I’m fine with this point, but what when others are doing it with your ideas ?

What when you find your wife is cheating on you ? How do you break up then ? I see revenge is not really the right path, but what do you do if others are trying or in face are humiliating you ? How do you meet humiliation ?

Girls love it too!

I’m happy to hear that there are young man like yourself living with integrity and reading AoM. You sound like a guy with a good head on your shoulders.

As far as your question about living with integrity without feeling like you are better than other people……what helps me is trying to sympathize with where other people are coming from. A lot of the people who don’t live with integrity aren’t bad people at their core, they come from homes where they weren’t taught good principles by their parents and don’t generally have mentors to show them the way. This is not to say that they’re without fault, but a lot of people have struggles that you’ll never know about when you meet them in passing. Keep leading by example and you never know who you may influence.

Thanks so much for your kind words and for sharing that story. I’ve had some bad experiences with post office employees, but it’s shocking that no one else in line stepped in to help either. It’s good to know there are other men at there living with integrity. Keep it up and hopefully it will rub off on others.

I disagree that the line about corporate bigwigs was a cheap shot. While there are certainly exceptions, there are dozens of corporate executives out there that directly contributed to our economic downturn, and nary a one of them has owned up to being at fault or apologized for their mismanagement of affairs. These are the men I was directing that comment to; to me they represent a blatant lack of integrity. Also, the “don’t talk smack” section was under the “Friends” heading; one shouldn’t talk behind a friend’s back but criticism of public figures is not only okay, but can often be prompted by one’s integrity.

I had read that column by the AIG executive that you cited. And I thought he made a good point. But then I read Frank Rich’s column on Sunday, and thought he made a better one:

“The only group more out of touch remains bailed-out Wall Streeters. “The era of this high living, this is over now,” said Ben Bernanke on “60 Minutes” last month. For whom? Witness the former A.I.G. executive who recently complained on the Times Op-Ed page about being unfairly tarred for corporate outrages he didn’t commit. He didn’t seem to understand that his (to his mind) unfairly maligned bonus — $742,006.40 (net) — would have amounted to $0 had American taxpayers not ponied up more than $170 billion to keep A.I.G. from dying.”

Long time reader, first time commenter. I just want to say, Thank you! As Brian says above, your articles (and those of your guests) continue to get better and better and resound in my head and life long after reading them. It is so refreshing to read these articles and then the comments of the readers afterwards.

In any case, very well written article. Well thought out, and I especially find value in your points about where you work. I have been in those situations where others may not even be doing completely deceitful things, but they deign to ignore this person in customer service or that person in accounting because of their accent, or their weight, etc etc. I just ignore that and say hi anyways, why wouldn’t I?

Another easy example: I was at the Post Office the other day, at the counter finishing up. A somewhat elderly woman walked up to the counter and asked the postal worker if they had a cart of some kind as she had a few heavy boxes to bring in from her car. There were at least 10 people in line as well as 2 workers behind the counter. The worker told her “no” and looked annoyed. Not a single other person said a word as the woman started walking out. I was shocked and hurried over to her, offering to bring her packages in. I don’t say this to pat myself on the back, but to bring up how unbelievable it was to watch an entire room of people not even offer to help this woman with 2 little packages. In less than 2 minutes I was back on my way. Sad when we can’t even help out our fellow neighbor like that.