A good man.
When society has lost family or the family is dysfunctional and there is no wisdom nor models to be successful, at what the past generations done, and can see the changes in the future. When there is no community, but neighbors and family scrambling after every last dime, then spend it to entertain themselves, because there is no future, no other sense but the gratifying of the self, there is no man or woman or child that knows good. When people who steal, cajole, trick and lie into being comfortable and buy the hangers on that keep him company, believing money can buy loyalty, and then enjoy when they fall due to hubris and mistakes. There is no hero to be supported, to learn from, to survive in spite of it all.
Integrity is when a man knows himself and the world as it is and should be and lives it. Then that is not just another male of the species, that is a Man. If a woman does the same and has integrity she is a woman. We are a social species. The success of our children, our future, and others depends on each other. When we can not identify with baker, the mother, the mechanic, the grocer, the doctor or the warrior, we don’t value them, nor ourselves. And honest good man and woman, recognize that they are not islands, they are part of a community. And it is that community that existed once, exists or even harder must exist in the future, is what one lives and dies for, for in it, do we not add to our soul, and to the collective memory and a spirit of the people.
And only in a community that supports each other can any of us survive. A good man or woman who is undervalued and underappreciated, there is no support or good found towards anyone in the community. The following of celebrities is a thing it is empty and hollow as hollow as they are. Otherwise they tear each other down. The mob ruled by parasites neither are people, they have with the lack of integrity stealing the spirit of others have carved their souls to nothing and are but the living dead. Integrity builds the soul, with or without a community, it comes from an honest relationship if not in community and kindred, but at least with the universe, that knows the truth of these individuals.
An honorable man keeps their honor shiny, it is the onus of obligation to oneself, their past and the future, it is the same root word to shine or to meet and obligation in Japan known as “on”, and it means to shine one’s sword. Honor, onus, on, my sword, my soul, integrity to shine for the past, the present and the future. This whether appreciated or not, to at least if nothing else, a caretaker of my soul, working for my childrens future, a community that I can reincarnate in, so may it be.