In the tradition of philosopher Slavoj Žižek, let me begin with an old Jewish joke. There’s an ultra-orthodox rabbi that loves to play golf, obsessed to the point where he plays golf every day — well, every day other than Yom Kippur. As the joke goes, however, one year he decides to have a little “cheat day” and tee off on the holiday. Up in Heaven, God is watching, and Moses is livid.
“Lord,” Moses says, “look at this rabbi playing golf on our holiest day of the year! Surely, you’ve got to do something!”
To which God replies, “Don’t worry, keep watching. I have an idea.”
The rabbi swings for his first drive and, ding, what do you know - hole in one.
The rabbi swings again - ding! Hole in one. Again!
For a third time now, the rabbi drives and the ball goes right in the hole.
As they watch the rabbi walk to the green to get his ball now, Moses, who, mind you, had seen tribes slaughtered and his people lost in the wilderness for decades over lack of fealty to God, is stunned.
He turns to God in disbelief and says, “Now why in the world are you doing that! I thought you were gonna punish him!”, to which God responds, “Who’s he going to tell?”
I love this joke because it’s clever of course, but I think it also highlights an important point about integrity. When people cheat on their values or fail to do the right thing, they often lose that which it is they value most — even, or perhaps especially, as in this case, when no one is watching.
Despite knowing this, it’s often hard for us to really wrap our heads around this principle and how it applies to us. Of course we know in principle that action X is the right thing to do, but because it is difficult to do right now, and there will be no perceived difference if we don’t, we often make the judgment call that it will be okay to let it slide this one time.
Even when that little voice in our head squeaks at us to do the right thing, its grander notions are often seen as, at the very least, ignorable and subservient to our much stronger, ego-driven desires and libidinal impulses. As the sharp-tongued American essayist H. L. Mencken quipped, “Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking,” underscoring the cynical perspective that the role of our conscience is merely in maintaining our appearances or social cohesion, not in enforcing our actual behavior. This quiet advisor’s warnings, what Freud called the superego and what Plato described as the charioteer’s noble horse in Phaedrus, while ostensibly important, often doesn’t factor into the calculus of our decision-making process and ideas of maximizing self-interest.
If we’re in a situation where we could do the wrong thing, but no one will know… well, then suddenly it’s much easier to shush that little voice, find an excuse for ourselves, and do as we wish.
While not immediately obvious, even in such a situation where we are the sole witnesses of our transgressions, this lack of integrity actually holds significant negative ramifications on your own being too.
Have you ever found yourself in a situation where telling a tiny lie could prevent or delay a really undesirable situation? Maybe you had to attend a team meeting at 9 am. You woke up late though, and are definitely going to miss it. Nightmare! As you frantically put on your clothes, you write the boss that you’re on the way, but there’s heavy traffic. The boss writes you back that that’s ok, and no word is mentioned of your tardiness. Phew, right?
Or, maybe someone asks you if you’ve read a certain famous book before, one that you really wish you had already. For me, this is In Search of Lost Time, which, at this point, I may never have the time to start reading. To save face, you fib and say you’ve read it a long time ago and don’t remember it well. The person smiles understandingly, and soon the conversation switches to a new topic, and nobody suspects that you have never read a page of the book.
I’m guilty of having done both of these before, and we’ve all at some point said small lies to get out of an uncomfortable situation, or to make up for one of our deficiencies. Maybe you’re believed this time — people believe that there really was traffic or that you really did read the book — but that isn’t the problem here.
The problem comes later, next time you want to tell someone the truth or convince someone of your view. The problem comes when you’re put to the test and need to prove yourself, later down the line. You may hesitate, soften your statements, or feel a nagging sense that you’re posturing. Suddenly, that little voice we used to ignore has increased a few decibels.
Part of you, through repeated minor violations of integrity, has learned that sometimes — to be frank — you’re a liar. Sometimes, you’re untrustworthy. Sometimes, you pretend. Then, the next time you need to speak with conviction, your own conscience cries out against you.
Even when you go to tell the truth, part of you doubts yourself. “Am I really telling the truth? Is this actually what I believe?” it asks. “Because sometimes I say untrue things, and sometimes I do things I don’t believe in.”
In essence, you lose the capacity to mean what you say and say what you mean, and this tears apart your ability to speak from your soul, and express yourself in earnest with full force. As a consequence, regardless of if your tiny lies or misdeeds were caught before, your future truths will be less believable, and your capacity to influence will be diminished. Your creations and aspirations will flatten and hollow out, and your beliefs will become muddied. Integrity isn’t just moral cleanliness; it’s the proper posture that allows for strength of will, and the epistemic trust in yourself that echoes in everything you do.
There’s a now famous research study by Anders Ericsson that found that mastery requires around 10,000 hours of practice on average. If I had to guess, half of that effort was needed not for directly fine-tuning the associated skills, but indirectly, in order to develop the confidence and self-assurance to deftly employ them so instinctually. This is because only once you’ve repeatedly practiced showing yourself who you are can you learn to believe in your model of the world and yourself.
