“I should like to hear of the rule
of kind and virtuous men,” continued Yuan Feng.

“The virtuous men are unmoved.
They have no thought.
They act without fear.
Judgments of right and wrong
or good and bad
do not occupy them.

All within the four seas
delight in what they possess and are fulfilled.”

Zhuangzi by Zhuang Zhou, trans. by Hyun Hochmann and Yang Guorong, Heaven and Earth

The highlight of the day on Wednesday is the Socrates Cafe discussion. The gathering of around eight to twelve of us takes place at the Geneva Barnes & Noble in the Cafe. Socrates used the Athenian agora and we make use of a bookstore coffee shop.

The topic is always “open ended”. That is a convention of one type or another is analyzed and interrogated. The best discussion revolves around questions that arise which reveal “more” than the typical use, the casual (mindless) manner of our speaking and behaving.

We discussed “integrity” last night. I felt restless throughout the discussion. That feeling can be a bodily response to a variety of subterranean “ghosts” within my psyche. Though I remember having a persistent hunch that the principle-based notion of integrity that I learned from early childhood was insufficient, a clever conditioning to ensure that I’d become a compliant adult. You know, — keep your head down, don’t make trouble, never question the authorities, pay your taxes when due, etc., etc.. OBEY! That’s the point-blank condensation of the concept of integrity which I was taught by example and by the stories related in Sunday school. Obedience uber alles! Obedience to powers-that-be overrides your own well-being, your individual personality, and the path which you’d otherwise attempt for yourself. Naturally the servility of the concept was dressed up as principle based integrity.

Now I think all of that was bullshit.

The tradition of the tao offers another form of personal integration, of becoming true to oneself. What about learning to be unmoved by what the majority thinks, and by media accounts of “reality”? How about learning to respond to my immediate environment without calculation, as a reflex? How about learning to act without fear of what I could lose? What if I could learn to ignore the conventional, time-stamped and approved standards of right and wrong? That is to act kindly, generously with reciprocal expectation toward everyone that I happen to encounter?

No doubt rotating the axis of my integrity will take time, and much practice…