A person of integrity does exactly what he says and says exactly what he means. There is no conflict between his thoughts and his words. His actions are consistent with the values he professes.

    Howard Roark, the hero of Ayn Rand’s novel The Fountainhead, embodies the concept of integrity. He refuses to compromise his principles for anyone or for any reason. Unfortunately, there are few Howard Roarks in the real world.

    Most people lack a consistent purpose in life. They might tell themselves that at certain times it's "practical" to compromise their values and lie their way out of predicaments. They might, in their misguided desire to win the approval of others, put on socially acceptable masks that hide their real identities. It's a small price to pay for becoming popular, or for moving up the corporate ladder, isn't it?

    Not if individuality, self-respect, and integrity are values. A breach of integrity is, by definition, a betrayal of one's own values. This is one of the most destructive things one can to do oneself psychologically because it erodes one's own identity -- and, consequently, one's self-respect -- and, consequently, one's self-esteem -- and, consequently, one's capacity to achieve happiness.

    An individual who lacks integrity is self-alienated. He is in a constant state of conflict with himself. If the conflicts are not sorted out, an all-consuming sort of mental self-torture takes hold.

    The human psyche naturally seeks to reconcile contradictions. A person who carries internal conflicts has two basic options: To make an effort to work out the contradictions or to push them out of consciousness by evading them.

    The evader will often go to extraordinary lengths to "protect" himself from reality. Such individuals are apt to become alcoholics, drug addicts, sex addicts, power addicts, etc. They will pursue anything that drowns out their internal pain and enables them (if only temporarily) to avoid facing the truth about what they've wrought in their lives.

A Personal Story

    I've witnessed the process of self-alienation first-hand. I've seen it all but destroy an individual who had the potential to be, if not an ideal human being, a damn fine human being. It is a tragic story, and one that illustrates dramatically the consequences of failing to maintain integrity.

    A tragic person would be one who possessed great talents, held noble ideals, and had boundless potential -- and then betrayed and sacrificed everything he claimed to stand for and value. It may seem implausible that a person capable of soaring like an eagle would choose instead to land in a cesspool of filth and depravity. I would have certainly thought it implausible that an individual whom I regarded as a friend (in this case) would sacrifice just about everything he claimed to value, including our friendship.

    But he did just that. He suffered a complete moral collapse that, in addition to wreaking havoc in his own life, caused me to experience a great deal of emotional suffering and a fairly significant amount of financial loss. I was in a state of confusion as to what could have possibly led him to self-destruct so thoroughly.

    But I had missed the warning sings. I assumed his occasional broken promises were confined to matters of relative unimportance. They weren't. The early, largely forgettable incidents that had merely irritated me were expressions of a fundamental premise he had adopted: that integrity is disposable.

    Acting upon that premise, he destroyed his values one by one. He breached his integrity not in subtle or insignificant ways, but quite often in the most perverse ways possible.

    He deceived everyone in his life (including, it would seem, himself) as to who he really was. Deception became his "drug" of choice. He didn’t merely lie in response to difficult predicaments; he broke his word on issues both trivial and important, and with the same consistency that a man of integrity would demonstrate in keeping his word.

    He had earned my esteem by claiming to be and, to some extent, showing himself to be, an exponent of independent thought and individualism. Yet, having failed to think for himself in crucial areas of his life, he came to embrace the religion of Islam.

    He doesn't believe literally in the Koran. Even if he tries to force himself to, he's acquired too much knowledge in the fields of science and philosophy to be able to take the metaphysical and epistemological aspects of the religion seriously.

    The reason he pursues Islam is because it fills a moral void in his life. He had begun associating with Muslims and soon thereafter wanted to be seen as a Muslim. Why? I suspect because he desperately wanted to be regarded as righteous in the eyes of others.

    So he hasn't abandoned morality completely. But he has adopted a socially based ethics in which he seeks the approval of others based on their standards, and not on standards that he has rationally chosen or accepted for himself.

    He believes that his primary purpose as a moral agent is to evaluate others, not himself (only other people or "Allah" are qualified to evaluate him). He's extremely critical of others' ethical shortcomings. When he perceives an injustice done to him, he judges the offender on moral grounds. But when he commits an immoral act, or a series of immoral acts, he attempts to push morality out of his consciousness.

    His goal in doing so is to save himself from a negative self-evaluation. But by making himself an exception to his own moral judgments, he deprives himself of the possibility of a positive self-evaluation. By failing to apply morality to himself, he has no basis for judging his own character and therefore no basis for developing self-esteem.

    His misconception of the role of morality has manifested itself in highly destructive ways in his personal life.

    He claimed to be passionately devoted to capitalism, yet he violated the very bedrock of capitalism -- property rights -- by engaging in theft and fraud. He stole not from random strangers of no importance to him personally, but from me, one of his only true friends at the time.

