Integrity

Over the last couple of months, I have been rather obsessed with truth, authenticity, lies, deception, and a whole host of other related ideas. Upon reflection, I have been thinking about another concept, altogether. In reality, the concept that has eluded me, and the concept that I wanted to discuss, is simply Integrity.

While more and more complex theories have led me somewhat astray, this last weekend (with quite a hang-over and in the coffeeshop in a casino in Reno), I was able to finally articulate the concept. Integrity is both important, as well as extremely abstract. But, I will try to articulate a definition, and then contextualize it later.

My definition of Integrity goes like this: Integrity is the behavior that governs the decisions that you make. Acting with integrity incorporates current events, self-awareness of your actions, and the relationship between those two. You, acting with integrity, would make the "best" choices that incorporate all of that information. The simple definition of just, "Do the right thing," does not encompass the concept accurately. Although, if you act with integrity, you will always "do the right thing."

The most troubled part of Integrity is the simple phrase, "best." I do not believe in Absolute truths (he says, absolutely). From a relativistic framework, the most slippery part of Integrity is the making the "best decision" because what may be the best choice may not be the best if you had different, or more information. In fact, this is a great place to reference the entries on Authenticity, Truth and Lies, and even the entry about Unexpected Advice. The more information you have, the more complex it may be to make your decision with Integrity.

I have discussed many of these concepts over the past couple of weeks without any contextualization. The motivation behind the discussion is that I am truly grateful because I have surrounded myself with people of Integrity. I may have only a few friends, but every one of them acts with Integrity. And, of those friends who are married, they have all married people who have it, as well. My family is the same way. And, Integrity is also a concept that I try to embody in my own decision making process.

If you have no Integrity, there is a slim chance that I will ever have room for you in my life. It may sound like a soap-box or a threat, but it is not. It is merely the best choice with my current information. Why would I subject myself, my friends, or my family to the consequences of poorly made decisions? Why would I want to bring someone into my life who doesn't strive to make the best decisions? I owe it to myself and my family to seek like-minded people.

People with Integrity wanted. No need to apply. I'll recognize you.

Pay-per-click Advertising

The jury is still out on the Pay-per-click Advertising on the Electronic Writer Website. We are certainly not getting rich from it, but at the same time, advertisements of some sort are on EVERY website on the internet. It is almost a legitimacy issue: you are NOT a legitimate website unless you have advertisements running down the column or as a part of your search results.

Although the legitimacy issue is interesting and may be a subject for a future post, the more pressing issue is the time requirement. I am spending an inordinate amount of time managing the ads that are displayed on the site. The service calls them "Competitive Ads" and they give you a way to block your competitors from advertising on your site, but I don't think of companies who sell essays as my competition. I think of them as my Antithesis!

Apparently, this is a hot market because everyone wants to sell essays. Along the fringes of this market, people are selling essay-writing services. Apparently, there is a market for WRITERS--and, they are somehow able to make it affordable to college students. It makes me a little suspect of the writing, as well as a little suspect of the company. Do you think they are actually able to afford staff writers to create your essay?

There are also single-subject essay selling services: you can purchase all of your essays for law school, for example. This has got to be the most idiotic game to play in law school. In an industry where you are being trained to memorize vast portions of documents and recall them during an argument, the last thing I want to do is purchase someone else's writing and: skip the training that I need, as well as possibly using your instructor's paper.

My biggest problem with the essay-selling business is an ethical one. I understand, and actually support a fair market economy and capitalism, but there is a point in which you must ask yourself if you are doing good things for your community. Are you making your world a better place? If you are selling essays to students, you are targeting the same marketplace as the tobacco companies. You motto may as well be, "let's get them while they are young--before they know any better." And, most likely, those students haven't taken a college-level course in ethics.

I am unwilling to paint students as shapeless lumps of intellectual clay, but I will say this: college students are in a transitory place. Most students are leaving the comforts of their home and are confronted with new issues such as: feeding myself, and washing my laundry. These are base-level issues that they most likely did not have to address in their homes. And, while these same students are busy worrying about food, clothing, and shelter for the first time in their lives, there simply may not be enough time left to think about ethical issues and consequences.

If there was a disclaimer that said, "Using a plagiarized essay may get you expelled from your University!" on the Website, would you use the service? I would stop and think about it.

I am not lobbying for government intervention, nor am I lobbying for censure (in any form). In fact, I am building this site as part of a response to these services.

There is something else that needs to be said, and it is to the owners, the inventors, the maintainers, the hosters, the writers and everyone else involved. It is an important question that can cascade to all levels of society, as a matter of fact. This is not my own ethical question. In fact, it was originally posed to me by a Nuclear Containment Engineer.

