Flight from Integrity

While seldom so succinctly stated, such an external, "other directed" guide to behavior is finding ever wider acceptance in American life. Implicit in its acceptance is a flight from personal integrity; and here may be found an important expla nation for some of the mischief pres ently besetting our society. Doubtless, this is good enough as a formula for getting rich. However, if an individual looks upon wealth as a means to such higher ends as his own intellectual and spiritual emergence or realizing those crea tive potentialities inherent in his From The Freeman, December 1959. 670 nature, then the formula has its shortcomings. And, in certain areas, it is downright destructive. This is a serious charge. Let's ex plore it. In order to get this matter into perspective, contemplate the countless specialized subjects known to mankind. Take anyone of them landscape painting, for instance and arrange the population of the U.S.A. in a pyramid according to proficiency or quality. There would be some one person at the very peak.

Under him would be a few compe tent landscape painters; there would follow perhaps one million having a discriminating appreciation of such art; after which there would be the great mass-millions upon millions, unconscious, unaware, utterly igno rant of the art or the standards by which its perfection could be at tained or judged. Rearrange the population in proFLIGHT FROM INTEGRITY 671 ficiency pyramids for all of the countless subjects which engage hu man interest and each of us would find himself near the base of most of the pyramids. Few are leaders or among the highly competent-ex cept rarely and momentarily, if at all. Each of us has a potential for growth and development-espe cially if advantage is taken of the help available from those on higher levels. With the above in mind, let us ex plore the implications of integrity to the situation we are contemplating. It involves the accurate reflection in word and deed of that which one's highest insight and conscience dic tate as true and right. Now, a per son's concept of what is true may not in fact be truth, but it is as close to truth as he can get. It is the individ ual's nearest approximation to truth, his most faithful projection of that approximation, the most accurate reflection of his best lights.

AdverseSelectivity With the pyramid picture and this conception of integrity in mind, let us now observe what happens when the skilled in any subject-the com petent who are near the peak-adopt the practice of finding out what the people want in order to "do more of it" and finding out what they do not want in order to "do less of it." In such circumstances, from whence comes the instruction for what each of the skilled is to do? From the best that is in each skilled person or available to him? From the highest conscience of each? Indeed not! The instruction and leadership in such circumstances is tailored to the level of the "know-nothings" of the given subject, to the values at the base of our imagined pyramid where over 90 per cent of the people are. Integrity is forsaken. Potential leadership is diverted from higher aspiration and, instead, panders to the tastes and foibles of the ignorant.

The fields of art and music, where new "lows" are now so much in evi dence, illustrate the flight from in tegrity. Consider the following con fession, ascribed to the famous painter, Picasso: "In art, the mass of the people no longer seek consolation and exalta tion, but those who are refined, rich, unoccupied, who are distillers of quintessences, seek what is new, strange, original, extravagant, scandalous. I myself, since cubism and even before, have satisfied these masters and critics, with all the changing oddities which passed through my head, and the less they understood me, the more they ad mired me. By amusing myself with all these games, with all these ab surdities, with all these puzzles, re buses, and arabesques, I became fa mous, and that· very quickly. And fame for a painter means sales, gains, fortune, riches. And today, as you 672 THE FREEMAN November know, I am celebrated, I am rich. But when I am alone with myself, I have not the courage to think of myself as an artist in the great and ancient sense of the term. Giotto, Titian, Rembrandt, and Goya were great painters; I am only a public enter tainer who has understood his times and has exhausted as best he could the imbecility, the vanity, the cu pidity of his contemporaries. Mine is a bitter confession, more painful than it may appear, but it has the merit of being sincere."l ' I have a TV program in mind. The star is an accomplished actress with an attractive voice. Does she sing the lovely songs of which she is capable?

