Flight from Integrity; L.E. Read

FLIGHT FROM INTEGRITY' tg oteonardG. Read SOME YEARS AGO the public relations officer of a large corporation summarized for me his guiding principle: "Find out what the people want and do more of it; find out what they don't want and do less of it." While seldom so succinctly stated, such an external, "other-directed" guide to behavior is finding ever wider acceptance in American life. Implicit in its ,acceptance is a flight from personal integrity; and here may be found an important explanation for some of the mis chief presently besetting our society. Doubtless, this is good enough as a formula for get ting rich. However, if an individual looks upon wealth as a means to such higher ends as his own intellectual and spiritual emergence or realizing those creative po tentialities inherent in his nature, then the formula has its shortcomings. And, in certain areas, it is downright destructive.

This is a serious charge. Let's explore it. In order to get this matter into perspective, contemplate the count less specialized subjects known to mankind. Take any one of them-landscape painting, for instance-and ar range the population of the U.S.A. in a pyramid accord187 188 LEONARD E. READ ing to proficiency or quality. There would be some one person at the very peak. Under him would be a few competent landscape painters; there would follow per haps one million having a discriminating appreciation of such art; after which there would be the great mass millions upon millions, unconscious, unaware, utterly ignorant of the art or the standards by which its perfec tion could be attained or judged. Rearrange the population in proficiency pyramids for all of the countless subjects which engage human inter est and each of us would find himself near the base of most of the pyramids. Few are leaders or among the highly competent-except rarely and momentarily, if at all. Each of us has a potential for growth and develop ment-especially if advantage is taken of the help avail able from those on higher levels.

With the above in mind, let us explore the implica tions of integrity to the situation we are contemplating. It involves the accurate reflection in word and deed of that which one's highest insight and conscience dictate as true and right. Now, a person's concept of what is true may not in fact be truth, but it is as close to truth as he can get. It is the individual's nearest approxima tion to truth, his most faithful projection of that ap proximation, the most accurate reflection of his best lights. With the pyramid picture and this conception of in tegrity in mind, let us now observe what happens when the skilled in any subject-the competent who are near the peak-adopt the practice of finding out what the FLIGHT FROM INTEGRITY 189 people want in order to "do more of it" and finding out what they do not want in order to "do less of it." In such circumstances, from whence comes the instruction for what each of the skilled is to do? From the best that is in each skilled person or available to him? From the highest conscience of each? Indeed not! The instruction and leadership in such circumstances is tailored to the level of the "know-nothings" of the given subject, to the values at the base of our imagined pyramid where over 90 per cent of the people are. Integrity is forsaken.

Potential leadership is diverted from higher aspiration and, instead, panders to the tastes and foibles of the ignorant. Adverse Selectivity in Art and ··Music The fields of art and music, where new "lows" are now so much in evidence, illustrate the flight from in tegrity. Consider the following confession, ascribed to the famous painter, Picasso: In art, the mass of the people no longer seek consolation and exaltation, but those who are refined, rich, unoccupied, who are distillers of quintessences, seek what is new, strange, original, extravagant, scandalous. I myself, since cubism and even before, have satisfied these masters and critics, with all the changing oddities which passed through my head, and the less they understood me, the more they admired me. By amusing myself with all these games, with all these absurdities, with all these puzzles, rebuses, and arabesques, I became fa mous, and that very quickly. And fame for a painter means sales, gains, fortune, riches. And today, as you know, I am celebrated, I am rich. But when lam alone with myself, I have 190 LEONARD E. READ not the courage to think of myself as an artist in the great and ancient sense of the term. Giotto, Titian, Rembrandt, and Goya were great painters; I am only a public entertainer who has understood his times and has exhausted as best he could the imbecility, the vanity, the cupidity of his contemporaries.

