Integrity Myth: “You have it or you don’t”

Integrity Is Not An Object

This quote is a great example of how misunderstood and misrepresented integrity is. I believe that this is due to the language gap in the English language, where Integrity is only known as a noun, thereby implicating it as an object.  However, integrity is very subjective, especially when used in conjunction with a person.

In a theoretical sense, integrity can be an absolute. Not as it applies to a person, but as it applies to an act, in a single instance for example. Just as there is (and has to be) an absolute truth, and an absolute right or wrong, in the mind of the subject, for integrity to exist. It is pretty easy to deem a person’s action as integrious, such as when someone picks up money that was dropped and returns it to the rightful owner. Simple. But a person, their life, and their thousands upon thousands of actions cannot be summed up to an absolute ye or newhen it comes to integrity. Integrity as it applies to humanity is of course a relative attribute. Everyone has some degree of integrity. No one is completely integrious, just as no one is completely unintegrious.

Let’s now examine this quote, what it implies exactly and how this might affect our opinion on the subject.

“Integrity, either you have it, or you don’t.”

This quote speaks of integrity in the sense of a noun, something that one can possess as an object. This is very understandable since up until now we only understood integrity in the noun sense. We haven’t had an adjective to attach the meaning of integrity to a person, to make it relative and subjective, but only this way of objectifying it. This gap in the English language has shaped and framed our cultural understanding of integrity. However, a deeper understanding of integrity will surely reveal that integrity is much more who you are, than something you have. This is because integrity is subjective to you as a person, but also involves the aspect of you integrating yourself as a whole and complete person. So by using the word in this way, and in using the noun, instead of the adjective we are actually mis-representing integrity as a stand alone object, which it cannot be.

Secondly, this quote implies that integrity is a black or white distinction, 0 or 100%. These implications actually exhibit what integrity is not. Integrity is something one can learn, develop and strengthen over time. And it works this way more often than not. Life experience tends to be the best teacher of integrity. To some degree we all start out with integrity as babies and small kids, then we start to lose it as certain influences, conditioning and events shape our minds and hearts growing up, and it is inevitable that we will grow apart from our purest and true self. This can happen in the teenage and young adult years and you see alot of people that are able to finally reconnect with later in life. The mid-life crisis is a great example of this.  Here’s another example of a common integrity quote that speaks to the same myth. “No can question your integrity, when your integrity is not questionable.” This is certainly more accurate than our title quote, and I like some of the other connotations it has, but you can see how it refers to integrity as an absolute, a mark of perfection.

Extracting a third component of misconstrued implication from this quote is that integrity in a person can be judged by another. This is a dangerous connotation, as Integrity is not and should not be a methodology for judging others. At the root of integrity is the relationship onehas with oneself, but also an open mind and respect for other peoples values and beliefs. Granted, that again we know there are certain absolutes in a single act, but judging a person’s overall character is speculation at best.  This quote, if taken too literally, can lend itself to a person that can falsely judge others and become arrogant. As you can imagine the person who believes this quote would, more often than not, believe themselves to be inherently integrious and therefore could act in blindness to reality and truth because they have convinced themselves that whatever they do will be integrious.