Integrity- A Rule for Civic Survival

Law 1: “If a man accuses another of a capital offence but cannot prove it, the accuser shall be put to death.”

So reads the very first law on the stele of Hamurabi (1750 BC).

A bitter irony that it took a dictator to install integrity as a social survival rule; made all the bitterer that the existence of the dictator is only possible through the complete suspension of integrity and accountability.

This a path that we in the free world are sleepwalking down, and I doubt it will result in the resurrection of Law 1, from some 3,775 years ago.

The current recipe for the suspension of integrity and accountability is as follows:

Step 1. Make up claims- the Other Party is full of… (enter epithets of choice)

Step 2. Keep repeating on every available channel

Step 3. When challenged, respond with a personal attack on the questioner’s person, politics, character, etc and not actually to the challenge to provide evidence to support the claims.

Rinse and repeat.

Apart from being school playground tactics, here the absence of integrity is at the level of the claims made without evidence and then at the level of attacking questioners’ character, person, imagined politics etc. as if personal attacks are some kind of compelling rhetorical device.

Unpacking this integrity-free approach leads to

Dishonesty in content – making claims without evidence in order to manipulate perception, and to knowingly cause real world harm.

Dishonesty in method – refusing fair scrutiny and replacing reasoning with personal attack.

Does this not cross the line into slander and defamation and therefore become actionable in tort? Is incitement to violence protected by free speech?

Surely, demonising and normalising personal attacks is intended to and does demonstrably cause real-world harm and is therefore actionable in law.

In most common-law systems defamation hinges on three elements

1. A false statement of fact (not opinion).
2. Publication to others.
3. Harm to reputation, usually with measurable damage.

What must be proven is “actual malice”, that the speaker knew the statement was false or acted with reckless disregard for truth.

This précis is from the landmark New York Times v. Sullivan case (1964). It was designed to protect open debate, but it’s now widely criticised because it enables lying with impunity unless intent to cause real world harm can be proven.

So, how does one pushback against schoolyard bullying tactics without descending to the same level?
That just snatches defeat from the jaws of intellectual victory.

A class action by every individual that suffered real-world harm. A court of law precludes unresponsive responses and does not consider personal attacks to be examples of compelling legal logic.

Demonstrating intent to cause real world reputational, personal, financial or other harm must be an easier hill to climb than bending the knee.

Any thoughts? Anyone?