Let me write down my candid thoughts on this overblown fit on “blogging with integrity” (which is, by the way, not important enough for the people of Maguindanao to empathize with, considering the bigger problems that they have):

I frame the discussion this way: the whole fit comes with the unintended consequence that my lack of integrity can only be compensated for by learning from people oozing with that virtue.  It’s as if I’m devoid of it that I can only become a person - a blogger - with integrity, through lecture-driven osmosis.  That I would need a resource person on integrity to know which is which, whether or not this is subjective or relative.

Somehow, I’m being divested of my integrity when someone else has to define values I already formed for myself in an arrangement of power: speaker-listener, teacher-student, resource-delegate.  I have to conform to some prescriptions - “unwritten rules” - to be a blogger with integrity.

It’s bad enough that I have to conform to other things to become a blogger other than my blog.  But of things that permeate my being, like a value like integrity… that is something else.

Because someone said so.  Who said so?  Am I integrity-less because I assigned a certain meaning to that and it shows in the way I make friends and do what is expected of me and it does not conform to a lecture note?

But let’s leave pedagogy out the door for the meantime.

There are definitely gems to be gathered from either side of the fence, but as I always say, when you impinge on something personal, the consequences are personal.  When you impinge on a personal value like integrity, the effects are personal.

Rightly or wrongly, being a resource person or speaker on a certain topic must require some degree of expertise.  Rightly or wrongly, being on the podium implies a monopoly of knowledge on the topic.  We may all be “mutual learners,” but that imbalance, as it stands, should always be considered.  And rightly or wrongly, the context of a very public lecture on personal integrity should always consider the personal integrity of the resource speaker.

Which begs some questions:

1. Who has the monopoly of knowledge in personal integrity?
2. Who has a sort of personal integrity that cannot be questioned or challenged?
3. Who has the expertise in personal integrity that we all should learn from them?

For me, the challenge is for agencies and clients to learn as much as they can about bloggers as much as bloggers have to learn more about the machinations of advertising and marketing.  In this age of influencers and brand ambassadors, that is the key takeaway.

As long as they do not come to convergence, where one thinks one way and one thinks the other, we will always have the same problems and challenges that seem only to resolve themselves in the pettiness of passive-aggressive online malingering.

As for a class-stratification statement of the value-ethics of bloggers with ads and bloggers without ads, again, I ask: says who?

It’s a sad day in society when we define integrity along the lines of class, and when our personal expectations of ourselves and value-formation is surrendered for talks and conferences into the “should be according to some person.”  It’s a sad day when the basics of honor, respect, and temperance - things that, when combined together and practiced consistently, form some agreeable notion of the word “integrity” - are set aside in favor of a form of integrity on the one hand, and a form of integrity on the other.  Integrities that lack integrity.

On a personal note, integrity is something I value for myself, and it matters to me.  No matter how you define it, or how I define it, there are lines that you do not cross.  So thanks, Wikipedia, for defining integrity for me.  I choose to live honorably, harm no other, and give one his or her due.

* - Disclaimer: This post represents no other opinions other than my own.