“So convenient a thing to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do” -Benjamin Franklin
human nature, irrationality, power, hegemony, governance, coercion, globalizations are terms we tend to associate with corruption, as well as the overarching concept that shaped the world in which we live, the primary focus will be bringing to light rather obscure concepts, such as Deontology, moral obsolescence, macrosocial phenomena and psychological realities that routinely influence the political/social environment, and why that conceptual take led me to believe in the concept of system failure and its impending inevitability. I will also make a few stops at the rhetorical vehicles of paralogic and paramoralisms that enable those phenomena to metastasize into the political realm.
The ultimate premise behind tackling this subject matter is to make a clear distinction between the two however elusive a task that is. The main argument being, corruption is far more complex and broad than any blackbox into which we may endeavour to place it, however it would suffice to at least highlight where this correlation makes it a topic worth discussing. Historically, Morality, reason and ethics contemporaneously fall in conjunction with the establishment of political governance, in fact, it’s the overall objective notions of good and evil that dictates the longevity and notoriety of a given political/ideological construct since humans largely subscribe to a worldview of which moralizing ideas and concepts are part and parcel.
Largely, I repeat, not entirely, as there are deviations from such a universal worldview. The aforementioned “universal” worldview I spoke of is more or less the genesis behind such ideas as justice, civil rights, equality, universal suffrage, the rewarding of good, and condemnation of evil, the struggle to end corruption in its various forms, the apparent of it and obscure. Such ideas, when conceptualized in a political domain would give rise to a period that corresponds with the “Renaissance” or the “enlightenment” during which, numerous, uniquely morally-charged ideas would flourish, a period where rationale prevails over the perceived ” obsolescence” of all preceding expressions of governance, think of the emergence of democracy, the disillusion of the feudal system, the birth of republics sparked by the French revolution, and other such events.
In contrast, the diversity of worldviews regarding morality and group consciousness can be just as detrimental, it’s been said that civilizations like the Roman and the Caliphate of Cordoba (better known as Al-Andalus) suffered a period of moral obsolescence preceding their collapse. A deep societal plunge into hedonism and materialism, coinciding with a general withdrawal from religious traditions. Understanding the notion of corruption, in contrast, requires a grasp of “moral absolutism”, a grey area to many when looking objectively at it, such theories that lay an emphasis on ethics and duty ought to give us a powerful perspective on this “universal” code of beliefs that enshrines much of contemporary world politics. Immanuel Kant is history’s glamorized proponent of the idea, ‘Code de deontologie’ as it’s originally termed, or the knowledge of deontological ethics, a transliteration of the Greek word “obligation” or “duty”, relating to normative ethics that judges the morality of an action on the basis of “morally” predetermined rules. A greyer area perhaps is Moral relativism, the idea that what’s considered “universally” immoral can be subjective, this topic was brilliantly illustrated in a conversation between Plato and Thrasymachus whose worldviews on morality were in diametric standoff.
System failure lies somewhere between normative ethics and subjective morality, and by the metaphorical system failure I’m referring to corruption and lawlessness. As I’ve written before, and also like to deduce, we are subjects of a system of constitutional morality that is largely dictated by figures atop of the structure, persons that, thanks to society’s immersion into the chasm of hedonism, were able to exert total monopoly over technical knowledge within the structure. Bureaucrats we often call them, and to whom impulsively ascribe such characteristics as ‘contentiousness’ and ‘ expertise’, uncritically presuming that such traits which tend to be true, is to be used for nothing but the betterment of the rest of society rather than the advancement of collusive agendas.
When contemplating system failure, its inevitability is not out of the question, it’s written all over it, and when it occurs, civilizations, such as the modern western will experience a period of unprecedented chaos, civil war and racial infighting will be the least of our worries, whereas the orchestrators and sustainers of the system will desert it.
“What can oppose the decline of the west is not a resurrected culture but the utopia that is silently contained in the image of its decline.”- Theodor W. Adorno