Only now and then. For the most part, she and those in charge of her TV appearances insist on the stuff which nickels in juke boxes indicate as mass-popular. Instead of the mil lions at the lower part of the pyra mid being lifted in their musical tastes by this singer at her creative best, we observe her descending and catering to the lowest or base tastes an imitation ofignorance, so to speak. Thus is the music of our day de graded. However unhappily we may view the wreckage which these responses to ignorance have brought to the fields of music, art, literature, enter tainment, journalism, and the like, lBroderick, Alan Houghton. Mirage of Af rica. London: Hutchinson & Co., Ltd., 1953, p. 203. we must concede that the individual who cares anything about himself has the choice, in these fields, of turning off the TV and not reading or viewing the rubbish that is so overwhelmingly served up to him.

The Realm of Politics But no such freedom of choice is allowed the individual when flight from integrity occurs in the realm of politics. The individual, irrespective of his scruples, his morals, his ide als, his tastes, is helplessly swept with millions of others into the mis erable mess which the dull weight of ignorance gradually but inevita bly inflicts on everyone. A candidate for the Presidency, supposedly brighter and better edu cated than average, nevertheless polled the mass of voters to find what they wanted from government. As could have been foretold, they wanted the very things that crumbled the Roman Empire-"breadand cir cuses." The farmers wanted subsi dies, not for outstanding perfor mance, but for not farming. The labor unions wanted grants of coercive power that they might extort more pay for less work. Many business men wanted various protections against competition. Vast hordes wanted the guaranteed life: pen sions, ease, retirement; in short, to be relieved of responsibility for self.

These are the things our candidate professed to stand for and promised 1983 FLIGHT FROM INTEGRITY 673 to deliver, if elected. Instead of standing consistently for the high est principles of political economy known to him, he imitated the low est common denominator opinion of the population. His campaign man ager confided that he had to do this to get elected; that once in office he would then do what he regarded as right. This opportunity never came; the candidate was defeated. And, defeat was his just due. One who runs a campaign without integrity proves openly that he would, at any time, forsake integrity if it appeared ex pedient for him to do so. This explains why the two major political parties in the United States today stand for the same things. Both have chosen to receive their instruc tions from precisely the same source, the lowest common denominator of popular opinion. The result is a one party system under two meaning less labels. This deplorable situation can never be remedied until there is a return to integrity, with candi dates whose outer selves and actions will reflect their own best thoughts, regardless of the effect this may have on their political fortunes.

Edmund Burke, addressing those who had just elected him to Parlia ment, put the case for integrity in unequivocal and unmistakable terms: "But his [the successful candi date's] unbiased opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure-no, nor from the law and the Constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opin ion." George Washington had the same practical and lofty sentiments in mind when he reportedly said to the Constitutional Convention: "If, to please the people, we offer what we ourselves disapprove, how can we afterwards defend our work? Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair. The event is in the hand of God."

Socialism Leaves Little Choice No individual, whoever he may be, can escape the immediate conse quences of ignorance in politics, as he can in art, music, journalism. There is no way to avoid the pains which bad political action inflicts. For ignorant political action encompas ses all-one's life and the suste nance ofHfe which is the fruit of one's own labor; one's freedom to choose how one shall live his own life. Po litical collectivism-the pattern consonant with political igno rance-means what it says: Every one swept indiscriminately into a 674 THE FREEMAN November vast human mass, the collective. 2 Why this wholesale divorce from personal conscience, this shameless acceptance of mass ignorance as our Director of Doing? Doubtless, there are numerous reasons, some of which may be too obscure for ready discovery and ex amination. One possible explana tion has to do with a false economic assumption. We, having paid so much heed to material progress and well being, to ever higher standards of living, let our economic concepts pattern other aspects of our lives.

