The Integrity of Community
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Integrity is one of the most important character traits we can develop. It is important because it requires both clarity about what we value most and the ability to be reflective about our actions and our lives. But what about communities? What about congregations, denominations, governments and societies?
Just as for an individual, integrity in community is a measure of the alignment between what a community, organization or society says about what it values, and its actions, intentions, behaviors and policies. So a lack of integrity would be when a group’s actions and practices violate or negate who they say they are.
But what about as a country? In his book, What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets, Harvard professor Michael Sandel says a significant problem in the US is that our political discussions no longer really grapple with conversations about values. What does it mean to live a good life? What does the common good look like? What are our civic responsibilities? What is essential for the protection of liberty and democracy? What does equality look like?
The heated and often vitriolic debates of contemporary politics are a reflection of how really empty they are. Slogans and sound bites and personal attacks do not make room for real discussions of values and how to protect them and to live them.
Integrity requires not only clarity about which values matter most, but also the ability to reflect on our actions and to gauge their alignment with those values. There seems so little capacity in our public discourse for this kind of reflection and debate. And this fosters disillusionment, regardless of political persuasion, with government and public officials because of their inability to act for the public good or address questions that matter most.
Liberty, democracy, equality, a commitment to the common good—these are values we say are foundational to the U.S., and yet it is another value that has been slowly reshaping our society. Sandel argues that market values have pervaded almost all areas of our lives and our society. Almost everything in the U.S. is now for sale.
The market has invaded areas that previously were determined by values related to what it means to have a good society, values aimed at achieving a common good. And nowhere is there a real conversation about where market values make sense and where other values should lead. In fact, the common narrative is that market values are good in all ways—that they provide the efficient distribution of resources and that markets should dictate all aspects of our lives. But there is a price—and that price is the loss of those other values.
Here is an example Sandel gives: There was a study done comparing blood donation systems in the U.K. and the U.S. In the U.K., all blood is donated without compensation. But here in the U.S., there is a combination of donations and blood banks that pay people to give blood. Traditional economics would suggest that paying people to give blood would boost supply, for you have both the motivation of wanting to help others and the financial motivation to give blood. In reality, the opposite is the case. The study found that paying people to give blood “led to chronic shortages, wasted blood, higher costs and a greater risk of contaminated blood.” Volunteers, when they begin getting paid to do something, find it less rewarding. Getting paid to do something they had volunteered for actually depreciates their intrinsic interest and commitment.
The less we are needed or asked to be civic-minded, the less we are called on for civic duty, the less we as a citizenry are aware, prepared, practiced or attentive to those needs. No wonder this sense of common-ality and connection is unraveling. Too often our social relationships are dictated by market values. And the more our lives are dictated by markets, the more those of affluence and privilege are sequestered from those of modest means.
We need more civic places and opportunities for dynamic civil discourse and debate about when market values make sense, and when a different set of values—values like democracy, equality, liberty, happiness and notions of the common good—need to guide us. Without this work we will continue to drift away from our core values and struggle even to articulate them meaningfully. The more nearly all aspects of our lives become market decisions rather than moral ones, the weaker our ability to define and align to what’s most important becomes.
This is why integrity is so important—for the individual and for communities. Communities have the power to bring out the best and the worst in people. Change is possible. Healthy, robust, values-based conversations can be reclaimed if we start inviting them— both engaging in them ourselves and requiring them of the people who ask to lead us. When we have lost our way as communities, individuals must work and speak and act to lead the community back to integrity.
Susan received a Masters of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School and a Bachelor of Science in Molecular Biology from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She is a lifelong UU who grew up at in the St. Louis area. She lives now in Cambridge, MA with her husband, Brian and their son.
- The Integrity of Community - May 1, 2020
- The Most Courageous Act - February 1, 2020
- The Power and Poverty of Freedom - April 1, 2016
