27. Integrity is the common thread of the job, career, and life itself
Integrity is the common thread of the entire job, career, and even an SP’s life. After all, integrity is the extent to which a life is integrated. SPs should therefore strive for their ideals systematically and constantly, and this should be clear from their behavior. However, this does not mean that SPs cannot change their ideals. Since every living person has a life, integrity is important and different for everyone, and as long as we are still alive, it is not finished.
Having ideals is a necessary condition, as stated in the previous chapter, but simply having them is insufficient. Ideals should be stable and sustainable. Anyone who switches from one ideal to another will not be seen as having integrity, because there is no evidence of commitment to the ideals chosen. Moreover ideals ensure recognition and identity if you work for them for a long time and make this consistently visible in your behavior. After all, ideals are by definition issues that cannot be realized in a short time period. An ideal is something you commit to for the long term.
In chapter 10, integrity was described as patterns of behavior, focusing on the way reprehensible behavior indicates failing virtues. In the same way, behavioral patterns can indicate leading ideals, for instance through the cases SPs choose to tackle, the tasks they take on, the subjects they speak out about, the motions and amendments they submit, the memoranda they publish, and the additional jobs they hold show whether SPs are led by ideals, and if so, what those ideals are. What people do indicates what they stand for.
Integrity is the thread of the job, career, and even an SP’s entire life. According to political philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre integrity is about living an integrated life. This is a matter of the unity of life. Life is a narrative. Integrity is narrative unity. People are co-authors of their own lives. They are actors in a play in which they are also writing the script. Integrity “resides in the unity of a narrative which links birth to life to death as narrative beginning to middle to end”.”134
According to MacIntyre it is a question of how life looks once it is over.
The more visible and consistent the life thread, the stronger the person’s integrity. That is why a politician who changes party has a lot of explaining to do – in many cases this can only be justified by loyalty to one’s own ideals. The same applies to a public administrator who changes position frequently without completing the term in office (which can generally only be justified if it is in the interest of society, one has been asked to move to the next position, or the aims of the previous position were achieved ahead of time). An incoherent package of duties, positions, and additional jobs is also bad for an SP (and is often only justifiable by the claim that the variety allows them to know and serve society as broadly as possible). SPs who have made the world a better place, such as Gandhi, Lincoln, and Mandela, are admired not only because they had ideals, as mentioned in the previous chapter, but also because these ideals defined their lives. They devoted themselves so systematically and constantly that their ideals were visible as a pattern in their behavior, forming their identity. Their ideals became identity-forming commitments, ground projects, as philosopher Bernard Williams called them, giving their lives purpose.135
SPs should therefore guard against inconsistency becoming their only consistency. When accepting new positions the extent to which they fit in with the integrity of a person’s life story is therefore continually relevant. That life story can consist of different parts, so people do not always have to do the same thing for the sake of consistency, nor do they always have to cling to ideals once they have chosen them. There can be good reasons for changing ideals, even if it means losing support. Vice president Chester Arthur followed US president James Garfield after he was shot dead by an applicant rejected for an official position. The murder led Arthur to realize that the “spoils system”, whereby the party who wins the elections hands out official jobs to its own supporters, a system he had long adhered to, was morally bankrupt. Arthur began to introduce the “merit system”, selecting based on suitability of officials rather than political color. This led to his becoming estranged from the people who had helped him become president, costing him his second term.136
Viewing integrity from the perspective of a person’s life story shows its relevance for everyone. Every living person has a life, so integrity is important to people simply for that reason. At the same time, integrity is dif