Mine is a bitter confession, more painful than it may appear, but it has the merit of being sincere. 1 I have a TV program in mind. The star is an accom plished actress with an attractive voice. Does she sing the lovely songs of which she is capable? Only now and then. For the most part, she and those in charge of her TV appearances insist on the stuff which nickels in juke boxes indicate as mass-popular. Instead of the millions at the lower part of the pyramid being lifted in their musical tastes by this singer at her creative best, we observe her descending and catering to the lowest or base tastes-an imitation of ignorance, so to speak. Thus is the music of our day degraded. However unhappily we may view the wreckage which these responses to ignorance have brought to the fields of music, art, literature, entertainment, journalism, and the like, we must concede that the individual who cares anything about himself has the choice, in these fields, of turning off the TV and not reading or viewing the rubbish that is so overwhelmingly served up to him.

He can, if he chooses, go his isolated, unmolested way. But no such freedom of choice is allowed the indi vidual when flight from integrity occurs in the realm of politics. The individual, irrespective of his scruples, 1 Broderick, Alan Houghton. Mirage of Africa. London: Hutch inson & Co., Ltd., 1953. p. 203.

FLIGHT FROM INTEGRITY 191 his morals, his ideals, his tastes, is helplessly swept with millions of others into the miserable mess which the dull weight of ignorance gradually but inevitably in· flicts on everyone. A candidate for the Presidency, supposedly brighter and better educated than average, nevertheless polled the mass of voters to find what they wanted from gov ernment. As could have been foretold, they wanted the very things that crumbled the Roman Empire-"bread and circuses." The farmers wanted subsidies, not for outstanding performance, but for not farming. The la bor unions wanted grants of coercive power that they might extort more pay for less work. Many businessmen wanted various protections against competition. Vast hordes wanted the guaranteed life: pensions, ease, re tirement; in short, to be relieved of responsibility for self. These are the things our candidate professed to stand for and promised to deliver, if elected. Instead of standing consistently for the highest principles of political economy known to him, he imitated the low est common denominator opinion of the population.

His campaign manager confided that he had to do this to get elected; that once in office he would then do what he regarded as right. This opportunity 'never came; the candidate was defeated. And, defeat was his just due. One who runs a campaign without integrity proves openly that he would, at any time, forsake integrity if it appeared expedient for him to do so. This explains why the two major political parties in the United States .today stand for the same things. Both 192 LEONARD E. READ have chosen to receive their instructions from precisely the same source, the lowest common denominator of popular opinion. The result is a one-party system under two meaningless labels. This deplorable situation can never be remedied until there is a return to integrity, with candidates whose outer selves and actions will re flect their own best thoughts, regardless of the effect this may have on their political fortunes.

Edmund Burke, addressing those who had just elected him to Parliament, put the case for integrity in un equivocal and unmistakable terms: But his [the successful candidate's] unbiased opInIon, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure - no, nor from the law and the Constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your representa tive owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion. George Washington had the same practical and lofty sentiments in mind when he reportedly said to the Con stitutional Convention: If, to please the people, we offer what we ourselves dis approve, how can we afterwards defend our work? Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair. The event is in the hand of God.

No individual, whoever he may be, can escape the immediate consequences of ignorance in politics, as he can in art, music, journalism. There is no way to avoid the pains which bad political action inflicts. For ignorFLIGHT FROM INTEGRITY 193 ant political action encompasses all-one's life and the sustenance of life which is the fruit of one's own labor; one's freedom to choose how one shall live his own life. Political collectivism-the pattern consonant with politi cal ignorance-means what it says: Everyone swept in discriminately into a human mass, the collective. 2 When an individual, in his thinking and actions, un hitches himself from integrity, he "lets himself go," so to speak. He is anchored to nothing more stable than whimsy, momentary impulses, mere whiffs of fickle opinion. He is adrift and without compass. This shows through in much current art, music, poetry, and unques tionably accounts, in a very large measure, for the rapidly growing socialism, collectivism, decadence-call it what you will. There remains, however, the task of discovering why integrity is so easily, casually, even eagerly abandoned. Why this wholesale divorce from personal conscience, this shameless acceptance of mass ignorance as· our Director of Doing?

