Youth and Integrity

Everyday you can grow in integrity and know you are becoming a better and moral person if you understand and practice the choices presented here.

Key General Idea:  All reality has structure.  If a thing’s  structure is kept in tact, it is good.  If it has been harmed in any way to that extent it is bad.  Structure is the “law” of a thing’s being.

Key Specific Idea:  Your person is structured.  That structure is  openness, freedom, transcendence.  You are open to evidence and people. You can choose to face and accept evidence; you can choose to be open to people and be willing to trust them.  If you do so you will be rewarded immediately with knowledge (from evidence) and with friendship (from trust).  If you close your mind to evidence, you will be punished immediately with ignorance about your surrounding world.  That  ignorance can be the source of both bodily and  mental harm.  If you close yourself off from people, you will be punished immediately by loneliness.  Consequently, the basic act of integrity is your decision to stay open, to become by choice what you are by structure, namely open to reality and to people.  That is the basic moral law and it always carries with it  obligations; and those obligations are sanctioned by immediate rewards/punishments.

Method:  Critical thinking, abstract  or philosophical thought.  The essay has been in development over four years and has been reviewed by teachers and high school students,  In general, teachers felt it was too difficult for students.  Two good students  found  those versions quite good.  Assumption:  If the students can handle the abstract thought of geometry, for example, the formulae for area, volume, area of a circle, circumference of a circle, the Pythagorean formula, they can also handle philosophical thought. They are capable of critcal thinking--provided the philosophical definitions are used as consistently as the math definitions.  Geometry can be taught; integrity and basic morality can be taught too.

Definitions:  There are many, but the fifteen most important are listed here.  All will be explained in the course of the essay and used in exactly the same way throughout.  The student will see that these and the other definitions are valid.  Challenge: if the student thinks the definition is inadequate, let him/her develop another that is clearly distinct from all the others.

1.  Why can’t a couple learn French by adopting and living with a French baby?

Ans.  Because the French baby is free from all language limitations and is open to learn any language that is part of his personal environment.

2.  Is freedom an action or a permanent state of being?  Explain.

Ans. It is not an action but rather a permanent state of being from which can come transitory free action.

3.  Give two other words for freedom.

Ans.  Openness or  transcendence.

4.  What is the fundamental act of respect for your freedom?

Ans. “I will stay open, affirm my transcendence, I will face evidence.”

5.  What is the root of all moral evil?

Ans.  The root of all moral evil is the lie.

6.  What does correlative mean?  Give two examples of realities that are correlative to one another.

Ans.  Two terms are so related that having one without the other is to have something that has no meaning.  For example, a boat without a body of water  to navigate or a threaded bolt without a nut similarly threaded, male without female (female without male).

7.  What is the correlative to the human person?

Ans.  The other human person(s).