Thought of the Day

Wednesday, March 30, 2011
One aspect of integrity is being the same person in both your private and public lives. There's no getting around this. Explaining why the dichotomy between your two selves is acceptable and doesn't negatively affect your integrity doesn't make you complex. It makes you a tool. A tool who lacks integrity.

5 comments:

Stacey said...

I've always said Integrity is based on who you are, not who someone else is or what they are doing. Consistency in Integrity is crucial, otherwise it's not Integrity.

Nathan said...

And I'm trying to figure out exactly which tool has you worked up today. So many choices!

Janiece said...

Nathan, I'm not worked up, actually. Mostly shaking my head in bemusement...

Phiala said...

I'm not sure I agree.

I don't contradict myself, or try not to, but in my private life I am much more liberal and outspoken about many things than I am in public. And I don't mean internet public, I mean at-work public.

One of my selves is a socially-liberal bisexual writer of zombie erotica who wants to dye her hair purple.

One of my selves wears boring clothes, has normal hair, keeps her mouth shut a lot of the time. I work for the government and with very conservative people, and being out of the closet on any of those things would impact my ability to do my job.

And my private persona--who I really am, if you'd like--isn't the same as either; neither my workplace nor the internet need to know everything about me.

Your definition of integrity as stated would make it difficult or impossible for me to do my job effectively, but I'm doing useful work that I trained hard for for many years, and like being able to pay the mortgage. Tool? Apparently.

Janiece said...

Phiala, I would not agree that you don't have an integrated personality based on your comments.

The fact that you choose to remain silent about your liberalism / bisexual tendencies / zombie fetish in your professional environment doesn't mean you don't have integrity - it means you maintain a professional demeanor in you professional environment. If your professional life is anything like mine, your workmates are not necessarily your friends. They are your colleagues, which implies a certain level of formality.

What would make you a tool is if you condemned bisexuals, or people with purple hair, or zombie fetishist at work because your workmates were conservative, but in your private life you aspired to or were in fact all those things.

Or to put a more black and white aspect to it, if you valued honesty, would you consider lying like a dog in your professional persona a completely acceptable behavior?

Maintaining a level of privacy about yourself isn't betraying integrity. But not being consistent in your values and your morality is.