How Integrity Is Intertwined in Various Aspects of Our Life
We are not unfamiliar with the word “integrity”. The most interesting thing is that even a small baby responds if integrity breaks. If there are two kids in front of you and if you do not behave with them equally, they will protest. In general sense, integrity means equality. Integrity is so important that it is not only an important human virtue but also is true for all other arenas.I will discuss that in detail in subsequent paragraphs.
Let’s proceed our discussion by explanations with examples. In an organization, there are many departments or sections. Integrity is a very important factor which needs to be balanced everywhere properly. Otherwise, lack of integrity in one place threatens the integrity in all other places. For example, in an organization if employees are not treated well, they will not treat their stake holders up to the mark. From the perspective of society and country, people also show sheer level of integrity that they get from their ancestors, cultures or surroundings.
One good example of the type of integrity is verbal integrity which is ubiquitous and seen easily. In another word, it can be said that it is a kind of balance between people’s speech and action. If speech and action are not aligned, trust erodes. Folks do not believe those persons who do not keep their words. That is why doing nothing rather than breaking promises is better in certain circumstances.
Integrity among speech, emotions, feelings are crucial. For example, a police officer is interrogating a thief regarding a burglary. At that moment, the thief is narrating a sad story with joy or his feeling reflects the reverse. Somebody is pleading for help but the emotions or feelings do not support the true nature of the crisis. There are lots of example of hiding emotions and feelings while being corrupt. Lack of integrity signals problem. There is linear pattern among speech, emotions and feelings.
Integrity among goals/objectives, time span and execution is important. In politics,sometimes, many hefty promises are seen without being materialized. So, strategy must be formulated, aligning the goals with the duration for ensuring materialization.
Lack of systematic integrity may pose a risk of collapse of a whole system. There are many nuts and bolts in systems. Many people in various hierarchies run a system.A tiny part’s breakdown halts the operation of the whole system.
Integrity among knowledge, beliefs, ideology, thoughts, culture and an individual’s behavior is easily measured. For example, an individual thinks one and behaves the other way reflects lack of integrity.
Lack of Integrity and fraud is correlated. In other words, lack of integrity to a heightened extent means corruption.
Integrated system is a standard system. Any deviation from the standard means corruption. If deviations become too much and widespread, huge lack of integrity occurs, which may lead to an ultimate collapse. When we start to sense an ever increasingly uncontrolled lack of integrity, it is a red signal of indiscipline, lawlessness, chaos, heightened level of conflicts, lack of trust, disrespect, frequent use unsympathetic words in language, lack of empathy, painful conflicting emotions, increased level of sickness and so on.
Integrity is an essential human virtue which needs to be nursed for long for developing. For integrity to be learned, a high level of integrity based paradigm is necessary and it takes a long time to fully acquire it. Integrity cannot be built overnight rather weaved in decades. If you do not show integrity as a prior human virtue, you never expect to get it back from others. Every single human being reflects unique paradigm. In a group of people, paradigmatic integrity is needed. For example, in an integrated circuit, all tiny parts are in proper balance while operating. Lack of integrity creates conflict and when a solution is sought, integrity is much searched for as well.
Integrity is remembered more during a life threatening crisis like COVID-19 when there is serious need to execute policies in no time. Integrity among different departments is involved. One department’s agility does not work when other departments do not respond at the same pace. In the mean time, crisis deepens at geometric rate and everything goes beyond control. This sort of environment reflects huge level of blaming, accusations, excuses, denying of responsibility, stealing and corruption in a bigger scale. Under this circumstances, correcting individuals is a wrong choice. Because there is an urgency to execute everything very quickly and correctly. To change human behaviour or to get the crowd behave correctly for that very period of time, extreme level of enforcement is necessary. That is why it is told that life threatening crisis quickly changes paradigms which may have not been possible in ages or generations.
Nature is the greatest example of an integrated system. Everything is in proper balance by the Almighty. Whoever or whatever ever tries to dismantle that balance, nature automatically protests and upholds or rescues the system again. Nature itself possesses its own paradigm. Integrity with the nature’s paradigm is utmost important. Questions like who, when, where, how,what,why may not be answered in short time but if there is integrity, everything is automatically determined with the course of time with perfect balance. On the other hand, If all of the above questions are answered or known but still lack of integrity persists then nothing changes. Integrity is a word related to many things and is a good scale to build or measure a network or group of people. Also, fixing lack of integrity expedites solving many chronic problems which have been remaining unsolved for ages.
