Power and Corruption

 

Power comes in many forms for example political power, economic power, the power of brain, the power of brawn, the power of love etc. It need not be a path to corruption. Instead, power offers a possibility to create because nothing can be created without power. It is only when power becomes a means to dominate that power becomes ugly and paves way for corruption.

To be powerful is not a folly. It is very important that every human being should be a powerful human being because the opposite of being powerful is being powerless or weak. Weakness should not be celebrated just because power has been misused by some.

Power by itself is not corruption. When human beings hankering for dominance get hold of power, it becomes a source of corruption. If human beings have a larger sense of identity within themselves and are seeing what they can create for everyone’s wellbeing, then power is a wonderful thing, and every human being should be a powerful human being.

Power does not corrupt, people are corrupt. When they get empowered, it becomes super visible. First, let us see what corruption is. Essentially, corruption means, with whatever acts of wellbeing a human being commits, he is excluding somebody. If you have something, you want to give a little more to this person, and a little less to that person. This is corruption. The question is whether it is a socially acceptable form of corruption or not.

Most of the corruption on the planet is because an individual is identified with something limited. With limited identity (the qualities, beliefs, personality, looks and/or expressions that make a person (self-identity as emphasized in psychology) or group (collective identity as pre-eminent in sociology) anything that you empower gets blown up into a larger dimension of corruption.

Limited identity is corruption. If you make your identity yourself, you will rob the person next to you. If you make your identity for your community, you will do things for your community at the cost of some other community. If you are identified with the nation, you will do good things to your nation at the cost of another nation. That is not perceived as corruption, but it is corruption. Corruption is not a lack of morality. Corruption is essentially a limited identity.

The nature of your mind is such that once you identify yourself with something your intellect functions only to serve and protect that identity whether it is gender, community, nation, race, religion…different levels of corruption.

The most educated people in the world have contributed to all the violence on the planet. Initially, when humans were a caveman they killed with a stone, that is the Stone Age; Iron Age means he killed with iron; Bronze Age means he killed with bronze; Nuclear Age means he kills with nuclear weapons. Some people have always been essentially violent, but the scale of violence that can happen today has happened because the best-educated brains in the world have worked to create the most violent ways to kill humanity just because they have limited identity. If the educated in the world had not cooperated, a violent man would kill one or two, with a stick or a stone. But only because the educated in the world have cooperated, a violent man can kill millions, realizing this there is a whole effort in the traditional Indian education systems about establishing a universal identity before children start their education process. Because education is seen as empowerment, before you empower them, the first thing is that they have a cosmic identity. This is called Aham Brahmasmi meaning ‘my identity is cosmic’. So, in some experiential way, inclusiveness is brought about from early age that they feel for everything in the existence. Only then education is given because education is seen as empowerment.

Let us make corruption cosmic!