I could almost believe that “the” end of days will be next year on day 02/22/2020. What a configuration!
I can feel that the social order is without the guide of common sense, but I don’t want to dwell on its pathology other than to speculate about what is missing . Especially when they are all convicted of their crimes, scrambling to distort their punishment. Perhaps the core of the matter is the absence of acknowledgment of any wrongdoing. They only regret that they didn’t get away with it. They are completely devoid of ethical responsibility to themselves, much less to others.
Worst of all they have no awareness, whatsoever, of how their behaviors dismantle the glue of public trust; so essential to rational social coherence. I don’t see how this can be repaired, healed or punished. In part because one “knows” in his/her core that the person who lied, betrayed your trust, can never be completely forgiven in the sense of returning to a full embrace of their acceptance and confidence.
I wish I could convey how important it is to learn, teach, and understand the impact of violations of trust to one’s self early on in a child’s life.
It is a most significant factor in social and individual character development. ( I have some reflections about the presence of religious belief in the public format.)
As for myself, I was confronted with these lessons of challenge and circumstance at various times throughout my early life, especially in relationship with my older brother. I want to be clear that I too am ‘guilty’ of violations of trust and its betrayal. I don’t want the discussion to be about self righteousness, it is not simply right or wrong in the nature and context of its experience. It extends deep into individual temperament and circumstance along life’s road. We live in its dilemma of emotions, error, judgment and ego, with too much ignorance of how essential it is to observe, learn, and respect it as a process. Integrity is something both learned, and actually reinforced, in experiences of its failure in ourselves and others. The most difficult thing is being open to the acknowledgement of our own shortcomings.
I am led to wonder why so many leaders violate trust in their desire to be in a place of power and dominance? Perhaps the self serving distortions of trust is the key to the fallacy of labels without having the content of their functioning in integrity? The integrity of self regard is essential in guiding public service for others .
The fact that integrity is simply not all that common in the character of the species, especially in leadership seeking to accommodate a public unfamiliar with fact vs belief. I think this is generally true. The validation of values in the social order are essential to the credibility of bonding in trust.
Learning about trust without damaging one’s own or another’s integrity is perhaps what lies at the core of self respect and in trusting one’s self. Genuine forgiveness, i.e. a valid, sincere knowledge, based in awareness of when, where and how it is valid, is part of the journey in the development of trust. The trust that brings integrity into living consciously, and an honesty in the understanding of life.
The complexity of this is epic because religion is the baseline of what “is” and is founded on a belief that is empty of integrity. A ‘believer’ can be “trusted”, a non-believer cannot. This is a corruption of trust. The integrity of the collective “value” is essential to the endurance of the living trust and its continuing development based on integrity.
The only foundation for integrity is rational thinking.
To violate rational thinking with believing is to destroy the integrity of trust.