I've been thinking about integrity quite a bit lately. I've been thinking about the integrity of the people that I interact with. I've been thinking about the integrity of our leaders or political leaders, but also our kind of social leaders the people who lead our kind of social lives. And I think for integrity it's it's just a tricky tricky way of approaching our perspective of other people.
Often we think about integrity and we think of authority in the same way because we're often assessing the integrity of any figure of Authority So when we think about our political leaders, we're looking at them through that lens of kind of what is their sense of integrity? And it can kind of go down to a very basic level of honesty.
So do we view this person as being honest? Do they are they telling us the truth? And this is part of it. This is the baseline of integrity. Are we viewing someone as being honest? But beyond that it comes down to someone's moral compass. So in their minds they have kind of a separation of right and wrong good and bad.
And, Whether that's a dichotomy or some big spectrum of rightness and wrongness what what it comes down to is that all the decisions that individual makes. Whether we can consider them being honest or not the decisions, they make are embedded with that moral fiber that moral fabric. The moral compass that helps guide them in the decision-making in their decision-making.
So when we look to others and we see these authorities figures, we see others in our lives, we're trying to understand how honest they're being we try to understand their level of integrity. As a person It's important for us to also look a little bit deeper and kind of identify what are their value systems that are guiding their decision-making?
Now, these are not explicit value systems. Nobody sits down and makes a decision and says, oh all of these things in my life, I think are right or wrong and therefore I will make this decision. No, those value systems are kind of subconscious they lie at kind of a very subterranean level of our psyche and so when we're making those decisions.
Those value systems what we think is right or wrong. Though that moral compass, that's got. Ten us through that decision-making effects the outcome of that decision-making. And so when we start talking about things like ethics and ethical decision-making what that really means is what is the morality behind that decision-making?
What is our value system behind that decision making? And do we see that value system as lending someone integrity or kind of disingenuousness? Dishonesty. Now a Voltaire has this famous saying about morality says I have. No morals, but yet I am a very moral person and what that comes down to is that morality isn't a specific kind of set of criteria.
This is my interpretation that he was a very vague and ambiguous statement. So, my interpretation is a value systems are not something we set out to as criteria for decision making. What they are is something that lies beneath our decision making and influences our decision making. And so if you need no morals, it's because your character.
Is such that you will make the decision that is best for others in your life. I want to leave this all off with one aspect of integrity. I think is most important. You can judge or I judge a person's integrity by the decisions, they make that affect other people.
So people in positions authority are often asked to make decisions that affect others but don't affect them. So when we look at the integrity of someone when I look at the integrity of a leader, I'm often trying to assess. And what ways would they make decisions that affect others?
What are the what is the moral compass guiding those decisions? Is it? One of compassion or is it one of selfishness? So I think integrity is something we're really not paying close enough and to tension to.
