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Three thousand five hundred years ago, the Law of Moses condemned bribery. Over the centuries since then, anticorruption laws have proliferated. Nevertheless, legislation has not succeeded in curbing corruption. Millions of bribes change hands every day, and billions of people suffer the consequences. According to the British magazine, The Economist, as much as 10 percent of the $25 billion spent every year in international arms trade serves to bribe potential customers. As the scale of this corruption has increased, the consequences have become catastrophic.
It is such a clear fact that people tend to corrupt, it is because they want to promote their own selfish desire and satisfy their unending needs, in a very short period of time than ever. Two powerful forces keep stoking the fires of corruption: selfishness and greed. Because of selfishness, corrupt people turn a blind eye to the suffering that their corruption inflicts on others, and they justify bribery simply because they benefit from it. This is because of the nature of human beings—self-oriented phenomena—where people want to meet their own “social obligations” in a way that they may ably meet it within short time before their colleagues, which they may assume that money may put them in a better “social status” and get them “public recognition,” in a society where correct value judgments are dying day by day. We live in a world where society’s feeling towards responsibility is depleting and people are becoming more selfish and self oriented.
These egocentric attitudes come into existence, because of our trainings and mental settings, in which all of us, in whichever culture and society we are living in, we are trained in a way that is highly “competitive.” We want to be first in excellence in schools, in our work, in social dynamics and all other settings that we may wish to participate. We are some how trained to be “competitive” than “cooperative”, in which the whole structure of educational and social systems are founded, which has its own pros and cons in maintaining effective and efficient social systems in any given society.
One of the reasons why many people are forced to dwell in corruption is due to the ongoing trainings styles [competition] we had been though in schools, family theories and social dynamics, who forced us to be in a mood of “ a better feeling than others” and as a result of these social trends that all of us are through, which is “competitive” in nature, where our entirety is affected, through our obedient actions for the rules and regulations of educational systems we have been through and the social systems we have practiced. Competition is a self-oriented phenomena—name, fame, ranks or positions— where one feels better than the other, where one wants to exercise a better power and authority than the other, where one assumes that one is always in a better position than the other; which in most cases leads to an undesirable end. Even though people show better capacity and excellence as a result of competition, the consequence that is be created in societies where there are limited resources is not simple, and one of the disastrous effects is indeed corruption.
We can see that in any given society, nowadays, the people who are corrupting are educated who have authority and power in any given society. These people have enough information about the evilness of corruption, and they even understand the consequence of it if they are caught, and what it means by involving oneself in corruption, but they still are dwelling on it. It is like HIV/AIDS, which is beyond a health crisis and a primal obstacle for development especially in the developing countries, as survey in the scope indicated that over 80% of the people who are infected with the virus have knowledge how the virus is transmitted, but they do not care or they are desperate in life. Knowledge by itself is not sufficient, and it must be supported by actions. The education systems and social structures we have been through has some how influenced us to be in a mood of “competitiveness” rather than being “cooperative”, and always forces one to feel, one is better than the other, and here is our challenge, in which we should try to think differently to divorce from one self from those selfish attitudes that our secular education is not able to provide us, and we all need to work so hard and think differently.
Our perspective on “betterment” should be changed, and our mental framework has to some how shift into a different paradigm that we need to start seeing things differently and work in a new way. We have to rethink and reconsider our values, in which our betterment has to lie, and try to figure out a betterment which has no outward consequence or not related to outward benefits and recognition, where people around us benefit from us and from our services too.
It is indeed imperative to shift our mentality not only in the educational systems but also the social structures, where our value judgments has to change and should know and figure out what benefits two people than one person. In any of our interactions, what is best for many people may be better than for one person, but in this case society should have the capacity to value ideals in a different way with new mental settings, which are capable to identify correct values and practice better judgments. The whole structure of the educational and social systems has to be reoriented into a different structure that children should learn how to be cooperative than competitive, and in any of the gatherings of every human society, people should learn this as well. Our mental settings has to be reorganized into a different model that new modes of thinking that are useful to the many should be introduced, and in any of our interactions, we should start thinking about the happiness and well-being of others better than oneself. As Chinese say, “One million miles of a journey starts by the first walk,” and we can do it from now, by allowing ourselves to be aware and try to think differently than we used to be, and change will come, for it is inevitable.
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Dereje Amera
Writing is a powerful instrument to promote one's ideology, so as to transform and galvanize the whole of humanity to have a better perspective about this world.
Words are just combinations of letters, but the power they exert in every human frame is still a mystery to all.
Writing uses these mysterious forces of words as a tool to introduce, induce and create vibrations in society, which do have an influence on every aspect of our life as human beings.
May the power of WORDS prevail over all!!
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