I believe that the Unintegrity Pandemic must be dealt with both one person at a time and systemically in organizations, businesses, cultures, and governments.

Here is the three-step plan I propose for putting an end to the Unintegrity Pandemic:

1. Develop Unintegrity Symptom Recognition Skills: Learn how to recognize symptoms of an Unintegrity outbreak – I hope this blog helps with this!

2. Develop a Clear Vision of Integrity: Develop a clear and complete vision of what Integrity is – we will explore this in my future posts!

3. Develop & Embody the Seven Skill Sets of Extreme Integrity: There are specific skills necessary for embodying Integrity, personally, in your relationships, and in the systems in which you are a part – you will learn what these are and how to develop them when the book I am currently writing on this topic is released in 2007!

That said, I propose that the single most important positive difference you can make in the world is to harness the power of what I call the “Integrity Effect.” Embodying true Integrity has a profound impact not only on your own wellbeing but on all those with which you come in contact.

You already know this if you have been blessed with the experience of being in the presence of someone who embodies the Integrity Effect. If you have not, you will shortly discover how embodying the Integrity Effect is not only the most effective way to serve highest good; it is also the single most powerful way to experience personal and relationship fulfillment!

At the same time, the Integrity Effect can only do its magic at the macro level when business, political, educational, religious, cultural and social advocacy leaders embody Three Dimensional Integrity like never before.

We now turn our attention from the problem to the solution. You will discover a new vision of Integrity (Three Dimensional Integrity) in a future blog I will post on the Integrity Effect.

At this point in reading prior blog postings, you have no doubt realized how truly mind-numbing the range of flavors and examples of Unintegrity is. Isn’t it amazing how much most of us don’t even identify Unintegrity when it is occurring? We even have culturally accepted terms that whitewash unintegrity behaviors. A great example is the word “cleanse,” as in cleansing files. This has become an acceptable word for describing the destruction of incriminating information to reduce the chances of being held responsible for something that occurred. Think Enron, or incidents of soldier abuse in Iraq. That we even have “politically correct” terms for Unintegrity only serves to downplay how devastating a phenomenon Unintegrity is, on ourselves, on others and on our world. What other examples of Unintegrity Whitewash words can you think of?

So, with such a huge, why do we tolerate it? The answer, in a nutshell, is that we are so accustomed to it, so adapted to its existence, that we hardly see all the forms it takes. This is a great example of the dark side of the human gift of adaptation. Let us now look a bit more closely at why we tolerate Unintegrity, followed by beginning to look at the amazing and magnificent things each of us can do about the Unintegrity Pandemic.

We Are Used to Being Surrounded By Unintegrity

Because of how pervasive Unintegrity is at all levels of every culture, we grow up with a wide selection of Unintegrity role models. Parents break their promises to us and then tell us we should feel the way we feel. Peers who seemed to be our friends turn out to only be out for themselves. Teachers tell us how we should learn, rather than showing us how to effectively learn with our own learning style. Clergy sermonize about how it is a sin to feel certain feelings or to question whether God exists, rather than showing us constructive ways to work with our feelings and how to do our spiritual questioning in effective ways. Television is full of cartoon and sitcom characters who are constantly out of integrity.

The older we get, the more we see that the people in our immediate life as children are not the only ones who are out of integrity. Hardly a day goes by without a news story about a person, organization, business or governmental entity being out of integrity. Hardly a day goes by when we encounter someone whose words and deeds do not match, or who is only out for themselves.

We Are Used to Embodying Unintegrity

What we saw (and continue to see) modeled to us is only part of why we tolerate Unintegrity. The other part is that each of us learned how to be out of integrity with ourselves beginning as children. The main difference among us is merely how out of integrity each of us became in order to survive. To the extent that we are used to embodying Unintegrity, we tolerate Unintegrity in others. (Unless, of course, we are so unaware of the range of our own Unintegrity, and so hate it, that we almost cannot avoid seeing it in others all the time, nor can we avoid judging them harshly for it!)

I offer you a couple of warnings before I launch into the examples:

1. This is Not About Blame: As I said above, the purpose of this chapter is not to lay blame but to expand your awareness of the range of ways in which Unintegrity expresses itself. Because I see the Unintegrity Pandemic as a systemic problem, I hold to blame no one individual, culture, religion, organization, business, profession, political party, governmental agency, country and organization of countries. I propose instead that each one of us has a huge role to play in solving this problem. Each individual, culture, religion, country, organization, business, profession, political party, governmental agency, country or organization of countries. So, as you read the rest of this chapter, I ask you to not dwell upon the question of who is at fault. Rather, simply open your eyes to how pervasive the Unintegrity problem is, so you can begin to focus on the solution (an integrity revolution), instead of continuing to view each of these illustrations as separate problems needing to be addressed separately.
2. Refrain From Despair: While it might be tempting to throw your hands up in despair as you read about the magnitude and pervasiveness of the Unintegrity Pandemic, please keep in mind that this book is about a solution to this problem. Only this chapter is about the problem itself. I therefore urge you to treat this chapter as a call to consciousness and as a means to motivate, not as an invitation to despair.
3. Examples Cross Categories: I have placed the examples you are about to read into individual categories to make it easier to understand each category. In reality, though, most of these Unintegrity illustrations could just as easily have been used to illustrate other categories as well. So, if you find yourself thinking, “This example could have been an illustration of arrogance as greed,” that is probably true.

The most dangerous worldwide pandemic of the 21st century is neither a dreaded disease nor global warming!

This global pandemic…

• Is not a medical condition, although it causes medical problems
• Is highly communicable
• Touches virtually everyone on the planet
• Damages international relations, the planet, the economy, businesses, politics, communities, relationships and individuals

This global pandemic has no name!

• Not being able to identify it makes this pandemic even more dangerous
• The 20th century personal development movement helped create it
• The 20th century approaches to business success helped create it
• Mental health professionals hold the secret key to its solution, even though most of them do not realize it

What is the name of this pandemic? You tell me the name of the opposite of integrity and that’s its name. Isn’t it curious that there is no word for lack of integrity? Well, we need a word for this, because lack of integrity is the global pandemic about which I am referring.

Stay tuned for more details and lots of examples, including hopefully examples that YOU post too, plus solutions to this pandemic that lives at the heart of what imperils all aspects of our planet in the 21st century