Honor

Some got it, many don't.

Sixty birthdays ago

I recently celebrated my 67th birthday. Birthdays are far and away my favorite celebrations. You can have every other holiday. I like birthdays because they're a recognition of a really great day for your birth family and your very first day on this earth. It’s all very personal. I think that’s something that’s worth celebrating.

As one marks getting older, it’s natural to reminisce about the “good old days,” and I’ve been doing some of this. Sometimes I’m down with it, but sometimes I’m not. I don’t know if I think that the “good old days” were always better than now. In some ways, they certainly were not. By any objective standard, the world has come a long way in the last 67 years.

But in other ways, the world has changed in ways that are not necessarily better. One way in which I’m as certain as I need to be that the world has changed significantly and not for the better is in the area of personal honor. I simply don’t see as much of this as I used to.

The building blocks of honor—honesty, integrity, and selflessness—used to be a lot more important than they are now. From where I sit, this is one of the principal reasons that many perceive civilization in decline. When you can’t trust hardly anyone, when integrity is unusual enough to celebrate when you encounter it, and when selfishness has consumed our culture, we’re not living in the best of times.

I write a lot about the enormous gulf between the cultural left and right in this country. And if you’ve been paying attention, you know that I believe that this is due to the increasing view of selfishness as a virtue rather than a vice. These days, it’s perfectly acceptable to think about oneself first and last. It’s also distressingly common.

Selfishness is the staple of the self-help and personal improvement industries. Look out for number one in any way that you have to. Let everyone else fend for themselves. That’s made it acceptable for people to just want what they want in politics and culture and think that it’s OK to force everyone else to go along for the ride if they’ve got the juice to make it happen.

You can’t run a diverse democracy that way for very long before it descends into war, murder, and violence. As much of an optimist as I generally am, I’m worried that we may be headed in that direction. At the very least, things are on course to get worse before they get better.

When I was growing up, a person’s word was their bond. Even in elementary school, we all understood the importance of being truthful and honest. Lie to your friends, and you’d end up without any. Handshake deals were good. I rarely worried about anyone not being straight with me while growing up. It happened, but it was uncommon.

But somewhere along the way between then and now, we lost our way when it comes to integrity. Seemingly, no one’s word is good anymore. Simple contracts now require lawyers and dozens of signatures. Waivers are required for virtually any activity that involves risk, no matter how obvious the risk happens to be. Everything has a warning label. All of this has become necessary because a lot of people see opportunity in human failure, misunderstanding, or misfortune. If you can make a buck off of any of this, why not? Everyone else does it.

There is, of course, a flip side to this. Professional incompetence is rampant. In many fields, ideology has long trumped evidence. Professionals are not what they used to be. The reason that I’m not more keen on tort reform than I need to be is simply because I see the legal system as perhaps the only way of reforming entire professional fields that have lost their way.

The thing that bothers me the most about integrity in the modern age is the often lonely plight of those who possess it. The academics who have the courage to criticize bad scholarship, the doctors and scientists who stand up to bad science and the terrible public policies it drives, the journalists who call balls and strikes dispassionately, the professionals who are driven by data and evidence in fields where this is no longer the fashion.

A lot of good people suffer for having the integrity to stand for what’s right—something that’s difficult to deposit into one’s bank account once the unemployment checks run out.

So, I don’t know. The beginning of my 68th year just might mark the first time in my life when I’m not completely optimistic about the future. I see way too many people out there who don’t understand the importance of basic virtues like integrity and all that it encompasses as a bonding agent for a healthy society. Personal honor has taken a backseat to selfishness. In many circles, one is considered a sap if they embrace the old ways. Especially if it comes at a cost.

I reckon that makes me a sap.

Anyone can do the right thing when it’s easy. It’s when push comes to shove that you find out who’s good in the pocket. Anymore, I’m almost afraid to find out.

Perhaps that’s the reason that our lifetimes are confined to a few generations. I’m flat out having difficulty adjusting to a world where promises aren’t worth much, when integrity is much more rare than common, where competence takes a back seat to almost everything else, and where it’s all about me, me, me instead of we. I suspect that I’m far from alone in this sentiment, but that doesn’t make it any easier to deal with.

Associated Press and Idaho Press Club-winning columnist Martin Hackworth of Pocatello is a physicist, writer, and retired Idaho State University faculty member who now spends his time with family, riding bicycles and motorcycles, and arranging and playing music. Follow him on Twitter @MartinHackworth