we respond to it; faith simply provides consolation and assurances that following a certain spiritual and moral road map is the answer to those questions. Steven Batchelor, an agnostic buddhist monk, said it best: "While moral conditioning may be necessary for social stability, it is inadequate as a paradigm of integrity." There is not much that I invest 'belief' in because... in believing something, in taking it on faith in the absense of experientially substantiated fact, I close myself off to other things, one of which might actually be the truth. I refuse to believe in things that I cannot know. I neither affirm nor deny the existence of a god or gods, or an afterlife, or reincarnation, or a soul, or any of those Big Unknowables. Instead, self-honesty requires that I recognise what I do not know and I cannot know, and focusses me on what I can address: the human dilemma and the possible resolution of it.

And the human dilemma is this: at core, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not, humans are are isolated, anxious creatures in a hostile world. Most of us experience ourselves as beings pitted against the rest of the world--just one more desperate soul struggling to survive amongst countless others. It is this desperation which puts us in conflict with our own integrity, I think. Desperation often drives us do or say things which hurt others and thus ourselves. Whether we admit it or not, we humans are empathetic beings in a participatory / shared reality, and we cannot hurt, abuse, or lie to others without diminishing our own Integrity, that law within. Thus the sense of conflict between survival and integrity. Thus the human dilemma.

And the possible resolution? Remembering that we have 'reality' in common. Remembering that we are more than just competitors for the 'better' things in life. Remembering that everything is transient: that we are all born, that we will all die, and that we will all suffer in between those two inescapable events. Realizing that as long as wear fear suffering, we perpetuate it. I think that most people don't realize that when we act with integrity, when we operate from a place of compassion and empathy for ourselves and each other, when we stop clinging to our fears of the undeniable transience of life, we create a world with less suffering. Or atleast, we are less likely to contribute to the fear and suffering. Ultimately, my integrity, and the integrity of my thoughts, words, intentions, and deeds, are based upon my sense of what I have in common with others, rather than what separates or distinguishes me from them. The Internet, more than anything, has taught me that much. The most soul-searching meditation on ethics leaves the world intact; but a single word or deed can transform it, forever.