by Felicia Jeffries

Created on: August 08, 2008

Human beings are the most intelligent creatures on the face of the earth. We have the ability to love, we have a conscience, we can can speak intelligent words, and we have the most amazing brain that scientists have ever tried to dissect.

Yet, with all these wonderful qualities that have been bestowed to us, why is integrity, a very necessary quality, lacking in society? The Webster's Merriam dictionary describes integrity as 1. soundness 2. adhering to a code of values 3. completeness

With this in mind, we can see how our human society is lacking in integrity. How important such a quality is in keeping society together as a whole. For, we see without integrity, spouses are unfaithful to each other. Employers have a hard time finding trusted employees. Children turn on their parents for selfish reasons. Parents do not fulfill their parental responsibilities. Supposedly responsible outstanding citizens, such as the clergy, businessmen, and politicians, get involved in corrupt activities. The environment suffers. Love dwindles, and becomes but a memory.

There are so many things that could be mentioned that ends up in the danger zone because integrity means nothing to so many people in this day and time. The dictionary mentioned soundness as one of the meanings for integrity. People, without integrity, act without soundness of mind. Life changing decisions are made irrationally. Therefore, so many people end up living a life of pain and regret.

Integrity has to be displayed toward oneself first. Afterwards it will trickle down to the people around us, and strangers we may come into acquaintance with. To illustrate: Consider an attractive young lady who is a virgin. She has been taught somewhat that loosing her virginity before marriage is morally wrong. She has stuck to this code of morals for quite sometime even cherishing her virginity. But because she is bombarded with images on television and airwaves across the radio glamorizing sexual activity before marriage, she begans to feel it isn't so bad. She even begans to think she is missing out on something wonderful.

She begans to associate herself with girls who live loose lives. They influence her thinking because of what she observes in them. Soon she is putting herself in compromising situations with young men who only want to take something precious from her because she is "fresh" to them. She soon finds herself wanting to loose her virginity more and more. And that is exactly what she does. She finds someone whom she thinks cares and is special to her.

The young man who seduced her found it to be a sport. She on the other hand did not find it amusing. It was painful physically and emotionally. And the young man, afterwards went his way bragging about how he "bagged it." She has regrets because she did not stick to her moral code of remaining chaste before marriage. Her feelings are hurt, and her emotions are like spagetti noodles, twisted.

There are so many scenerios, but this illustrates how integrity has to be shown to oneself. It is not a quality that you can turn on and off when you get ready. Integrity is like a compass that guides a person in the right direction. When integrity is in a person, it serves as a protection against so many harmful things that may seem fun. It also is a quality that proves to other people that you can be trusted.

Without integrity distrust abounds. Confusion and chaos takes over in the minds of humans. Things that people know are morally wrong become right and, the world becomes what we know it as today, messed up.

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