INTEGRITY, REPUTATION AND THE FATE OF MAN
Every human is defined in either of these two ways: Who he is or how he wants people to see him. Who a man is tied to his integrity quotient; how he wants the world to see him is related to his reputation. In between these two stand points lay the balancing window for explaining what has become the reality of existence and the puzzling way of life of man and his institutions, be they economic, political, religious, etc.
Because the issue at stake has alot to do with the reality of things and its derivatives, it is important to take note of the postulation by Berger and Luckman (1966) that, 'reality is socially constructed and that the sociology of knowledge must analyse the process in which this (reality) occurs.' Therefore, this discourse is situated within the context of positive and normative reasoning which are two opposing analytical approaches used in behavioural sciences like psychology, political science, sociology, economics, business management, etc explain social phenomena.
Positive reasoning percieves things from the the prism of "What is" (realist school of thought) while normative thinking is related to the idea of "What ought to be" (idealist school of thought). The philosophical foundation of the concepts of integrity and reputation are built around positive and normative approaches in social analysis respectively.
Integrity is the attribute of being constantly one's self whether in secret and/or in the open because what is being done is righteously, morally and legally correct. On the other hand, reputation means hypocritical attribute of being flippant in action to gain acceptance before divergent publics. In other words, integrity is a constant; reputation is a variable which changes with changing circumstances.
Elexander the great once told his name sake, a soldier who run away from one of his country's wars against enemies: "Change your name or change your ways." This was because Elexander saw himself as a committed and determined soldier who cannot abandon any battle engagement and so those who bear names like his should live up to that expectation, no more; no less!
Learning to be consistent in thoughts, words and actions is in deficit in today's world but a virtue that cannot be wished away. The actions of men must reflect the spirit and letters of their words and the words of men reflecting in their everyday actions to minimise or even eliminate all indicting contradictions surrounding individuals or groups of individuals. "If we are ashamed to bear the true tag of what we do, then we must change what we do. A witch should be bold enough to answer a witch and stop answering a prophet", said Pastor Etim Ogbeide.
Any problem that mimics cannot be solved easily. It is only when men live up the true meaning of their belief systems that their Ideological problems, if any, can be tracked and solved. A religious fanatic or bigot who masquerades as a liberal saint is an accident waiting to happen because a man cannot pretend forever. This is also because, "to a religious bigot humanity is barely skin-deep. He lives in a world of surfaces, a world of masks and artifice. Thus he expouse the absoluteness of externals"(Olatunji, 2022). This means that for a religious zealot, religion is valued above humanity it is meant to shape and so cannot be predicted.
In the community of people friendship is germane. However, all friendship are built upon mutual benefit or mutual predictability and trust. No two person can reliably and sustainably co-habit who are practically strange bed fellows. Strangers could relate but temporarily until those involved graduate from mere acquintances to good friends whose relationship is driven by sustained mutual understanding.
One of the greatest challenge of communal living is discreet conservatism, that is, being, "careful and prudent in one's speech or actions, especially, in order to keep something confidential or to avoid embarrassment." Discreet conservatism is the maintenance of secretive or tonque-chequing disposition that is meant to hide someone's mischievous tendencies. It is anti-thetical to sound and enduring relationships.
Pearl Buck in a forward to "Passport to Friendship", a book written by William Peters in 1957 noted that, "if people knew each other well through their various ways of living and thinking, a human relationship would result which, based upon mutual understanding, could mean peace on earth and goodwill among men." This assertion implies that being earnest, plain or reasonably opened to one another in a community creates reliable atmosphere for brotherhood and sisterhood to thrive between and amongst neighbours. It motivates trust and deepens the bond of unity amongst people which every society craves, especially, in the globalised social configuration of the 21st Century.
The construction of a man's character and his disposition towards others is dependent, largely, upon the credibility of his mentoring agents in terms of the quality of instructions he is fed with in his life time. This idea is validated by Gimi (2022) who asserted that "the attitude of individuals, groups and communities towards one another are, in fact, a reflection of the way and manner in which they are conditioned by the providers of various forms of knowledge on whom they rely for guidance." Therefore, any personality stature that is built upon faulty instruction is bound to result in moral and ethical contradictions that diminishes the the integrity of a man. In other words, it takes credible moral instruction to build integrity quotent that is worth celebrating within the context of universally accepted virtues of truth, love, empathy. He that is truthful, loving and empathic bears the toga of a man of integrity.
The missing link between integrity and reputation represents the birth of human and societal contradictions. In a falling or imperfect world, humans and their institutions are susceptible to failures but no one is ever willing to admit failure. Individuals, groups and institutions, be they religious or political or even social, hardly own up to their glaring failures but, instead, claims reputations that cannot stand integrity test. For instance, a man who has failed stomach-flat, in his moral responsibilities, will still want to fake being morally upright just to gain acceptability in his community.
