How to acheive moral integrity
I’m a great fan of the Netflix drama series ”Better Call Saul” and love its compelling and entertaining study of human nature. The series depicts the wheelings and dealings of a band of lawyers and their interaction with a colorful array of clients which include everything from sweet grannies to hardened thugs. The main protagonist is James (“slippin’ Jimmy”) McGill, an endearing and street-smart, but at the same time fundamentally corrupt attorney who thrives on the fringes and in the clearly out-of-bounds of the legal profession. Despite weak credentials – and because of his hard work and ingenuity – Jimmy lands a senior partnership at a reputed and successful local law firm. But very soon he realizes that a staid legal practice is not his gig. One day, badass ex-cop Mike Ehrmantraut phones Jimmy at the behest of a drug dealer and asks him a simple question: “Are you still morally flexible?” The offer is irresistible.
Moral flexibility – what an enticing notion! I define it as the ability or disposition to ignore or bend established moral rules or principles when confronting any situation that demands a moral response. My careful wording is deliberate.
Positive moral flexibility
Moral flexibility is not something inherently immoral. On the contrary, if exercised properly it can be an important ingredient in moral responsibility; an expression of practical wisdom as it involves discerning what value/values to uphold when confronting moral dilemmas. In such circumstances, it’s the rule of wisdom and personal responsibility over legalism and bureaucratic stupidity (bureaucracy = the rule of desks). In this sense, moral flexibility is the opposite of moral rigidity and the belief that strict rules must always be applied irrespective of context, circumstance or personal consideration; the belief that one size fit all.
Ask Aristotle, one of the greatest moral thinkers of all time. On a visit to the Isle of Lesbos, he once observed how masons measured the material they were working on. He noted that these masons did not use a normal, straight-edge ruler. Such a rigid ruler was of no use to them when carving round columns from slabs of stone. Instead they used a flexible ruler made out of lead, a sort of primitive tape measure. This observation shaped Aristotle’s theory of practical wisdom – phronesis. Moral rules, he believed, need to be bent sometimes to fit the situation we’re encountering as reality itself is twisted, complex and ambiguous. In other words, when dealing with complex moral dilemmas we have to carve our moral judgements by bending rules sometimes and using flexible measurement tools.
I remember listening to a lecture by Cecilia Lejon some years ago. Lejon was director of the municipality of Trelleborg at the height of the refugee crisis in 2015 when Sweden welcomed more than 60,000 Syrian refugees, a huge number for our country. Trelleborg was one of the principal points-of-entry for these incoming refugees and the municipal services were quickly overrun. The federal Swedish Migration Agency (Migrationsverket), formally responsible for the reception and processing of all these people, was no better prepared and initially offered not much help. So Lejon took it upon herself to mobilize all available resources, both municipal and from civil society, to accommodate these people. Along the way she had to bend, and in certain instances simply ignore, bureaucratic rules and regulations to get the job done, putting her job and reputation on the line. Her major concern, the principal moral reference to her, was the protection of the very vulnerable people who were landing on the shores of southern Sweden. Her commitment to this overarching moral principle permitted her to justify a very pragmatic approach to the challenges she faced. She needed to bend rules to do what is right.
Negative moral flexibility
For white-collar crooks like Bernie Madoff, Kenneth Ley and Elizabeth Holmes– as for Slippin’ Jimmy – moral flexibility means something completely different. It means the liberty to act at will, to disregard any moral rule, without the need to justify the action by appealing to any other moral reference. Here the moral tape measure has been thrown away completely. Negative moral flexibility is therefore merely an expression of personal whim, greed or blind ambition. In all these cases, negative moral flexibility is the opposite of moral integrity.
There are few moral villains in the same league as a Madoff, Ley or Holmes. But history and social psychology teaches that most of us are indeed capable, given certain conditions, of being complicit to crimes or even personally inflicting harm to others. This is especially likely to happen when and where such actions are deemed socially acceptable and can be rationalized to others and to ourselves. This fact may be disconcerting to many as we generally have a quite an optimistic view of our ability to resist immoral acts. This unfounded moral optimism has a scientific name: self-serving bias defined as the tendency to perceive oneself in an overly favorable manner, to ascribe success to our own abilities and efforts and failure to external factors. This deeply engrained trait of negative moral flexibility in our character is certainly not attractive. But awareness of it is the first step to moral maturity.
Moral integrity
Fortunately, there are notable exceptions; individuals who have de facto resisted peer pressure and the temptation of becoming guilty bystanders. In the Madoff debacle the name of the whistleblower was Harry Markopolos, at Enron it was Sharron Watkins and at Theranos Tyler Schultz. These individuals, like others of their kind, were not prepared to stand idle and become a part of corrupt scheme. But in the process of divulging the truth, they had to be prudent and morally flexible. They had to wait, weigh different alternatives, gather more information in the process, and confront their fears. In other words, they had to find the right approach to achieve the optimal effect. In some cases, like Tyler Schultz, this would involve even resisting the pressure to drop the case from close family members.
The word integrity comes the latin integritatem and integer meaning “whole.” People with integrity display a certain wholeness or completeness in their life and in their approach to things. Heart and mind, reason and emotions seem to coalesce into one. Most often, it is the work of a lifetime.
Six steps to achieve moral integrity,
1. Get real. We humans are not born saints or moral heroes. We struggle with our moral choices and to keep our priorities straight. The first step to moral integrity is to be brutally honest about these struggles and how these affect us emotionally. Take careful note of the circumstances, relationships or dilemmas that make you morally vulnerable. It’s the first step in alingning your life with your values.
2. Take the moral fitness test. Intent and motives matter. So does virtue, i.e. the practical ability to do the right thing. The moral fitness test consists of asking yourself what you would do if your actions were not motivated by the fear of punishment or the hope of reward or praise. How would you act if your principal motive was simply to do the right thing? Hold on to your answer.
3. Be prepared to pay. Moral integrity comes at a price and cannot always be combined with financial success and popularity. If you stick to your principles and become incorruptible, you will likely lose some feathers and endure a certain amount of social disapproval, especially at the beginning. Your sleep, however, will likely improve.
4. Build moral alliances. If you want to build up a sustainable moral posture over time, you’ll need to create a context that will nurture and encourage you. Find the moral enablers around you; colleagues and friends who share your values and core convictions. As the social animals we are, we need to know that we are not alone in our struggle, that we can count on the support and encouragement from moral allies.
5. Make the tough decisions. When you feel ready to live the moral life you aspire to, make the tough decisions that will clearly show to yourself, and to others, that you mean business. The German philosopher Jacob Boehme famously said: "All things are rooted in a Yes and a No." What are the “yeses” and the “noes” that you have to make more explicit and the concrete decisions you have to take in order to live with integrity? Then implement these without delay.
6. Keep learning. Morality is an iterative process, an art that we can never truly master without ongoing moral training, study, reflection, and honest feedback from others. In this process, you might one day betray your values. Such failures will likely be result of your character not keeping the same pace as your moral ambitions. In that case, start over again with step 1 with renewed curiosity.