4. We seek to act with integrity.

Treating one another as ends requires that we learn to act with integrity. This includes keeping commitments, and being more open, honest, caring, and responsive.

When a person chooses to belong to an Ethical Society, that person is making some very specific commitments that relate to the way he or she acts. While all of us realize we are "not there yet" in any full ethical sense, still, when we are voted in as members of an Ethical Society we have willingly relinquished some of our anarchistic impulses in order to honor the integrity of community life. This includes our right to say whatever we want to say whenever we want to say it. This is done not in the spirit of repression or mindless conformity, but rather to assure that the baseline conditions for productive ethical group interactions are met. These conditions includes: evolving a culture of trust rather than paranoia so that we can safely explore what it means to be ethical, and, modeling the ethical principles we have developed by the way we interact.

We commit to treating one another with fairness and kindness and to keep our promises to one another and be truthful with each other. We agree to not harshly judge each other, and to listen, and give each other space for response. We agree not to let the unethical aspects of the world all around us creep into our midsts. This of course includes refraining from the acts of urban chaos that haunt us, including asault, theft, vandalism, tampering with or altering records, posessing or using weapons, posessing, using, selling, or distributing illegal drugs, and engaging in such hurtful activities as intimidation or coercion. In the rare event any of these things might occur among us, we support a policy of suspension with interventions aimed at setting firm boundaries for the future.

We will also personally refrain from lying, harassing, libeling, profaning, and engaging in continuous verbal abuse such as constant blaming, cruel criticizing, attacking, threatening, labeling, and ridiculing. We will refrain from disrupting groups, since we are a voluntary community committed to developing a deeply ethical ethos.

In group meetings we are committed to supporting one another even when we disagree. We will attend to the process as well as the content of our meeting. Toward this end, we agree to speak from our own experience, to refrain from putdowns and constant advice, to honor personal confidentiality and cultural differences, to accept our responsibility to help get our own needs met, and to help the group stay on the agreed upon tasks. We will honor the designated leadership of any group, and keep our commitments to begin all meetings and end all meetings on time.