Doubtless, there are numerous reasons, some of which may be too obscure for ready discovery and examina tion. One possible explanation has to do with a false economic assumption. We, having paid so much heed to material progress and well-being, to ever higher 2 This dim view of political collectivism is not to be mistaken as a backhanded endorsement of the "philosopher king" idea of Plato and its modern counterpart: that society should be wholly governed by committees of the creative elite. There is no political process of knowing or selecting in advance the persons who will be most creative .. The only process· that will bring the creative minority to the top, that win encourage their effectiveness, is com plete freedom.

194 LEONARD'E.READ standards of living, let our economic concepts pattern other aspects of our lives. Erring in our economic as sumptions, we compound the error in our social, politi cal, moral, and spiritual judgm.ents~ Here· is the error in economic diagnosis : We .assume that "Find out what the people want and do more of it" has been the formula for our success, for our pro lific production of goods and services. Thus, in the eco nomic area, so we think,. our guidance has come from the mass market rather than from conscience or higher realms of mind. The current cliche, "The consumer is king;" tends to support this view. Actually, instruction from the mass market has to do only with duplication. The market determines whether or not. an economic good is to be duplicated and, if so, to what extent. Duplication, sometimes called "mass production," ad mittedly controlled by the market, is· not, however, the secret of productivity. The secret lies back of that. It has its genesis in the creation, the invention. Ralph Waldo Trine helps with this explanation: Everything is first worked' out in the unseen before it is manifested in the seen, in the ideal" before it is realized in the real, in the spiritual before it shows forth in the material. The realm of the unseen is the realm of cause. The realm of the seen is the realm of effect. The nature of effect is always de termined and conditioned by the nature of its cause.3 The noted economist, Professor Ludwig von Mises, 3 From In Tune with the.Infinite. Indianapolis: The Bobbs Merrill Co., 1897.

FLIGHT FROM INTEGRITY 195 reputedly the greatest free market theorist of our time, adds his judgment to this view: Production is a spiritual, intellectual, and ideological phe nomenon. It is the method that man, directed by reason, employs for the best possible removal of uneasiness. What distinguishes our conditions from those of our ancestors who lived one thousand or twenty thousand years ago is not some thing material, but something spiritual. The material changes are the outcome of the spiritual changes. 4 Where, for example, did Thomas Alva Edison get his ideas for the electric lamp? Not from the mass market! How could a people give specifications for something about which they were totally unaware? In reality, the productive process works outward from that which is first presented uniquely to an individual mind as awareness or consciousness or insight (the re ception of ideas-ideation) and is then accurately (with integrity) worked out or reflected in the material good or service. There is a distinctively spiritual accomplish ment before the good or service is held up to view be fore the mass market.

American. economic progress has been truly phenom enal. But this progress has been founded on inspiration from the highest insights of individuals, not. on advice from the lower levels of ignorance. In this manner the masses progressively are freed from poverty and slavery, free men's material needs gratified as never before, and opportunities opened to everyone to pursue and develop 4 From Human Action. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1949. p. 141.

196 LEONARD E. READ those creative potentialities inherent in his own person ality.5 If we would succeed with our political institu tions, we have in the productive process a model to em ulate. However, we must understand how this process really works: that it finds its power in highest conscience and the accurate reflection thereof, in short, in integrity. One's highest conscience, regardless of the step it oc cupies on the Infinite Stairway of Righteousness and Wisdom, is sensitive to the way one treats it. Lie about it, distort it, reflect it inaccurately, take contrary instruc tion from inferior sources or yield to the temptation of fame or fortune or popularity or other weaknesses of the flesh at its expense and it will become flabby and flaccid and will be incapable of rising to higher levels. Now and then we .observe individuals who can be de pended upon to state accurately that which they believe to be right, persons unmoved by fickle opinions, by the lure of applause, or by the sting of censure. We may dis agree with such persons, but be it noted that we trust them. For their creed appears to be: This above all, to thine own self be true; And it must follow, as the night the day Thou canst not then be false to any man.

Such persons are possessed of integrity! II Touched upon here is the moral function of wealth. Whether or not people use wealth to free themselves for higher effort is beyond the scope of this essay. Many do not.