While we are busy asking "Could we," what about answering a different question--Should we?

A Little Unexpected Advice

Last weekend, I went to Reno. It was a drunken debacle of gambling, booze, smoke-filled casinos, hang-overs, all-you-can-eat brunch buffets, and whatever else. It is not a typical thing that I do for relaxation, however, I did it this weekend and had a great time. While I was there a nice and unexpected piece of advice for living unfurled.

The dealer at one particular Blackjack table put on one heck of a show. He was funny in an almost abusive (though non-offensive) way. A really tough line to walk, but it was working. We were laughing at him, at ourselves, at the idea of being in Reno and gambling, and of course at the play of the card game. He coaxed, coached and cajoled us through hand after hand of cards, and we all won money.

The biggest obstacle between you and winning at Blackjack is usually the other players, sometimes the alcohol, and most often a combination of the two. The dealer has an extremely limited set of rules for play that are, of course, based upon statistical odds in the casino's favor. Luck, oddly enough, only manifests itself in tiny moments during a hand. A good set of rules will win more money for you more often than merely luck. If the other card players were SMART, they would adhere to a set of rules that were equally as strict as those followed by the dealer. When you can find a table where everyone is following these rules, sit down and do not leave--you are going to win.

At one point, the dealer turned his comedic attention towards me. I sat at the last seat before the dealer on the far left side--the infamous "third base." I needed an strange card (like a 5) in order to beat the dealer, and my odds were poor. Someone else on the table asked for a card, and the dealer gave her the card that I needed. The next player asked for a card, and the dealer gave him a card that would have substituted nicely for the one that I originally wanted. And, each time that happened, I mumbled something like, "That card would have worked."

Before the dealer gave me my card, he gave me a brief, but appropriate few words of wisdom. He said, "You have to have fortitude to sit at third base. You have to have the strength to see everyone on the table take the card that you need. If you can't do it, you need to move." He punctuated his last words by throwing my card at that very moment.

The interesting part was not the implications of his advice upon the card table, but rather the implications that it holds in all of life. When sitting at third base, you get to see more of the cards played before you get to play your own hand. You get to have more information to make your own decisions. That might make your decision easier, or it might make your decision more complicated. That is an externality of possessing more information.

The same is true with life. More information can make your decisions easier, or it can make them more complex. If you stay inside of your self, you may have an ignorant, happy life--but you will not get to see very much of the world. And, if you decide to pursue more information, or more of life, you have to have the strength to see everyone else take a card that you could have taken--making choices that could have worked for you.

He gave me a face card, and I busted. But, the table won . . . .

Valentine's Day

This is an excerpt from my 2nd novel, Hot Tea. I thought it would be particularly appropriate for today.

Believe it, or not, fine dining has seasons. During the summer time, when the default meal is to barbeque and be outside with friends, upscale restaurants are filled with bored food servers who are pleasantly surprised if the night gets busy. Friday and Saturday nights of the summertime will find the same restaurant staffed by blood-thirsty waiters trying to squeeze every penny out of every table to compensate for the slow nights the rest of the season. By contrast, as the weather reaches lower and lower temperatures outside, you will find higher and higher numbers of recreational diners inside. There is a direct correlation between temperature and the amount business in restaurants.

Certain holidays, however, mark the exceptions to the seasons. They are the sudden heat wave in the middle of winter. The mid-July snow. Of all the Holidays on the calendar, there is one perched aloft the highest pinnacle of painfulness. From a food server's perspective, Valentine's Day is simply the most foul of all the holidays.

This particular holiday falls in the middle of the dining high season. So, first of all, it spoils what would usually be a good night. The calendar year, however, determines the actual evening, and while there are no good nights to stage one of these Valentine's Day "celebrations," it is usually best if it falls on either a Sunday or Monday night--the slowest nights of the week.

This is the point where you ask, "What makes Valentine's Day so awful?" Quite simply, it is the people. Middle America opens its gates for one evening of every year, and out spills a huge throng of people who never dine, who watch television from the big-screen TVs in their living rooms, and who order delivered pizzas to eat while watching rented movies as a part of a typical Friday night. While there is nothing wrong with those activities, there is, however, a fundamental problem with the idea of Valentine's Day. It forces all of the people who are comfortable with those activities to put on a tie, or perhaps a skirt, and go out to an expensive restaurant where they have to pay to have someone park their car, pay four times more money for their dinner than if they had just ordered a pizza, never get enough food of their plate for all the money they are spending, and have them sit in that "stuffy" restaurant for hours upon hours. Sounds like fun, doesn't it?