A thief will always fake being innocent until caught in the act; a liar faking honesty until caught lying; etc. How truly innocent are the innocent faces human beings carry in today's world? The amount of innocent faces we see around us cannot be reconciled with the excalating trends in crime and violence being perpetrated around the world today.
In religion, people arrogate to themselves saintly disposition and reputation they cannot deliver. Perhaps, religion has become one of the practically leading breeding grounds for evil but who will accept this fact? There are churches everywhere, mosques everywhere and traditional shrines in communities, all claiming to be decent worship centres and agencies for social control but the evil men sometimes perpetrate from those centres could make one lose sleep through out his life. Places reputed to be platforms for the cultivation of God's oracle of peace, unity and love have bequeathed to us lame and morally sick community memberships. Today, people kill, rape and swindle their fellow men with reckless abundance, all in the name of religion thereby robbing religious bodies from where the criminals belonged of their integrity claims.
Nominally, there are fewer etheist, people who have no religion than religious people in the world today. Therefore, it can be hypothetically argued that 80% of the world's worst crimes are perpetrated by, at least, 20% of the world's religious rembership. And 20% of the world's worst crimes are perpetrated by etheists.
The outcome of actions or inactions taken in the name of religion in Nigeria is quite baffling. In the name of religion, morally exposed elements who have violated the country's standing rules could escape justice with great ease. Reflecting on this terrifying effects, Gimi (2022) stated that "it is discouraging that even after most Nigerians have recognised the fact that their respective religions, regions and ethnicities are the basic identies, they still have continued to show absolute recklessness in the way they handle those critically defining realities of their existence."
The new social order of this present century, globalisation, is a unique phenomenon which requires humans to go beyond just tolerating one another but to accept the reality of diversity and learnt to live together as one and the same people with common destiny (fate). In other words, the new civilisation provides ample opportunity for diverse people to congregate and share the beauty of their common humanity. It is, therefore, odd for anyone to take hard-lined and prejudiced decision to isolate and eliminate, with impunity, people whose shared belief differs from his or her own.
As the world increasingly become a "global village", narrowed community for human interaction through the power of phenomenal advancement in Information Communication Technology (ICT), intolerance and rejection of other people of different belief is an outdated fashion. It is ironical that while the world converge and integrates, others are engaged in fruitless effort to return humanity to the age of barbarism or cannibalism where humans eat humans. This should not be under any guise.
Whenever there is clash of civilisation (culture), especially, in this globalised and democratised age, civil dialogue remains the only credible and harmless solution. Terrorism, religious or cultural fundamentalism will not do. In fact, the gun can only kill humans but certainly not their belief system. beliefs are intangible but deep seated spirits or shared ideas that can only be deconstructed through diligent and convincing instruction (teaching). History has shown that no force, no matter how powerful could expel or root out established belief systems in people; only sound, persuasive teaching could. That is why socialist and communist ideologies that were thought to have been eliminated during the cold war are still being nurtured in parts of the world today.
In the political space, democracy is acclaimed the best of political systems. It is reputed to be a system which guarantees unreserved practice of rule of law (institutionalism) and majority rule. However, what happens even in advanced democracies like the United States of America (USA) sometimes defy democratic logic and leaves a bad taste. Under the United Nations are closed to 200 countries but America alone or any of the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council could veto any global decision and that's it.
America could declare war on any nation against UNs' protocol or unsolicited interventions and no sanction might be meted on it. Therefore, democracy is an elitest system of government of the privileged few who have military capacity to impose dominance on others and if convenient through controlled balloting. It is an elite system of government that legitimises itself through the manipulation of the common masses.
A man is what he does not what he wished he would have done. He is his actions and not his fantasised imaginations. This is the main thrust of the adage, "action speaks louder than voice." It is absolute hypocrisy doing one thing and professing another that is not in tandem with the action taken.
Integrity matters a lot but it seems to be missing in the dictionary of men, especially in the 21st century. No wonder artificial intelligence is increasingly the driver of civilisation in this age even in matters of relationship. It is unfortunate, man is increasingly losing his pride of place in the womb of time but together, we can reverse the order. Man is to rational to destroy his civilisation through irrationality!
*References*
William, P. (1957). Passport to Friendship. Philadelphia, New York: J. B. Lippincott Company
Gimi, S. (2022). Deborah Samuel: Hell in the spoken words (1). The Nation, May 19, 2022.
Berger, P. & Luckman, T. (1966). The social construction of reality. New York: Penguin Books.
