Conversation

“If your boss demands loyalty, give him integrity. But if he demands integrity, then give him loyalty” — John Boyd The presence/absence of attack dog types close to the leader is a good litmus test for groups based on loyalty vs integrity.
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It’s a mistake to assume that “loyalty” regimes are better for conflict situations. It is actually a sign of weakness at operating in conflict mode. Integrity is overall a dominant strategy. Loyalty based groups can win a few battles, but can’t prevail in a sustained conflict.
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Some conflict regimes seem to sustain loyalty-based dominance. This is basically an illusion. It happens because *all* players are loyalty players, and it is a negative-sum blood-feud pseudo-equilibrium slowly eating itself.
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Occasionally, an integrity-based group will, under stress, switch to loyalty-based, but it’s quite rare. One practical reason is that some of the stable roles take time to fill (attack dogs, consiglieri) and tend to stay in-role for a long time. The reverse switch never happens.
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Used to think loyalty groups have a lack of imagination and creativity at the top, but this is not true. They lack non-social imagination. Things are of interest only to they extent they have potential to reconfigure social/political circumstances.
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I can navigate loyalty-based groups fine, but always stop short of the innermost circles. I try to make sure I don’t even accidentally audition for them. The “made man” concept is like tenure for loyalty based groups. You want to avoid that if you prefer an integrity-based life.
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Ironically, my “be slightly evil” shtick is basically a joke about integrity > loyalty as true north. Good/evil are always relative to local “loyalty fields.” It is an affiliation-based morality pattern. To be “good” is to be loyal to a leader or deified dead person or a god.
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‘Integrity” can be understood, in loyalty-logic, as “loyalty” not to “principles” or “law” or “process” (all dirty words in loyalty logic) (that’s the sophomore version) but to an epistemology rooted in doubt. If you do that, you can never be 100% trusted. Ie slightly evil.
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