A return to Truth and Integrity – daring to care
One week into Trump’s presidency, if you have been living in a similar world to mine, you might have been questioning the meaning of big, keystone words like Integrity and truth.
Words are symbols and have no meaning without context. They are also the foundation of constructs that build relationships and TRUST (another big word) between people.
Most of my life has been built around Integrity. Teaching it, exploring it, excavating it. Sometimes, naivety and Integrity can coexist.
In 2000, I created a two-day workshop, which was delivered to thousands, called “Dare to Care – How to Speak the Radical Truth with Compassion.” (You can purchase the ebook that outlines the seven-step process, which forms the backbone of Dare to Care, “Speak the Truth”, here.) My teacher of teachers, Buckminster Fuller, urged us, with his last breath, to live in integrity..
Rather than use words, we must live them. We must be the model. Now more than ever, we need to do this, for we are at a time in history where elements of global leadership are working with great consistency to demonstrate that integrity, truth and trust are entirely different from what I was taught in kindergarten.
It is no surprise, then, that George Orwell’s book, 1984, has this week regained the #1 position in book sales, for it deals with the fallout of not fighting for good and truth every single day.
Over the years, I have written extensively about truth and integrity. Yet obviously we need more people to write about it, act and live in integrity, because it feels to me like there are places in the world where we have forgotten what it means.
Bucky Fuller would say that integrity means to “hold its shape”. There is a wholeness integrity. ‘Nothing left out’. Coherent. Aligned. Resonant. We cannot argue with it.
In his fabulous book, Abilene Paradox, one of my favourite books on management/leadership of all time, Jerry Harvey writes about Captain Asoh, a story of a JAL pilot who, in the 60’s, landed his plane perfectly in San Francisco Bay, 2 kms from the runway, without any loss of life. At his trial, day #1, he admitted, without making up reasons why or why not, he had made a mistake” “I screwed up”.
The simplicity and raw honesty of his story, set against a backdrop of six 6 months of sensationalism and innuendos, caught everyone in stunned silence.
I screwed up. That is all. We can explore a million variations of why I might have, but the truth of the matter is that I screwed up.
I am so tired of the justifications, the stories, the defences, the endless rationalisations as to why and why not. It is all just endless BS.
Can we please just have integrity? And truth?
Of course, here it gets complex; that’s what we have built a world, covered in legal dollars, where people need excuses, stories, and, as such, we have no idea what is real and what is not. Anyone who hangs around a courtroom will tell you that it is rarely about justice, and most often about who had the best defence, truth or not.
The biggest task we face as humans in Universe right now is the ability to apply discernment. To ask the question that most people will not ask, are afraid to ask, or might not know how to ask.
To really think for ourselves. To seek perspectives we had not dared explore.
Like.
“There is no such thing as a straight line.”
And.
‘One plus one plus one can equal four.’ (I can show you how)
As for education, how do we transform our system of education to one of learning? To have our kids become even more annoying at asking questions than they were in the first few years of their lives? To not feed them with stock answers. But to get them to continue seeking?
And finally, in our discernment, we must fight again for good. Say no to lies. Call them lies. Call them by name. Call out the elephant. (Check out “The Thin Book of Naming Elephants.”)
It is time to set aside the attempt to be politically correct and inclusive. Brutes and bullies will just laugh at you for being nice. Truth can come with clear and resonant anger. Anger is healthy when it speaks from a reservoir of integrity and doesn’t seek to belittle or reduce; instead, it simply conveys what is so.
I find it fascinating that I am writing these words, 16 years after sending two years of teaching Dare to Care.
Perhaps it is time for me to dust off the program and bring it back to life, for god knows we all need to build our skills of communication to handle the world of deception and lies that has descended upon us?
What do you think?