Erring in our economic assump tions, we compound the error in our social, political, moral, and spiritual judgments. Here is the error in economic di agnosis: We assume that "Find out what the people want and do more of it" has been the formula for our success, for our prolific production of goods and services. Thus, in the eco nomic area, so we think, our guid ance has come from the mass mar ket rather than from conscience or higher realms of mind. The current cliche says, "The consumer is king." 2This dim view of political collectivism is not to be mistaken as a backhanded endorsement of the "philosopher king" idea of Plato and its modem counterpart: that society should be wholly governed by committees of the creative elite. There is no political process of knowing or selecting in advance the persons who will be most creative. The only process that will bring the creative minority to the top, that will en courage their effectiveness, is complete free dom.

The Spiritual Nature of Progress Actually, instruction from the mass market has to do only with du plication. The market determines whether or not an economic good is to be duplicated and, if so, to what extent. Duplication, sometimes called "mass production," admittedly con trolled by the market, is not, how ever, the secret of productivity. The secret lies back of that. It has its genesis in the creation, the inven tion. Ralph Waldo Trine helps with this explanation: "Everything is first worked out in the unseen before it is manifested in the seen, in the ideal before it is re alized in the real, in the spiritual before it shows forth in the material. The realm of the unseen is the realm of cause. The realm of the seen is the realm of effect. The nature of effect is always determined and condi tioned by the nature of its cause."3 The noted economist, Professor Ludwig von Mises, reputedly the greatest free market theorist of our time, adds his judgment to this view: "Production is a spiritual, intel lectual, and ideological phenome non. It is the method that man, di rected by reason, employs for the best possible removal of uneasiness. What distinguishes our conditions from those of our ancestors who lived one thousand or twenty thousand years 3From In Tune with the Infinite. Indianapo lis: The Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1897.

1983 FLIGHT FROM INTEGRITY 675 ago is not something material, but something spiritual. The material changes are the outcome of the spir itual changes."4 Where, for example, did Thomas Alva Edison get his ideas for the electric lamp? Not from the mass market! How could a people give specifications for something about which they were totally unaware? In reality, the productive process works outward from that which is first presented uniquely to an indi vidual mind as awareness or con sciousness or insight (the reception of ideas-ideation) and is then ac curately (with integrity) worked out or reflected in the material good or service. There is a distinctively spir itual accomplishment before the good or service is held up to view before the mass market. Let Each Do His Best American economic progress has been truly phenomenal. But this progress has been founded on in spiration from the highest insights of individuals, not on advice from the lower levels of ignorance. In this manner the masses progressively are freed from poverty and slavery, free men's material needs gratified as never before, and opportunities opened to everyone to pursue and develop those creative potentialities inherent in his own personality. If 4From Human Action. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1949, p. 141.

we would succeed with our political institutions, we have in the produc tive process a model to emulate. However, we must understand how this process really works: that it finds its power in highest conscience and the accurate reflection thereof, in short, in integrity. One's highest conscience, regard less of the step it occupies on the In finite Stairway of Righteousness and Wisdom, is sensitive to the way one treats it. Lie about it, distort it, re flect it inaccurately, take contrary instruction from inferior sources or yield to the temptation of fame or fortune or popularity or other weak nesses of the flesh at its expense and it will become flabby and flaccid and will be incapable of rising to higher levels. Now and then we observe individ uals who can be depended upon to state accurately that which they be lieve to be right, persons unmoved by fickle opinions, by the lure of ap plause, or by the sting of censure.

We may disagree with such persons, but be it noted that we trust them. For their creed appears to be: This above all, to thine own self be true; And it must follow, as the night the day Thou canst not then be false to any man. Such persons are possessed of integrity! , Every Person Should Be Free · .. to pursue his ambition to the full extent of his abilities, regardless of race or creed or family back ground. · .. to associate with whom he pleases for any reason he pleases, even if someone else thinks it's a stupid reason. · .. tg worship God in his own way, even if it isn't "orthodox." · .. to choose his own trade and to apply for any job he wants-and to quit his job if he doesn't like it or if he gets a better offer. · .. to go into business for himself, be his own boss, and set his own hours ofwork-even ifit's only three hours a week. · .. to use his honestly acquired property or savings in his own way-spend it foolishly, invest it wisely, or even give it away.