Thinking again about integrity – the shower in the morning is a great place for thinking. The mind is fresh after the night’s sleep and ideas that have been percolating in the unconscious begin to emerge. To love requires a beloved. In theory everyone we encounter, in fact everyone, should be the beloved. In practice this is not so easy. Being unselfish and putting the other person first comes easily when there are feelings and emotions as a driving force. When this is not the case, especially today in our crowded, impersonal urban society, it is almost impossible to make every encounter of the hundreds each day a personal encounter. Even if it were possible it would not be tolerated by the hurrying crowds who regard their impersonal anonymity as a shield, or defence. And so we, inevitably, slip into the prevailing mode of blind unconcern. Caught in the rush of traffic it would be impractical to stop for the stranded motorist. That is the job of the police. Hurrying to catch the train there is no time to help the harassed mother manoeuvre her pushchair and three toddlers down the escalator. Apart from those with whom we have a personal relationship we have little or no time for the others we meet.
This is why integrity might be something more easily put into practice. It begins by being ‘about me’ and self interest always has a flying start. But who am I and what does it mean to have integrity? ‘Who am I?’ is the $64,000 question. One of the reasons why there is no easy answer to it is because as humans we operate on many different levels, often on more than one level at a time. (I am not sure that level is the right word. Mode, or dimension might be better.)
There is a physical-biological dimension of being a body. Much time is devoted to feeding this body, moving it from place to place, washing and grooming it, tending to its wounds and hurts and, finally, just relaxing and resting. Much of this is automatic and does not involve specific mental effort.
There is a feeling-emotional dimension. Here the reciprocity between the physical and mental states is very marked. Physical well-being can produce an emotional high. Illness can cause depression. Mental stress can produce physical effects such as headaches and ulcers. Hormones and psychoactive chemicals can determine mood and mental states. These in turn have a profound effect on the personality. Emotions authenticate meaning. Einstein’s formula E=mc2 may determine the shape of the cosmos but as an abstract concept its meaning is negligible compared to that of a child holding its mother’s hand. Emotions and feelings shape our sense of morality, of what is right and wrong. Traditional Christian spirituality, influenced by Platonic dualism, saw the body as, if not evil, at least an obstacle to spiritual development. Physical urges, feelings and emotions were to be kept in check and, as much as possible, denied. Agere contra was the Jesuit watchword. The body would die eventually but the soul would ascend to heaven. At the general resurrection it would be united with a transformed body, a risen body. More about the spiritual later.
There is a social dimension. We become persons as a result of social interaction. We learn language from others. Language is the major factor in our mental development. We discover our sense of self and of self-worth as a result of being loved. It is in this social dimension where most people find their life has meaning. Life is about loving and being loved, raising a family, enjoying friendships, engaging in interactions with others in work and in projects. Existential questions such as ‘Who am I?’ and ‘What is the meaning of life?’ only present themselves here in what Jaspers called ‘limit situations’ – times of birth, marriage and death.
There is a mental dimension. This is the dimension of stories, ideas and concepts, of maths, logic and philosophy. It is also the dimension of poetry, music and drama. These last have strong emotional content but all have some feeling attached. Even the most abstract branches of mathematics have beauty and the feeling of knowing truth.
There is a spiritual dimension. This exists at all levels. What spiritual means is not easy to explain. Generally it is defined as opposing matter, or the body; to do with the mind and with religion. Etymologically it comes from the Greek pneuma, breath, and from nous, mind – the principle of order in things. For St. Augustine it was the apex of the mind, the personal and dynamic point of contact and encounter between God and man. St. Thomas Aquinas, taking his ideas from Aristotle, saw the soul as the form of the body, that which gives it individual substance. Descartes held that reality was twofold, matter and mind – res cogitans. This dividing of reality into two, matter and spirit, or matter and mind, is at the root of our difficulty of trying to understand what it means to be human. While mentally I can distinguish myself from my body, this is a mental abstraction. I am not two, a body and a soul. What I am is a living body, yet at the same time I transcend my body. Spirit is a ‘presence’. I am present to myself.*
I am present to others, as they are to me. I am present to nature, as it is to me. Finally, I am present to the Transcendent (I say Transcendent because He does not have a name. ‘Tell them ‘I am’ sent you.’) – not all the time (though I believe that it is always present to me) but on those luminous occasions when the fabric of reality becomes translucent and I become aware of the infinite depths of being. According to Karl Rahner – ‘Spirit is ‘greater’ than man, as Pascal says, “l’homme passe infiniment l’homme”, not in the sense that it is alien or extrinsic to man, but in the sense that man is only what he is by being thus ‘greater’ than himself. The most essential thing in man is not a self-sufficient subjectivity, but a constant opening out beyond himself, which we call his being ‘there’, the presence of being disclosing itself as mystery.’
This is integrity – being open to the mystery within and to the mystery within the others we encounter and responding accordingly; being present to others as we are present to ourselves.
*[There is the presence of the object to the subject, of the spectacle to the spectator; there is also the presence of the subject to himself, and this is not the presence of another object dividing his attention, of another spectacle distracting the spectator; it is presence in, as it were, another dimension, presence concomitant and correlative and opposite to the presence of the object. Objects are present by being attended to but subjects are present as subjects, not by being attended to, but by attending. As the parade of objects marches by, spectators do not have to slip into the parade to be present to themselves; they have to be present to themselves for anything to be present to them (Lonergan, 1967, p. 226, quoted in McCarthy, Michael H. (1990), The Crisis in Philosophy (Albany: SUNY Press). , 1990, p. 234).]