How Much Is Your Integrity Worth?
By Ced Solidon • Jan 19th, 2009 • Category: Commentary
If you try to be profound about it, then you can say that it is priceless.
But if you’re one of the greedy bunch, then surely you can put a price on it. Not sure how much your integrity’s worth? Let me demonstrate some of the figures to you.
If you trade it for a Cebu Pacific flight to Hong Kong and back then it would cost around 7 thousand pesos, more if all your expenses are paid for. How about trading it to watch a famous circus act? Around a thousand maybe. How about a ‘lakbay aral’ trip? Several thousands of taxpayers’ money. A sack of rice or a plastic of groceries? Around a thousand pesos – lower if it’s only the barangay elections. And a cut on the budget for repairing roads? It depends on the agreed percentage.
The thing is that when you trade your integrity for something that will diminish it — like money and material things — then you cheapen yourself because it means your values can be bought at any price. It doesn’t matter how many zeroes follow that figure. The fact that there is a figure cheapens something that’s supposed to be priceless.
And when you turn back on the things you are supposed to be against, then you rank yourself lower the cheapest, oldest whore in town.
Photo courtesy of djayo @ sxc.hu.
Ced Solidon is the blog's founder. He currently works as a freelance writer. Aside from that, he also maintains a writing blog, Write Like a Rock Star! He loves to read books and play music.
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