Which brings up perhaps the most compelling reason to practice integrity. Raising the stakes and putting aside the diminished capability to influence others, having a sense of integrity is the ontological glue that holds your world together. Without it, your entire existence will crumble. Does that sound hyperbolic? Allow me to explain.
In Discourse on the Method, rationalist philosopher Descartes first stated his key idea, “je pense, donc je suis,” translated properly into English as “I am thinking, therefore I exist.”1 Using his method of doubt, he proposed the thought experiment of an evil omnipotent demon who sought to deceive him about the entire nature of reality. With this in mind, Descartes systematically questioned all of his beliefs about the world, from what he saw around him to mathematical principles, until he could arrive at one irrefutable certainty amidst the deception of this demon. This one undeniable truth, that, “I am thinking, therefore I exist,” is concluded by the very act of searching for truth. For Descartes, the act of doubting itself proved the existence of a doubter, therefore establishing being as an essential truth of the one who thinks.
Because of this, the certainty of the thinking self or mind existing became the bedrock behind Descartes’ entire philosophical framework for rebuilding knowledge — all of human certainties were rooted in this core truth.
But what happens when you start to doubt your very own thinking? When you become uncertain of what it even is that you think and do, and if these thoughts and actions are even yours to begin with? When the internal relationship between reality and self-concept are so fractured and misaligned that even you no longer can determine the dissipating border of truth and lie?
I reason that, if thought grounds being, as Descartes proposes, then corrupting thought corrupts being. Integrity, as the trait which allows us to trust in our thinking, is then also the the trait that allows us to trust our very being. Given that thinking establishes existence in Cartesian thought, violations of integrity undermine our trust in our thoughts and therefore the foundation of our existence itself! In order for us to lean on our thinking as the bedrock under which we know our own existence, we must also trust that this thinking itself can be trusted. I believe that without continual integrity, our own thoughts become indistinguishable from one more of Descartes’ demon’s tricks, and this ultimate proof of your existence collapses under the weight of your own unreliability. The damage of lapses in integrity is not just moral, you see, but ontological.
And so there are enormous, life-and-death stakes behind each white lie and every moral misstep, stakes which each of us fail to meet all the time. It is imperative that we begin to do otherwise, however, as the groundedness to actually know the reality we exist in comes from the trust we develop in ourselves as steady self-narrators.
In line with this effort, I will admit that I have still not yet finished reading The Brothers Karamazov. Yet, I am aware of a well-known line from the novel, spoken by Father Zosima, that I believe illustrates the significance of this same rule:
“Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”
The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky
If I were to add anything to this beautiful quote, I would continue by saying, “And unable to trust himself, he ceases to exist.” Each violation of integrity fragments the soul, and a fragmented self cannot fully think, fully choose, or fully be.
Aleko Brice is a 25-year-old writer and entrepreneur from Los Angeles, living in New York City since 2024. A recent university graduate with degrees in English Literature and Economics, Aleko enjoys thinking and writing about what makes life meaningful.
The use of the gerund case here is more accurate of a translation from the French than the traditionally translated “I think, therefore I am”, as Descartes intended to show the process of thinking as continually rediscovered truth. The present act of thinking proves the present act of existence.
My understanding of "The Cogito" is that Descartes is saying you cannot doubt the very fact that you are thinking, because even doubting that fact would itself be a thought. Therefore, there must be a “you” doing the thinking. In this sense, I agree with some of the other comments that I don’t quite follow your reasoning all the way to non‑existence. I’m not sure that doubting the truth or integrity of your thoughts is the same as doubting the very fact that you are thinking. However, I still think there is a really interesting idea here.
I agree that for someone with some level of self‑awareness and a degree of morality that steers them away from the kind of lying you described, this lack of integrity could cause a sort of fracture within themselves. This might result in a kind of “non‑existence” in the sense that the person loses a strong definition of who they are. They know they believe in certain morals, but they also know they do not act according to those morals. If a person is self‑aware enough to reflect on this, I can see how it could be jarring to their sense of identity.
Along these lines, I also wonder about someone who genuinely does not care that they lie. Someone who lacks integrity in this way might not care or even realize that they tell such lies. For a person like this, I think you could say there is a kind of “non‑existence” in the sense that the person they think they are does not really exist. Their internal definition of themselves does not match the person who actually interacts with the world.
I would love to hear your (or anyone’s) thoughts on these slightly alternative ways that acting without integrity can lead to a loss of existence.
"The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others."
I believe the instance in which this is most pernicious is in how we choose to spend our time -- and for many of us, that is dominated by our jobs. Similar to the act of lying, the act of doing that which you do not feel best represents you only serves to wither your integrity, for it is parallel to lying as an act against your integrity. The conundrum of today's society is that integrity is so far repressed compared to the benefits of these jobs that you so scorn.