Referring purely to the integrity thing here, I do take objection to the suggestion that blindly following silly rules that affect other people to virtually no extent, yet ruin your life, can be counted as integrity. It's about as integral as committing ritual suicide in the name of honour. Speaking purely about the eyesight here, to cite a similar example, how about if you desperately wanted to be a pilot, but you had an extremely mild form of colourblindness. This extremely mild form manifests itself only when extremely similar colours are concerned - like, you can't tell the difference between brown and dark green except when the colours are side-by-side. You know damn well that this is never going to influence your ability to do your job in the slightest, but at the same time, you also know damn well they will write you off in an instant if you tell them. Would you willingly declare this? I highly doubt it, and it wouldn't make you any less a good person if you didn't.
I see the fact that these very people at the top who make up these utterly discriminatory regulations are willing to send hundreds of soldiers to die for US corporate interests under a web of complete fabrication a much greater display of a lack of integrity...one I think is deserving of the death penalty, but that's a subject for another day. They obviously don't care about the citizens of their country who have their dreams smashed and lives ruined because they had LASIK done or have to wear glasses, so I see no reason why these citizens should care about following those pointless rules - it's easy to sit on that side of the fence, in the ahh nevermind, it works for us so nevermind camp, when it doesn't affect you, but when it does you really FEEL and know how utterly unfair it is. It's pure bueuracracy. I really see no argument at all with any weight to it ("because we can" does not cut it) that can justify barring people who've had laser surgery or who wear glasses from being pilots, and I've never, ever spoken to anyone else who believes it is okay.
In the same light, would you refuse to download a simpsons episode that you'd seen 10 times on TV anyway, under the pretense that it's illegal? Or use a nocd crack for a game you legitimately own and paid £30 for so that you don't have to keep the disc permanently at hand - that's illegal too, but there's nothing wrong with it. Obeying those two laws religiously is more akin to being a goody two-shoes than it is to having integrity.
Don't get me wrong, I genuinely do appreciate the support/advice/time you guys have given me, but I'm almost (but not quite) insulted about being accused of having a lack of integrity over that, because that's really not the case at all. Resigning yourself to a !!!! life you'll never be happy with over something so stupid as a pair of glasses - something that will have no discernible effect on anyone else - is not much of an option.
PS. if you are a pilot, and I assume you are, you're very lucky and I envy you very, very much. Wish I was one of you every single hour of every single day of my life.