Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Integrity

Trying to uphold it is a lose-lose proposition in all situations. Unless you're religious and fervently believe in Heaven, I guess. In which case, you might want to prepare yourself for a rude surprise come Judgment Day, when you find out that there is no Heaven and you had spent your short, precious life living up to an invented ideal designed to brainwash you into becoming a good citizen. Nietzsche's Mad Man is running wild (see the paradox?).

In a certain philosophy discussion section I had a couple of weeks ago, we were simulating the Prisoner's Dilemma game, which is basically a puzzle that tests out different theories of cooperation (i.e., going back on pacts, ganging up on others, etc.). My group ended up dead last. Our only consolation? "We never screwed anyone over! We were the only ones that kept our word and our integrity!"

But it was not much consolation, because we were at -23 points by the end of the rounds. If we had been generals commanding armies at war, we would have ended up like Germany at the end of WWI. So much for trying to uphold integrity in this nonsensical world.

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