in•teg•ri•ty
inˈteɡrədē/
noun
1. noun: the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness.
“he is known to be a man of integrity”

2. the state of being whole and undivided.
“upholding territorial integrity and national sovereignty”

“We forget that if defending the integrity of our native soil is a question of national honor, then it must also be a question of national honor to grant this soil its full value, and thus forestall the need of having to defend its integrity.”
Perito Moreno

“A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”
Aldo Leopold

Yes, integrity of native soil is a matter and question (?) of national honor, and the integrity of each individual, national honor and the state of the biotic community are not separate entities. Integrity is wholeness—within a person, a nation, a biotic community, the earth itself. Honor is esteem and the human recognition of the privilege of life which require humility of the individual as a part of the whole in a never-ending, organic process much like that granting the native soil its full value.
Knowledge of the value (and cost) of personal integrity is not gained without effort and experimentation and, more often than not, some failure. In a long life (82 years) of knowing a lot of people across a wide range of cultures and persuasions, I’ve yet to meet an innocent person of impeccable integrity. Have you? I like to think about many things, including integrity, in terms of the Lotus Flower. In Buddhism the Lotus is a symbol of purity of the physical, mental and spiritual actions of a person, its beautiful flowers nurtured by and rooted in the mud and muddy waters of attachment and desire. Confucius said: “I have a love for the Lotus, while growing in mud it still remains unstained.” Integrity is a process, not a certificate, a beautiful flower rooted in muddy, nourishing soil rather than a pretty blossom with cut stems in a sterile vase. Confusing integrity with adhering to a particular set of beliefs, code of conduct or standard of achievement does not honor either. Instead, it encourages the sort of fundamentalism in thought and action personified by people like Cliven Bundy who recognizes neither national honor nor any value to native soil that does not serve the self-interests of, in his case, Cliven Bundy, at the expense of the larger human and biotic communities. Integrity is organic, encompassing both the personal and the larger community and does not grow from the barrel of a gun, adherence to dogma or crisp salute to the power of authority which to Bundy (and others, alas, too numerous and well known to list here) is himself.
We live on a planet experiencing the on-going extinction of 53 complete species, the deforestation of more than 60,000 acres and the desertification of 30,000 acres of its soil every day, day after day after day and compounding. That is: 12,000 species a year are becoming extinct; almost 22 million acres deforested each year, and 11 million acres turned to desert every year, year after year after year and compounding. However one thinks about the reality of these statistics, their causes, consequences and possible actions of healing, those thoughts are more likely to include words like ‘corruption,’ ‘crisis,’ and ‘collapse’ than ‘integrity.’ A portion of those extinctions, deforestations and desertification are occurring in the United States, and as Moreno indicates it is “…a question of national honor to grant this soil its full value, and thus forestall the need of having to defend its integrity.”
Extinction is forever. Integrity is wholeness. There is no ‘other’ in integrity.
Every national quality, including honor and integrity, begins (and, one could argue, ends) with the individual citizen. That is you, esteemed reader, and me individually and, one hopes, together or at least contiguously represent the honor and integrity of our national soil. Not them, us. You and me. Questions arise: What can the lone individual do to contribute to the national quality of granting the soil we all live upon and from its full value and forestall (eliminate?) the need of having to eventually defend its integrity? What influence has one person among the more than 320 million Americans and nearly eight billion human earthlings on the real and practical spheres of economic, military, imperial and political power driving the disintegration of the world’s biotic and other communities under the umbrella term ‘progress’? Does it matter that we as individuals speak truth to and place our bodies and thoughts and actions in the way of those powers, risking, (inviting) alienation and much more? Other questions arise and there are nearly 8 billion reasons for the individual to feel inconsequential, as if standing alone in the center of 11 million acres of freshly desertificated soil lacking the nutrients and water to grow a weed, much less a lotus flower. But the better question is, if not you, who? It is the better question because there is no one more qualified to answer.
You are both the question and the answer. Think of that.
Thomas Berry, a Catholic priest and one of the great environmental thinkers and writers, wrote: “We must also develop a way of thinking about ‘progress’ that would include the entire earth community. If there is to be real and sustainable progress, it must be a continuing enhancement of life for the entire planetary community…True progress must sustain the purity and life-giving qualities of both the air and the water. The integrity of these life systems must be normative for any progress worthy of the name… If the industrial economy (which has well nigh done us in) in its full effects has been such a massive revolutionary experience for the earth and the entire living community, then the terminations of this industrial devastation and the inauguration of a more sustainable lifestyle must be of a proportional order of magnitude….we have before us the task of structuring a human mode of life within the complex of the biological communities of the earth. The task is now on the scale of ‘reinventing the human,’ since none of the prior cultures or concepts of the human can deal with these issues on the scale required.”
The process of personal, national and environmental integrity demands reinventing the human in much the same way, at least metaphorically, the lotus flower grows from mud at the bottom of a pond. It will be the most challenging expedition into the unexplored territory of human adventure since, perhaps, Homo erectus reinvented itself as Homo sapiens. Let us start the journey, or, rather, take the next step.