late
Today I continued my pursuit of pointless things.
I did, however, manage to get some dishes washed.
I wore a new pair of pants that kept confusing me because they had multiple layers of deep pockets.
I bought caramel apple cider at Starbucks and felt a double shot of self-disgust for (a) buying anything at Starbucks and (b) drinking all that sugar.
As I walked to my office on campus, I got targeted by a million aggressive scalpers trying to sell me tickets to tonight's Pitt basketball game.
I ate spaghetti.
In an act of self-indulgence I bought a CD.
I realize it's getting late.
I ponder the difference between dignity and integrity. I guess they're actually quite different constructs. I once did a google search on dignity, and got some song by Bob Dylan:
Got no place to fade, got no coat
I'm on the rollin' river in a jerkin' boat
Tryin' to read a note somebody wrote
About dignity
And so on. Dignity also seems to refer to a prominent GLBT organization, and there's "Death with Dignity", and other such campaigns. Thus dignity is considered a right, something that is society's job to help ensure that you maintain.
Integrity, that is another story. I always used to think of moral integrity as the integration of your behavior across different times and different contexts, such that your response A in situation B would be the same on Monday at work as it would be on Saturday at home. Your path is unshaken by circumstantial variation. You are you. You do what you do and be it good or bad it is constant and that reflects someone who knows what they want out of their own comportment in life. I suppose many of us know what we'd like out of our own behavior but the self-control isn't so easy.
My right shoulder is getting tense, and sometimes I get these weird sensations that crawl up the back of my neck and onto my scalp. Nothing to be concerned about, just strange.
It's a quiet night. I appreciate that. I'm going to sleep now. I hope.
Comments
I was asked in a job interview for a govt job to define integrity.
Posted by: Sno Cones | Diciembre 4, 2004 11:21 PM
What CD did you buy?
(Note that consumer behavior can be a variable in determining one's integrity, i.e., your Starbucks guilt--but that's not why I want to know, I'm just curious.)
Posted by: John | Diciembre 5, 2004 12:19 AM
John: the CD was John Adams--No use of cows as instruments (so far as I know). The CD is called "Road Movies" but I mainly got it because it had the piano piece "Phrygian Gates" on there. I don't think that particular purchase damaged my integrity. The Starbucks cider, yes, I'm sure it's doomed me to eternal damnation. What's sad is that the Starbucks by Pitt is on a sidewalk lined with panhandlers. It's kind of a sad strip of town.
Sno Cones: That's interesting. I'm not sure how I would respond in that situation. Unfortunately I imagine myself becoming quickly cynical: like, mr. or mrs. interviewer couldn't care less what I think about integrity, s/he's just reading the question and letting me answer and erstwhile mentally planning a grocery shopping list or something like that.
I think, though, a good discussion about 'integrity' would be worthwhile. Though I want to make my perspective clear. I'm not the self-righteous moralizing type--or let's say, I try not to be, that's not my intention. I'm not pushing this from any sort of specific religious viewpoint either. I'm saying, in the post-post-modern world, where does this whole "integrity" idea stand. Or insert a more appropriate term if you know of one. I leave that as an open question for now; if I have time later this week I'll make a separate post and structure it a little better.
Posted by: Karin | Diciembre 5, 2004 10:48 AM
I'm not sure I feel altogether comfortable commenting on the state of po-pomo (wasn't that a Beach Boys song?) jargon, but I would say that the two words I hear most often associated with what I think about when I think about 'integrity' are 'authenticity' and 'applicability' - the former has been a cultural studies buzzword for a spell, the latter emergent or borrowed, I guess) from empirical science - both essentially being used to describe that which maintains an existing healthy subjectivity without (and here's the 'po' part) resulting to any overarching metanarrative qua moral schema.
In short, keeping it real.
Posted by: John | Diciembre 5, 2004 07:55 PM
'Authenticity' does make some sense within a pomo framework--it's like living in honest accordance with those values that you almost inescapably espouse, while maintaining awareness of the non-absolute, non-universal nature of those values. But 'applicability'....what? I'm still a bit confused on that.
Posted by: Karin | Diciembre 6, 2004 07:11 PM
Many of the 11,200 sites that come up in a search of "postmodern applicability" say that, in pomospeak, one doesn't universally "explain" or "define" with theory, but rather "applies" said theory to a text and observes it's (the theory's) applicability to said text, the way science would "apply" a dependent variable to an experimental group and observe (or not) a change. For Levinas (and, in fact, for Derrida and Baudrillard), this is found in the *application* of a foreign (read: Western) "ethics" to an Other, whereas in your reading of authenticity above, it is in the applicability of those inescapable values that one determines the authenticity of one's subjectivity.
Did that help? Or hurt?
Posted by: John | Diciembre 6, 2004 07:37 PM
Huh. Ok. I think if I see it through the eyes of empiricism then I can sympathize. Theory testing involves determining patterns of observations that would be consistent or inconsistent with your theory, and then making those observations. The more consistent observations you find, the more applicable the theory to the phenomenon. So, applicability in the sense of integrity must entail consistency between one's professed principles and the rest of their own subjective little world.
So, that's my probably my final attempt at understanding how applicability could be appropriately linked to the concept of integrity (if i don't have it by now, i'm giving up). It is funny how semantics contract and expand. I can imagine the neural plasticity behind this. Which is probably a sign that I'm getting too tired and should go to bed.
Posted by: Karin | Diciembre 8, 2004 10:06 PM
I think you had it all along.
But, getting back to your original post, how do you think 'integrity' applies to 'digity'? Are the two related? How do ethics weigh in on determining the relationship between these two words? Should Bob write a sequel?
Can you tell I'm fighting insomnia these days?
Posted by: John | Diciembre 8, 2004 10:33 PM