A corrupt State produces corrupt citizens

“We talk on principle, but we act on interest” - Walter Savage Landor, English writer and poet.

When you are forced to buy the things you want, irrespective of its cost, and not because you consent; but because of compulsion resulting from want of alternatives. When you want to make things that benefits your society; and yet need to, and forced to, obtain permission from men who make nothing but the demand for money to grant authority.

When you want to build a home for yourself, and need to obtain permission from men who built homes out of the moneys extracted from people such as you. When you see money flowing and being made by men who deal not in goods or services, but in favours. When you need to admit your child to gain knowledge, yet need to submit to men who have no understanding, nor knowledge of ethics.

When you see that men get rich by graft and by pull, than by work; when laws do not protect you against the corrupt, but protect the corrupt; when the corrupt obtain rewards and honesty becomes self-sacrifice; be warned: the country that you are living in is corrupt. And, be more certain that; it will also produce a corrupt society, rotting at the core. This, in turn, will help grow more corruption and a dishonest citizenry. Such a society may be heading for its doom; but what is sad about such situation is that the victims of corruption, the citizens, regardless of their march to doom, have no sense of the ills to come; nor care beyond today.

Deeply

I suppose it is because we only think deeply about matters, but not clearly. The irony of this is that one has to be sane to think clearly, whereas even an insane person can think deeply but not clearly. The art of thinking requires that a person be, not a puppet of emotions; but has to continuously keep questioning one’s assumptions. It may seem paradoxical, yet it is true to say that the more we know, the more ignorant we become in the absolute sense.

It is only through enlightenment we become conscious of our limitations. A society that lacks learning and enlightenment will naturally tend towards corruption because humans are a self-propelled force entirely under the control of external influences such as evolution.

The theory of evolution is the process of natural selection whereby organisms better adapted to their environment tend to survive and produce more offspring. Hence, when this process is applied to humans; humans who have not learnt nor evolved to adhere to ethics, and are not enlightened; temptation to be corrupt becomes their natural state: for it is a natural selection, the easy way to move forward in life, though it is the greatest treason when men do the wrong deed for right reasons. After all, intellectual evolution is the continuous opening up of new and greater prospects to elevate the human condition; the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavour to adhere to the principles of natural law, and put to rout all that was not moral, nor natural.

Remember that nobleness begins at once to refine a man’s feature; while actions of little virtue, meanness, and corruption, to imbrute them.

Corruption

Over the centuries, Mankind has tried combating the force of corruption. He has tried everything from prayers, social agitations, revolt, good governance, and so on; yet failed until impending doom looms upon him and his society.

Is this because, he has failed to understand the natural world; because he has not gained reverence for life - all life. In fact, it is over 2,500 years since Plato said that a corrupt State produces corrupt citizens; and yet, corrupt States come into being and continue doing so in spite of the intellectual evolution of the individual. It is becoming increasingly clear that no matter who is in power, as long as human greed keeps rising, be it the greed for power or the greed for wealth, corruption will remain.

When man makes evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good.

Do not expect them to stay moral and sacrifice their lives as fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to be honest when honesty is punished, looting rewarded. Certain ages in the history of mankind produces certain types of people; and merciless though the laws of nature be, the wonder of it is that nature will not let its creation - mankind that originated from an incandescent mass - to fall to doom; even though, into a frozen mass we shall eventually turn.

Around 2,500 years ago, perhaps when humanity was falling into the abyss of intemperance and self-indulgence, the world saw the rise in intellectualism: be it through the coming of a Buddha or other humans who immensely contributed to the intellectual rise of Mankind and his ethics. Without ethics, man has no future. Ethics determine choices and actions and suggest difficult priorities. True independence and freedom can only exist in doing what is right and treading the ethical path.

Freedom

A society that robs an individual of the product of his effort, or enslaves him, or attempts to limit the freedom of his mind, or compels him to act against his own rational judgment, is not, strictly speaking, a society, but a mob held together by institutionalised gang-rule.

Therefore, there is no such entity as ‘the public’ - since the public is merely a number of individuals - the idea that ‘the public interest’ supersedes private interests and rights can have but one meaning: that the interests and rights of some individuals take precedence over the interests and rights of others. The smallest minority on earth is the individual.

Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.

Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities. Individualism regards man - every man - as an independent, sovereign entity who possesses an inalienable right to his own life, a right derived from his nature as a rational being.

The fact that most humans are not rational is an altogether different matter. However, individualism holds that a civilised society, or any form of association, cooperation, or peaceful co-existence among men can and must be, achieved only through the recognition of individual rights; and that a group, as such, has no rights other than the individual rights of its members.

Inversion

For the time being, we may not be approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion. However, we did live in such a period: a period where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force. Do you consider it moral to treat men as sacrificial animals and to rule them by physical force? Moral cowardice that keeps us from speaking our minds is as dangerous to this country as irresponsible talk.

The right way is not always the popular and easy way. Standing for right when it is unpopular is a true test of moral character. Thus, there can be no compromise on basic principles.

There can be no compromise on moral issues. There can be no compromise on matters of knowledge, of truth, of rational conviction. Hence, never let the uncontested absurdities of the past become the accepted slogans of tomorrow - whoever is in governance.

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