Integrity or Conformity?, aphorism 200, The Mechanics of Virtue, Matt Berry

200


Integrity often precludes itself with the question: Integrity or Conformity?  Now one is even tractable to the accusation of one’s “lack of integrity.”  A parallel example might be cowardice-baiting, where person A calls person B a coward unless B reads from precisely that script which A suggests is the one and only role for the performance of courage.  Ironically, B now performs the “courageous” action out of the fear of moral failing or public censure.  Likewise, the man of integrity often whips himself into a public display that is more like conformity than its opposite.  Even as he takes a stand against the “majority view,” the framework behind his boldest and most sincere activism is, “If I do not perform action X, then I cannot imagine my rank among those heroic models who have real integrity.”



A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism



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