What is Integrity?

[Manuel Tavares]

What is Integrity?

By Steve Beckow

Posted March 31, 2022

https://rayviolet.blogspot.com/2022/04/what-is-integrity.html

What is integrity anyways?

We talk about integrity in journalism. No good just throwing words around. What is that quality?

Well, first of all, in my view, integrity is adherence to the truth. Ranged against adherence to the truth are a fear for one’s life, fear of a loss of livelihood, pressure from others, etc.

Like so much else in this Age of Devolution, integrity as reverence for the truth seems to have suffered. We lack a good moral compass.

Integrity is also being good for your word. Our word is more valuable than anything else I can think of in the interpersonal arena. If the truthfulness of our word or the failure to honor our promises becomes an issue, we’ve lost a great advantage.

As a person who adjudicated claims, I know that the whole hearing room atmosphere would shift when the first lie was told and made known. Contradiction, inconsistency, impossibility – it mattered not. Any swerving from the truth needed to be explained satisfactorily.

If not, then the proceedings shifted and became about credibility. They ceased to be about wholly accepting a story. Up till that point, it sounded credible. Now it had become suspect.

We’re less formal in everyday life but that doesn’t mean we don’t judge the other’s credibility. Just without the tools and laws.

Telling the truth and keeping one’s word are things we learned in kindergarten: Take turns; put things back; keep your word; tell the truth. (2) ...>>>https://rayviolet.blogspot.com/2022/04/what-is-integrity.html