First and foremost, we must acknowledge that the quest for integrity is the grandiose journey that can meliorate the masculinity crisis and condition the hearts of men to be sufficiently open to give and receive love.
The barrier continues to be patriarchy for it denies men the right to be whole, to have integrity and underscores its cruelty as the right path. Terence Real verbalizes that “we force our children out of the wholeness and connectedness in which they begin their lives” and then inspirit them “to bury their deepest selves, to stop speaking, or attending to the truth, to hold in mistrust, or even in disdain, the state of closeness we all, by our natures, most crave.” Real intrepidly maintains: “We live in an antirelational, vulnerability-despising culture, one that not only fails to nurture the skills of connection but actively fears them.”
It is an anthem for guys to avoid being vulnerable in relationships. Guys want to be in love without being in love. Love her enough to get what you want without her hurting you. We are familiar with the theory that whoever tries hard (loves) in a relationship will get hurt twice as much. This theory is the nitty-gritty of the endless cycle of avoidable heartbreaks in relationships because the heart has no remote control. Thereupon, people have their hearts broken or break hearts by accident or noble intentions of self preservation.
Going back to the keyword of our title, what is integrity?
Rabbi Harold Kushner, author of Living a Life That Matters, offers an intelligible definition: “Integrity means being whole, unbroken, undivided. It describes a person who has united the different parts of his or her personality, so that there is no longer a split in the soul.”
Hooks maintains that patriarchy makes men surrender their integrity through compartmentalization, dissimulation and disassociation to extreme levels where they view themselves as acting with integrity even when they are not.
M. Scott Peck in Further along the Road Less Traveled, confers the quintessence of “integrity,” which is from the verb “to integrate,” articulating that it is safely the antithetical of compartmentalization.
Peck contends that compartmentalization is a pain avoidance technique: “We’re all familiar with man who goes to church on Sunday morning, believing that he loves God and God’s creation and his fellow human beings, but who, on Monday morning, has no trouble with his company’s policy of dumping toxic wastes in the local stream. He can do this because he has religion in one compartment and business in another.” Mooting on the above, one will realize that patriarchy seconds compartmentalization. Therefrom, integrity is a torturous prerequisite of wholeness.
Yonder, Hooks expounds that integrity is essential for healthy self-esteem that is unhealthy in most males because sexist male roles keeps them immutably dishonest and dissimulating (taking on false appearances).
Nathaniel Branden talks about the modus in which lying harms self-esteem in his avant-garde work, Six Pillars of Self-Esteem. He outlines that like most men, he had convinced himself that it was important to tell lies to protect other people until the truth downed upon him, the truth that “lies do not work.” He made a difficult and painful choice to honour his self-esteem and integrity because, “by procrastinating and delaying I merely made the consequences for everyone more terrible.”
Into the bargain, Branden details how he hurt himself and others worse by dishonesty. Lying is so demanding, from creating it, maintaining it, remembering it and dealing with how it steals your inner peace. It arrests you from the moment you speak it and imprisons you through maintenance. That is why it is declared that the truth shall set you free. Free from breaking your values, loyalties and disfiguring your self-esteem.
Hooks explains that contrary to popular views that lying and compartmentalization are a source of power, they are actually detrimental. She mentions that the danger of guarding and protecting a false self is harmful to male emotional well being for the reason that it erodes self-esteem.
She insists that a huge amount of depression men suffer can be ascribed to their inability to be whole. Notwithstanding that they have been socialized to create and maintain false selves, most men remember the true self that once existed. And it is that memory of loss – coupled with rage at the world, which encouraged the loss of the self – that engenders depression.
Additionally, the suffering from an unknown source in adult males, is undying. It forces many men to addiction, whether to workaholism or substance abuse. Both forms of addiction detach men from feelings. If we were to create a meme about them, we would say ‘When emotions kick in, add more work or drugs.’
This disassociation through drugs and work makes men avoid dealing with their character flaws. They present themselves as beyond reproach, perfect in every aspect of their being. A poisonous misconception. Their anger cloaks depression and profound sorrow.
For men reading this, highlight that psychologist M. Scott Peck assures that whenever any of us takes significant steps to grow, we go through a process of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Wait for it! Those are the same stages Elizabeth Kübler-Ross identified as those we go through when confronting our death. Next time you get angry for being criticized, remember that you probably fear the change of growth as much as you fear death.
Psychological and spiritual growth requires men to mourn, as part of the process of healing. In self-recovery endeavors, men should feel the pain in order to heal. Otherwise it is impossible to heal from unfelt pain. Muse over this, if a man is not willing to break patriarchal rules that he should never change – especially to satisfy someone else, specifically a female – then he will choose being right over being loved.
Hooks argues that in practicing integrity, men should admit that part of the work of wholeness is learning to be flexible, be versed in negotiating, get the hang of embracing change, thought and action-wise. Moreover, the capability to critique oneself and change and to hear critique from others is the condition of being that enables us to be responsible. Nathaniel Brandon commensurates being responsible to experiencing joy, to being personally empowered.
Words of therapist George Edmond Smith in Walking Proud: Black Men Living beyond the Stereotypes, will bring down the curtain. He evinces that his psychological growth was enhanced when he began “doing very simple things that are unselfish.” Telling readers that if men “would commit to good and not evil each waking moment, their lives would change dramatically.”
Service! Even in typing this, I am but your humble servant. We are left with the last chapter, too excited to state what it is about.