    Perhaps on the surface his behavior is consistent with that of the typical criminal who simply takes advantage of opportunities when they arise. He did steal some items from me and did defraud me out of a fairly substantial amount of money.

    But he chose to steal items of relatively small value, such as food and computer software. And a great portion of the fraud he committed didn’t actually benefit him financially. Some of it was money he caused me to throw away needlessly.

    He could have stolen my computer, money, credit cards, etc. in one fell swoop, and then skipped town. Instead (having access to my residence), over a period of weeks, he took only a few items that yielded a minimal gain. Having also signed promissory notes, which he had for months failed to make good on, he set himself up for a lawsuit, which I filed against him and won. He has so far served a small amount of jail time for his misdeeds.

    No con artist who gave a moment's thought to planning his crimes would choose so inefficient a strategy. A con artist operates under the (false) premise that it serves his self-interests to exploit others for financial gain. As such, he is deliberate, calculating. His goal is to make the most out of each crime while making it as difficult as possible for his victims to seek justice.

The Psychology of Self-Alienation

    Unlike the typical con artist, my former friend didn’t consciously plan out his crimes and lies and other destructive behaviors. He pleads that his actions are rather the result of his upbringing, of the bad economy, and of a host of other factors external to him.

    He refuses to take responsibility for his choices in life. He denies that he really meant to do the things he did. He tells others that the legal proceedings he’s been forced to go through are bogus.

    But he knows the truth. He fears having to face it, so he runs away from it. His evasions, rationalizations, and other psychological "defense mechanisms" are geared toward protecting himself from having to deal face-to-face with reality.

    Taking even one ounce of responsibility -- making even a small payment toward reducing his financial debt, for example -- would force him to own up to his actions. That, to him, would be psychological torture. So he does nothing, thereby making matters worse for himself in the long run. He even prefers being arrested by the police to lifting a finger and taking some small measure of responsibility that could avert such a consequence.

    The person who I thought knew as a rational, principled, and benevolent individual turned out to be an erratic, unprincipled, and malevolent person. He sometimes projects benevolence, but it is not sincere. His only genuine emotion seems to be anger -- expressed toward members of his family, victims of his crimes, and anyone to whom he can assign blame for the way his life has turned out.

    He is intelligent and healthy, yet he is unable to hold down a steady job or form stable relationships. His days are spent in pursuit of mostly pointless activities that at the end of the week add up to nothing. He insists that his failures in life are the result of factors beyond his control. He can't accept the fact that his path in life is the one he has chosen -- or, perhaps more precisely, the one he has fallen into as a result of his failure to make a conscious choice.

    I don't beleive that he decided consciously to be a loser; but neither did "circumstances" turn him into one. He fails to achieve efficacy in life not because he tries and fails to achieve goals, but because he does not try. Perhaps for him, it's easier psychologically to simply be a failure and then rationalize the reasons for it. Taking steps to change his course in life would commit him psychically to accepting the premise that he, and he alone, is responsible for his life. But it is the need for personal responsibility that he's been committed to evading.

    He’s succeeded so well in evading that now he doesn't even know what he means when he says the word "I." Therefore, the statement "I will" is meaningless. Something might happen or it might not, but he has rendered himself impotent to make anything happen. He has no way of knowing whether he will accomplish any particular goal or not, because the "I" of the moment won’t be the same "I" tomorrow, which won’t be the same "I" the next day.

    Consequently, to him, long-term planning is impossible, and long-term thinking is futile. He lives only for the moment. He's motivated not by what is moral or rational but by what is expedient. Thus, he focuses on the most trivial aspects of life and neglects the most important things, including those things that could actually save him from the corruption that rules his soul.

    He knows that his life is unfulfilling. He may even on occasion permit himself to realize the extent to which he’s been corrupted. But he dares not ask why his life is the way it is. Afraid of what he might see, he never looks at his psychological self in the mirror; i.e., he doesn't introspect. As a result, he never empowers himself to fix what's gone so terribly wrong inside.

Conclusion

    Ending up like my former friend is the ultimate consequence of permitting oneself lapses of integrity on "minor issues."

    Yes, he is an unusual case. I am not aware of anyone who else carries internal contradictions of such a magnitude. I could not, were I a novelist, conceive of a character more fundamentally in conflict with himself.

    I have learned something from him, however: In judging others, little things do count. A person who sometimes tells so-called "white lies," or breaks "small" promises, or acts against his own principles when it is "practical" to do so, cannot be trusted to tell the truth or keep promises or hold to his principles when it really counts.

    Integrity is all-or-nothing. Either one has it, or one does not. I wish I had understood this sooner.

Logan Feys (i@individualistvoice.com) is the founder of Individualist Voice, a web site dedicated to providing an independent, rational, and uncompromising voice for individual freedom in all areas of human existence.

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