Let's take a peek at the hostess stand for a moment. Regardless of the day of the week, there are 600% more reservations than the restaurant normally seats on any given evening. A large percentage of them have been made by crafty guys who have made similar reservations at three other restaurants at 1-hour intervals in case they are running a bit late. The location is invariably "a surprise," so they can take their dates/girlfriends and boyfriends /wives/mistresses to whichever of the three locations is the most convenient. Regardless of the drop-off rate, the Valentine's Day reservations reach alarming proportions from the perspective of the restauranteur.

In response to the sheer suggestion of those kind of reservations, every employee the restaurant has ever employed is working that night. All of the part-timers who have "real" jobs and who are trying to quit the addictive cash-in-the-pocket-rush of waiting tables are scheduled weeks in advance to take a temporary hiatus from their twelve-step programs to return for just this one night. The normal wait-staff are locked into a closed-room meeting and flatly ordered to attend. No vacations. No plans. No excuses. If, for any reason, sickness-included, they decide to be absent on Valentine's Day, they will not have a job when they return.

Once the diners arrive, the real fun begins. They grumble as they pay to have someone park their car. They grumble when they realize that even WITH their reservations, they are going to have to wait 10 minutes for their table to be ready. They grumble that the two drinks that they ordered while waiting cost almost $15. They grumble as they peruse the menu to see the prices on the steak--the one menu item that doesn't have French words in the description. They grumble at all the other people standing around them grumbling in the exact same ways about the exact same things.

Meanwhile the staff is grumbling because there are 300 parties of two, and not a single table of four (twice the tip money for the same amount of time). They are grumbling because their dates/girlfriends and boyfriends /wives/mistresses are at home watching chick-flicks and complaining because their Valentines are at work on the "one night of the year" when they are supposed to do something special for them. The staff is grumbling because they watch the diners' eyes travel over to the price column on every item of the menu. They know the restaurant will sell out of the cheapest wine, as well as the menu items without any French words in the description. And, the staff is grumbling because every guest will want to stay for twenty extra minutes. After all, when was the last time they had spent this much money on dinner.

When posed with that question, my guess would always be . . . last year, on Valentine's Day.

Gathering Momentum

Many months of deliberation have expired, and finally the Electronic Writer project is starting to move forward. I have been watching the traffic and people are visiting the Website. They are clicking through the pages. We are starting to gain some momentum.

After a couple of weeks of tinkering, I finally have the Navigation in the right places--at least, I think so. If you have differing opinions, please tell me. The bulletin board will be completed and available sometime today, so register and tell me in the Comments section.

Now that the foundation has been poured, and the walls of the structure has been built, I get to start working on the content. I have already created much of the stuff. You learn so much more when you teach something, and under that premise I have always been trying to teach everything--as a back-handed way to get access to more of the information myself.

In my early 20's, I composed a poetry-writing course for my own edification. The essay writing information is from a recent English 1a course that I taught at a community college. The fiction writing information is also a spin off of several attempts at teaching fiction writing, in an effort to learn the craft better myself.

I apologize, in advance, because my politics will enter the dialog. I will, however, always make my politics evident and allow you to decide how you want to deal with them. You do not have to agree with me, nor do you have to like my politics. My opinions and views, however, are informed and chosen. None of what I believe have been simply handed to me by peers, parents, church, or instructors. If you have a compelling argument, and it passes my own fact-checking process, perhaps you can change my opinion. I am, after all, always in search of the Truth, or truths, or a better version of the truth . . . .

I expect that if you engage in a dialog, that you respect the opinions of others. Disagreement is a good thing. Destructiveness is not acceptable. My term for it is dissonance. We are all happily NOT agreeing, not trying to break each other down, and yet fully committed to forwarding our own agendas--because we believe they are correct (otherwise why would you believe it?).

Intolerance will not be permitted.

Roland Barthes composed a great theory about language that he called "Joissance"--a derivative of the French word for "playing." In his theory, he argues that language and the usage of language, and the act of composing sentences and better ways of saying something is a FUN process. Even engaging in the dialog about the usage of language is a FUN, playful process.

While it may be a bit obscure, I have clung to this theory since my first read of it. I believe that language is fun, writing is fun, talking about language is fun, talking about writing is fun, and that it is a dream job to spend the day creating a sentence, and then tinkering with it to get it to say what you wanted it to say better, more descriptively, more succinctly, more accurately, etc.

So, Roland Barthes' theory will prevail in Electronic Writer. Have fun with this place, and have fun with your writing. More importantly, have fun with the other writers who are here to do the same.