Corruption!!!

[Dany Balan]

TRUTH!The best quote ever on corruption!

[Dany Balan]

What are you guys thinking about this?

[Gesundheit]

I think it's both.

Or more precisely, I think all humans are corrupt regardless of circumstances. It's just different degrees of corruption.

Because law/artificial order is unsustainable, and it ultimately begs for corruption/chaos.

[Dany Balan]

@Gesundheit true

 

[Parththakkar12]

@Dany Balan I want you to imagine this situation.

Imagine that you are one of the world's top leaders. You have the biggest corporations trying to cut deals with you, you have all sorts of people trying to suck up to you and offer you material goods in return for your favors that you can do for them. Doing those favors will mean that you abuse your power and that you will potentially be hurting the system and other stakeholders of the system along with it. But, the entire system is under you! If you want to, you can easily cover it up so well that nobody will even notice. If they do, they will close their eyes because you are the highest authority they report to!

What will you do in this situation? Keep in mind that you are one of the world's top leaders, so you will be offered all the biggest material goods and more. Money, sex, power, position, you name it. Nobody will know except yourself that you abused your power for these things. You are getting these things on a silver platter just by virtue of being where you are.

One of the big ramifications of saying 'I'm a good leader. I will not accept these material things and I will not abuse my power for them! I will do good things for the people.' is that you will lose those offers. Not only that, you will be closing the doors to people giving you those material things on a silver platter in the future. Do keep in mind that you will be offered all the material things that you want!! You want those material things. You are being offered all the material goods you could possibly want on a silver platter without having to work for it. On the other hand, if you say no, you are choosing a harder path for yourself to get those same material things! You will have to work harder for those same material things.

Which one will you choose? The one in which you are offered those things on a silver platter for abusing your power or the one in which you will be a good leader but you will have to work to get those same material things? If you choose to abuse your power for those material things, if you choose the easy way, nobody will ever catch you or punish you. If you choose the hard way, you are already committed to it and you have closed the door to the easy way forever.

Imagine now that all of your peers are choosing the easier way. What would you do then?

This is the moral predicament of being in a high position of power. It is very difficult to not abuse your power! It takes a very strong moral character to be fair and to not abuse your power.

If you are in your ego, you will inevitably abuse your power. Especially if nobody is punishing you for it. There's no way you won't.

There is only one way to avoid this situation. If you are in your Life Purpose and you have that position of power according to your Life Purpose, you aren't just thinking about getting what you materially want, you are also thinking about the legacy you will leave behind and the contribution you make to those below you when you had that position of power. This is the only real way to be a good leader. You have to care about what you're giving the world, what you are contributing to the world more than material things, more than your own material desires.

Do you see why this is such a tall ask? Do you see why so few people like Gandhiji or Martin Luther King ever pull this off? The ones who do pull this off though make history. They're the ones whose names are permanently etched in the history-books.

[aurum]

@Dany Balan

It’s a bit of both in my experience.

Yes, power draws out devils who are seeking power over others. And it often flows to people who are power hungry and willing to do the devilish thing to get it, which means devils are often likely to be in power.

But also, @Parththakkar12 is right in saying that maintaining your integrity in a position of power can be extremely challenging, even if you have good intentions.

Often times you can just get swept up in corrupt institutions and systems. You may even really believe you are doing the right thing and have people around you who believe the same.

That’s what makes corruption so tricky. It’s not as obvious as finding the “bad guy”, the cartoon super villain who wants to rule the world. Often times that “bad guy” could be a “good guy” in many other ways! It could even be you.

Do you think you don’t participate in exploitation and corruption? Of course you do. But you may not realize it. And you will think yourself as one of the “good” ones. 

And why wouldn’t you think of yourself that way? Probably most of the time you live a normal life. You have people you care about. Generally speaking you try to do the right thing. And of course, the more we think of ourselves as “good”, the better it is for us.

If all the devils were aware of how they were being a devil, there be no devils. 

[Preety_India]

I think this world is divided into good and bad people.  Good people aren't materialistic. Evil people want to dominate whereas good people want to surrender. Power is like a litmus test. Most people who are good are not power hungry and won't put themselves into positions of power. Bad people see any way to dominate as a great opportunity. They easily put themselves into positions of power. 

Naturally most people who compete for power are evil people 

We cannot solve this paradox until we find a solution for what predatory people use and that is weapons. 

Weapons create a problem.. What do groups of bad people use against good people?  Weapons to create fear some of these weapons are - fear, violence, death threats.  These are the basic weapons that causes good people to back off and not fight the bad. 

It's important to destroy these weapons. To reduce threat, fear, violence by punishing anyone who uses them. By putting such people in jail. By retracting the very thing used that causes suppression. The weapons. 

The weapons need to be destroyed. They need to be neutralized in order to create balance of power. When weapons are used, the predators get more powerful than the prey very easily. Remove the teeth and nails of the tiger and the tiger can do nothing. 

In a stage Red culture and even in stage Blue, these weapons are the main source of the problem. Such weapons are extensively used against good people to keep them from getting power. Good people back off out of fear. This is the strategy. Good people don't use such weapons because they don't want unity, they don't like to create fear or violence. So this gives an unhealthy advantage to sociopaths who use these weapons since they will only be used against good people but nobody will use it against bad people 

So one way of tackling the situation that evil people dominating good people is to have a universal restriction on the use of threat, fear, suppression and violence. This needs  a strong law enforcement system that will handle the ones who use such weapons. An independent body that is not influenced by the power in the state. A body that simply restrains the use of weapons. This way it would create more opportunities to compete against bad people and get power. Once you get a powerful good leader who only has best interests in his mind, in the absence of threat and violence he can execute important actions and resolve issues, putting an end to corruption. 

 

Edited February 22, 2021 by Preety_India

[Leo Gura]

Spot on description of the Trump admin. All of them were the biggest scumbags of society. Like vampires crawling out of their caves, sensing an opportunity.

[Forestluv]

11 hours ago, Dany Balan said:

 

I would agree that all governments include power dynamics that is attractive to those that are corrupt or corruptible. Yet I think the quote is also misleading because it suggests 100% of government will corrupt 100% of politicians and government is 100% filled with corrupt politicians. This is a hyper-simplistic construct that lacks degrees and nuances. For example, both the Obama and Trump administrations included elements of corruption, yet Trump's administration had greater degrees of corruption than Obama's. 

[diamondpenguin]

We need to shove our most spiritually developed up in office but disguise them as a rube so they vote for them. 

[mmKay]

@Leo Gura omg i got it. All people bit into Trump because he has Tru in his name. Imagine his name being Falsemp ;0  aint nobody trusting that name