On Corruption

Corruption starts within. It is never an external process.

It affects everybody. Each time we indulge in little, seemingly innocent habits, we show our true colors. We reveal our true nature. We are sinful. We are proud. And we are wrong.

When confronted by a true dilemma of choosing comfortable slavery to our comforts or working harder, self-sacrificing, being severe with ourselves, we face the music and give in to our peccant nature. And we do it because we are creatures of comfort.

Case in point

A long time ago, people lived their lives at a different, much slower speed.

Back then, comfort had a different, much lower meaning. Their lives were spent in what we would now categorize as misery.

Now, some people, mostly women, are comforts creatures. They do not appreciate the lack of comfort.

Despite this absolute lack of comfort, people used to live freer lives. Regardless of what we learn today about people being oppressed by their overlords, they enjoyed more freedom of action. When push came to shove, the oppressed would just pack up and move to the next valley, city, or country.

That’s how the Swiss became free Switzerland. That’s how Italian cities got their charters of liberties. A smart lord would recognize that ruling with an iron hand would lead its subjects to despair. In time, he’d lose them to lesser stringent lords… or to the relative freedom of the city.

You see, folks, Comfort, Technology, and Freedom have always been interconnected in a triangular relation.

A trade-off exists between comfort, technology, and freedom.

In a modern society, a tech-based society, government appropriates technology, using it against individuals to subdue and control them. Whereas, in the Past, people used to live less comfortable lives, but government was less powerful and farther from the people. Government has never been central to their existence, especially for that of the poor.

The situation was a bit different for the rich and powerful, as their wealth made them either assets to those in power OR enemies of state. We all know this tune.

But fact is that the state has no power, the central authority is powerless, outside technology. It is a certain degree of technology (i.e., roads, aqueducts, etc.), a certain technological level that gives government its power.

Without technology, there can be no centralized state power.

Suffice to look at Afghanistan. The country has been invaded twice in my lifetime, once when I was born, and again when I was 23, by two global superpowers: USSR and USA. Each time, they failed miserably, squandering both blood and treasure in a futile attempt to control it. Both found out the hard way Afghanistan cannot be controlled from the outside due to its backward state.

Alternately, a state lacking infrastructure cannot control its subjects. Therefore, its population gets to be left to its own devices. The People get to enjoy their Freedom.

In a nutshell, people seeking comfort, comfort creatures, enable a technologically adept government to control them by dispossessing them of the most precious asset of humanity: Freedom.

It all comes down to our personal choices.

How many of us would rather they lived 1,000 years ago, in a colder abode, without any of the modern comforts, which most of us, let’s face it, take for granted?!

How many of us would rather live today in close proximity of police, hospitals, schools, restaurants?!

But life in the Middle Ages was far freer than it is today, when all the modern trappings come with serious strings attached.

Modernity has been achieved at the loss of personal freedoms.

Lenin put it best:

Bolshevism is the victory of the proletariat and the electrification of the Soviets.

Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country.

And we all know how well that turned out for the People.

If you want Freedom, you must learn to be Spartan with your needs and wants. You must do more with less. True freedom cannot be found in overindulgence. Overindulgence makes one dependent on technology and a slave to comfort.

If you are a slave to your belly, you are, by definition, in bondage. You are not free.

If your life depends on drugs or medicine, you are not free. Find a way to shed such chains.

If your life depends on others, you are their ward. You are not free.

If your goal in life is to be free, then you must fight a war against yourself to reclaim your Agency in your Life. You must fight the Corruption that rots your soul.