(no subject)

[tylik]

I wrote most of this a couple of days ago, but never quite finished it. It's not really finished now, but I'm posting it anyway.

A lot of the reason I posted my question about integrity was that I've been trying to get a better handle of my own reactions to people doing things that to some degree, to me, demonstrate a lack of integrity. The reactions tend to come in three basics flavours, usually simultaneously:

1) There is some great inconsistancy between how they have represented themselves, and what they are doing. Ergh.

2) People tend to be like that, and for whole catagories of actions, I don't entirely get it. At least some of this is me. (I suspect this is something akin to a language problem, and has little to do with integrity per se. I certainly run into it regarding enough other subjects.)

3) This might be something that they need to do, and I have some sympathy with that.

In a general sense, I don't have a problem with people finding themselves in dilemmas. Shit happens. I don't think there is a one size fits all solution to these problems. But I think one can deal with resolving these difficulties in ways that are more, or less, kind, respectful, fair, honest, and probably a number of other things in the same general genre.

(Of course, if people tend to find themselves in the same kind of dilemmas over and over again, I tend to get bored with them.)

Saying that you are going to do one thing, and then realizing later that indeed you feel very strongly that you should instead do something else happens. I think it's the kind of thing that will happen to most people. I guess to me, most of the graceful ways of dealing with this situation involve being pretty upfront about the problems. Tell the people who are affected. If reasonable, work to allieviate any problems brought about by reasonable expectations on their part not being fulfilled by you.

Part of what I was mulling over was my own knee jerk response to keep my word. But then, I don't give my word very frequently, and darn near never in an open ended fuzzy sort of way. Most of the time, for me the choice is between breaking my word -- which I value, thanks -- and maybe a bit of annoyance or inconvenience. This assumes that I gave my word to someone acting in good faith. If someone deceived me about the circumstances, it becomes much less likely that I'll feel bound to keep my word. (However, I'll most likely explain this to them in excruciating detail.) I

In a general sense, I tend to feel very strongly that people have an ethical obligation to take care of themselves. And this is why my reaction surprised me. I do feel, I guess, that all else being equal it is more important to be true to oneself than true to one's word. Of course, all else is never equal. And "being true to one's self" can be such a flakey concept. And in general I do expect mature adults to have enough foresight and self knowledge not to give their words in ways they are likely to have problems with down the road. I know a lot of people who say all kinds of things in a rush of emotion, and regularly decide they don't want to / can't be bound by them down the road. I find that pretty squicky.

On the other hand, some things I find fairly understandable. Our society, for instance, tends to really encourage people to make promises about their future feelings ("I will love you forever") in ways that simply don't make sense to me. I think the way we model marraige tends to be pretty fundementally flawed. This idea that you have this ceremony once, and then you're married, and you don't have to do anything to stay married... I think it sets up really unrealistic expectations.

Getting a little more to the general case, I think integrity to me has a lot to do with consistancy. Are one words consistant with one's actions. If they aren't, from time to time, does one bother to resolve the matter, annotate it, ignore it, or deliberately obscure it? Do one's values in one sphere of one's life have at least a working relationship with one's values in another?