Integrity [ in–teg–ri-tee ]
Part 2
Are they ashamed of their loathsome conduct? No, they have no shame at all;
they do not even know how to blush. So they will fall among the fallen;
they will be brought down when they are punished, says the LORD.
~ Jeremiah 8:12
Integrity is that one other thing lyricist Hal David left out of the famous Burt Bacharach song when of love he wrote “it’s the only thing that there’s just too little of.” I fear it is not merely my imagination that leads me to believe that today—particularly in the United States—there is a disconcerting shortage of more than just toilet paper, ketchup packets, chlorine, and computer chips; an increasing scarcity that in the end will prove to be even more deadly than the dearth of IV poles, ventilators, heart defibrillators, and empty hospital beds, not to mention nurses, other health care workers, and as David points out—love. As noticeable and urgent as these things are—especially the ones listed at the end of that line up—there appears to be a paucity of a good that cannot be commodified, a human quality or characteristic the capacity for which we are all born but that must be consciously nurtured, exercised, and strengthened lest it atrophy or disappear altogether.
Which is why I feel the urge or need to say something on behalf of Sir Integrity, or if you prefer, Dame Integrity. It is an understatement to say I’m concerned about the lack of Integrity seemingly spreading across our country like one more wildfire. I am greatly disturbed by the increasingly blatant public display of Integrity’s nemeses—dishonor, dishonesty, and disgrace—by individuals masquerading as fully grown adults. Doth mine eyes deceive me? Yes, if I am not careful (read, responsible and discerning). Same goes for you.
In a society habituated toward breeding and inculcating shame, perpetuating its prevalence and enduring harm, let us not too quickly throw healthy, appropriate shame out with the bathwater. Is there such a thing as healthy shame? There is. And saying so in no way dismisses the pervasiveness of toxic shame nor the need to root it out and offer the appropriate care that leads to healing. Unlike guilt which is a reaction connected to committing a transgression, shame is the response to feeling exposed—think em-bare–ass-ment. Guilt is experienced as a judgement on something we did wrong, whereas shame is felt much more deeply and internalized as a judgment on our very being, on who we are, as if what is wrong is us.
The problem is that so often those who are shamed have nothing to be ashamed of (unlike their shamers), while those who need to be called out, and exposed, often feel not a prickle of shame. It is this latter group of whom I am speaking. Apparently—and sadly—human beings’ ability to immunize themselves from feeling shame is nothing new. In the late 7th and early 6th century BC, the prophet Jeremiah warned of those who act shamefully, but “no longer even know how to blush.” I am talking here about the kind of shame and shamelessness the Hebrew prophets were addressing.
In addition to his often-quoted assertion, “In a democratic society, some are guilty, all are responsible,” Rabbi Abraham Heschel believed in and possessed a healthy sense of what he called “existential embarrassment.” The embarrassment of being itself, of being alive, of beauty in nature that brings a person with a pulse to tears, of friendship, and love, and a felt sense of the ineffable. But he means more than this as well. We’re not talking about being embarrassed for showing up at school with our pull over shirt inside-out or passing gas on a first date. We’re talking about being more than a little bothered by the destruction of the earth, the amount of money spent on the military industrial complex, increasingly unapologetic xenophobia, racism, and the fact that while twenty million Americans lost their jobs during the pandemic 650 American billionaires saw their net worth increase 35% and are now worth 4.6 trillion dollars. Existential embarrassment invites humility, on the one hand, and responsibility, on the other hand.
The unflinching moral depravity, calculated sadism, and systematic dehumanization perpetrated by the Nazi’s—who were raised at a time in history when Germany represented the apex of high culture—dispossessed Heschel of any illusion that sophistication, especially intellectual or cultural, guaranteed an individual or a people possessed any significant amount of Integrity. Consequently, witnessing the normalization of evil carried out so designedly and neatly by educated people, led Heschel in the mid-1950’s to write:
I am afraid of people who are never embarrassed at their own pettiness, prejudices, envy, and conceit, never embarrassed at the profanation of life…. There are slums, disease, and starvation all over the world, and we are building more luxurious hotels in Las Vegas.
Should we not also be concerned when shame that manifests as appropriate “existential embarrassment” is so noticeably AWOL? Wherever there is a shortage of Integrity I guarantee there will be a corresponding obliviousness to existential embarrassment. An exigete of the soul, Heschel witnessed the incarnation of horror executed by those who felt no reason to be embarrassed or ashamed by their mistreatment of other humans. He also noticed that those who sensed the ineffable dimension of reality and perceived it to be an overture of divine presence blushed, while others did not. He wrote:
Faith is a blush in the presence of God. Some of us blush, others wear a mask which veils spontaneous sensitivity to the holy ineffable dimension of reality. We all wear so much make-up, we have almost forfeited our face.
That’s a devastating line. In a time and place when fewer and fewer people even give one seconds thought to “saving face”—after all there is no perceived need—more and more people end up forfeiting their faces. (to be continued . . .)
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