As humans who ultimately aren't very different from each other, we all live on multiple spectrums of behaviour. We can all be happy, all get angry, and all can behave in ways that we might not believe we can, if the conditions are right. People who thought themselves strong have broken down under pressure, and facing the same pressure, the weak have stood up. The nicest person has cracked. And the meanest person has performed incredible acts of service.
And the uncorruptible, have been corrupted.
How corruptible are you?
There is plenty of corruption in the world and we witness and are impacted by it daily, in many aspects of our life. Many do not trust politicians, or the very wealthy, yet those same people make decisions and conditions that affect us, that we are subjected to. We know life isn't fair, but we also know that it could definitely be more balanced than it is, if it wasn't for human nature;
Greedy, power-hungry, insatiable.
No matter how good you believe yourself to be, we are all on the spectrum. Which makes me wonder how different I would be, or you would be, if given a position of power, the resources for control, the opportunity to take advantage of, or inflict pain on others.
The question isn't whether we can be corrupted, it is what we need to be corrupted and at what level. For instance, let's take money as an example, where for some they will murder for a few dollars, for another it might take millions or billions. And for a few, there would be no amount of money in the world they would murder for, but they would for another prize, another protection.
Kill unknown person-A, or your daughter dies.
And then I might justify the saving of my daughter as reason enough to break my moral code. Perhaps I will make up stories that she has potential and a whole life ahead of her, but person-A is an unknown and could be a terrible person.
And I think, that many people's "number" for murder would be far lower than they would publicly state. I think it is the same for theft too, or in the case of politicians or police, taking a bribe. Publicly, we want to put on the veneer of goodness, but behind closed doors, is that the real us? If we believe we won't get caught, do we still stick to our personal ethics?
In some countries and some parts of countries, the barrier to murder is very low. And perhaps it is not surprising that there is a strong relationship between the murder rate per capita, and the perceived corruption in those countries. The highest per capita murder rates are in countries where there is high corruption, like Jamaica, with up to 53 murders per 100,000 people. The EU average is 0.9 per 100K. The US is 5.5 per 100K.
What does that say about corruption in those areas?
It is not so simple to draw lines from such sparse data, but it doesn't matter how we really look at it, corruption isn't only at the top leeching trillions from the economy, it happens all the way down too. Which means, even if there is a switch in government people, ultimately it would end up in the same place, or worse. One of the problems of always cutting the heads off leaders when unhappy with them or they make a mistake is, the pool of heads keeps shrinking and the candidates get worse and worse.
But there are perceptual differences in the types of corruption, aren't there? For instance, the corruption in government with abuse of resources for personal, private or group gain is seen differently, than the corruption of a person who abuses women or children for sexual gratification. But, are they really different, or is it just that the currency of corruption differs? In both cases, the perpetrator is morally corrupt. Abusing power for gain.
Does power always corrupt?
Perhaps yes. This doesn't necessarily mean that the outcomes are bad though, because we could see the corruption as the power being energy transferred to change a behaviour that wouldn't otherwise have changed.
The conditions change, we change.
At least for me, I like to think I am a pretty decent human being, but I wonder if that would be true if put in different environments, under different stressors, offered different opportunities. While I wouldn't stay the same, with what and to what level would I need to break my ethics, and I wonder if I would go willingly, fight it, or perform mental gymnastics to justify my behaviour as to why it is "the right" thing to do given the circumstances.
The worst people to have ever lived, thought themselves good.
At least publicly.
We can guess, but never know how we would actually react in conditions until we are in them. We do not know what we would actually do if faced with a life or death decision, or if we won the lottery. We do not know what we would do if a politician with power, or if we hadn't eaten in days and someone offered us food in return for a crime.
We are all on the spectrum.
Conditions can push us to the extremes.
Taraz
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