Pizza, prelates and a President

I recently ran into a couple of friends, who I'll call Jenn and Mark, at an Italian restaurant, just as they were about to be served a 'white' pizza of cheese, sausage and arugula. It took me several minutes to recall that they are committed vegetarians. I commented on the pizza's appeal before I noticed they were playing dietary hooky.

Mark tried to pass it off: "Oh, is that meat?" Sometimes people take a vacation from a regime, no big deal. I do this too, announcing, for example, I am not having a drink, feeling all healthy and virtuous, and then suddenly I have ordered a mojito.

Are we hypocrites? If so, baby hypos. That's a charge that stings, because it strikes at one's integrity. When we fail to meet our standards, or those of a community we respect, we feel shame. However, the facade of perfection is fraught. Every parent has done something that we told our children is wrong, whether drinking milk out of the carton, or telling the white lie that yes, we would love to come to the school's fundraising dinner but unfortunately have other plans.

Whether conscious or an impulse, the occasional, inconsequential lapse does not cause a fit in any but the most rigid. The bigger lapses set off one's moral smoke alarm. Most of us have a sense of what is dishonest or unjust, what a minister friend calls "living outside one's integrity".

Over the past summer, we saw an integrity implosion: lies, exposés and violations—every form of dirty dealing in the news. Prelates charged that the Pope colluded in a cover-up;  an investigative journalist published a book detailing his thesis that the US President is a Russian asset. An actress and her boyfriend paid off an accuser: you know about all this.

I felt disheartened, but also challenged to revisit the principle of integrity in my life. And I am not the only one. A newly-separated friend says she has determined to drop her lifelong modus vivendi.

"Michaela" lied repeatedly to duck areas of her life that she didn't want to face. After her partner insisted on a separation, she asked her father for advice. He said, "Stop the behaviour that makes you lie, and you will stop lying." Ah, the plain-spoken wisdom of a loving parent!  (I suggested she read Sam Harris' essay, "Lying", available here. Harris raises the bar high, but I'm with him.)

Michaela says she couldn't stand the behaviour anymore herself, and I was moved by her courage. I also wondered, What happened to the moral compasses of persons in the papers all summer? When a system is riddled with moral failure, we can't just call someone names (liar, psychopath, bully) and figure we have to live with it.

A slice of sausage pizza is not the thin end of the wedge; to infer that Mark and Jenn's lunch signals moral deficiency doesn't add up for me: we're human, especially in front of a meal. 

But for the serious issues, I want to act when I sense breaches of decency, morality, or social responsibility. Act by my vote, by my presence, support a press committed to publishing the facts, diverse opinions and debates. Turn away from the easy clichés like "It is what it is", which bolster apathy.

And I will continue to think. My friend Beth Adams wrote an insightful post on The Cassandra Pages, "Fact vs Opinion" , which is about critical thinking (and provides a link to an online test). We need to keep our radar operating through all the weaseling.

I only hope there are results along with exposés, and that corrupt institutions will be cleaned out, rebuilt and, if they are worthy, revived.