Someone brought up “Integrity in Leadership” on another social media platform, so I thought I would add my 2 cents on that. I’m commenting on this as it is a definite factor in how I separate the “good” characters in my novels and the darker ones who, lacking integrity, choose all kinds of crazy paths and choices……none of which in the end have anything to do with being good or doing good to redeem themselves.

For being good in this world, i.e. having integrity, is a conscious choice not something you stray into. Again, you are either good or bad. And so you choose.

I don’t fall for the Modern trope that we all are both good and evil. That’s just BS. That’s why when I started reading Martin’s Game of Thrones I just found his characters unbelievable. The fact we have laws on the books in this world that say you cannot murder, steal, lie, or extort means we have morality. Yes, you become an Evil man or woman if you choose. There is no gray in that. And so I will never write a story about a character that does not eventually drift one direction or the other, despite being conflicted, fallen, tragic, or whatever.

But integrity is a defined term. There’s no blurred lines or moral relevancy in it. You either have integrity or you don’t in business.

But there is a larger integrity we forget about and are blind to. Cultural integrity. If the leaders we admire and elect have no integrity then that becomes the value system of the larger society, despite our best efforts to ignore it. That is what we see today in America. For example cutting taxes, winning, and making money seems to be the over-arching priority for most of our American leaders today, despite the rhetoric thrown around that they have higher interests in mind. That value system then trickles down to the business culture and becomes the primary value system we all secretly adopt.

We thus have a failing America today with very little Integrity. We chose that value system by the leaders we elected and the business leaders we admire. That is America’s current crisis.

In that environment personal integrity doesn’t matter much except as a guidepost for how one lives their personal life completely separate from the larger society. I think those who are not in business or politics still hold the last of an older America that once placed integrity, character, and ethics above monetary concerns.

And it will likely remain that way until we rethink our American priorities.

As a writer I am really focused on this idea of using story to not only enact my personal morality play on my readers, but to simply reveal the conflict of all this as a reflection of our reality without judgement upon it. It’s thrilling to reveal this, as Americans are experts on the idea of the underdog, the loner, the maverick that defies the larger society to prove a point or enact change. That’s how one’s book characters reveal this truth….simply contrasting their own higher character contrasted with the world’s darker one.

All our books and movies are filled with that theme. Recently that’s begun to change. But this is the classic Mono-myth, The Hero journey that we see in story, or used to expect. It’s very much a reflection of our own personal psychology…..are we going to learn from our mistakes and become a hero through dying inside and being reborn or stay stuck and defeated. That’s all that storybook theme means. It’s a reflection of us.

But integrity says something more….are characters we write about reflective of a dying part of the society as a whole…..some fallen, lost part of America that is no longer valued, but once was and waiting to be revisited.

That is where these themes to me become such fascinating tools in story. We can make such subtle social commentary about our Modern plight through our characters and their struggles while avoiding morality plays if we are subtle. And that idea is a part of my own character development…..the use of my novels to voice those hidden views of the vices I see in the society at large.

— the Author

Created Dec 30, 2018, 12:10 AM