What is integrity? I always thought that I knew until I read, The Insufficiency of Honesty by Stephen L. Carter. Now that I have read it I have a new way to think about what it is. I’m not completely sure exactly what Carter’s definition, but this is the way I interpreted it; be true to yourself after thinking everything through.
Carter says, “When I refer to integrity, I have something very specific in mind. Integrity, as I will use the term, requires three steps: discerning what is right and what is wrong; acting on what you have discerned, even at personal cost; and saying openly that you are acting on your understanding of right and wrong.” All of that seems vague to me and yet I agree with it. In order to be true to yourself you have to have identified what you think is right from wrong. The main difference being your own beliefs and acting upon them and integrity is that with integrity you have thought about your beliefs before acting upon them. In other words you aren’t blinding following a belief, you have actually taken the time to think it over. You have thought about rather it really is wrong or right and what the consequences are.
So many people don’t do that last part and I admit that I am guilty of it too. I try to think before I do and I enjoy thinking about what is right and wrong and why it is so. I also love having deep conversations with friends about these things, but there is no way to reach every possible belief and oddly enough if I have to act on a belief it is usually one that I haven’t thought of and then I think about after the fact. We are all guilty of this, no matter how hard we try. So how can we say that any always acts on integrity? I don’t think it is possible.
On the last part when it said knowing right from wrong and what those consequences are, and how you said your even guilty of it yourself. I think we all are at some point, we've all known and either didn't have a choice, or didn't care and it came back to bite..but the definition Carter gave was pretty much to the point if you were look at each one closely and really interpret what it was trying to say.
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