Corruption is a good thing!
Everything has its upside
“Elk nadeel heb z’n voordeel” (J. Cruijf, Dutch philosopher)
Corruption universally is considered a bad thing. But maybe that is not true. At least not for these taxi drivers in Paris:
“Most revealing, however, were two Parisian taxi drivers of African origin who said they were planning to return to Africa for the sake of their freedom. To return from Europe to Africa in search of freedom might seem at first a quixotic thing to do, completely counterintuitive, for is not Africa associated in our minds with tyranny, oppression, corruption, and poverty?”
For them, in France, they live in
“ (…) an ocean of regulation. In their working lives, they were hemmed in, badgered, and constrained by regulation, supervision, surveillance, and mistrust. However hard they might work (and even that was subject to rules), they would never be much better off; but to change work was almost impossible, and to start a business of their own in France, while not literally impossible, required a kind of exhausting doggedness.”
Rather go back to Africa, where a small amount of money paid to a corrupt official will take care of business.
Another quote:
“Strict laws, strictly enforced, is a recipe for paralysis. I’ve often said that while Mexico is much less free than the U.S. on paper, it is much more free in fact. People in the U.S. fear their government, especially the IRS (Belastingdienst). In Mexico, people build what they want, eat what they want, sell what they want; tax evasion is the national pastime.”
Imagine you want to build anything: a business or an annex to your house. Would you rather pay money to a corrupt official, or get stuck in a bureaucratic quagmire? The first option is faster and probably cheaper.
Okay, sometimes corruption is not so good. Like it used to be in China:
“When my older son was born 15 years ago, we stuffed cash in an envelope and gave it to the doctor to make sure my wife was treated well in the hospital. We don't do that anymore.”
Still, a little corruption can go a long way, just not too much!
And now something for completely different!
This second piece is only for people who want to get Enlightened. If you are not interested, or already are Enlightened: have a great weekend!
What is Enlightenment and how to get there
A User Manual
by Swami Bru-Hin -Sma
Technical, unspiritual description of Enlightenment:
“ (…) a psychological state that involves the unmediated experience of the world, because we believe that that state has certain desirable properties.”
The goal of the teaching is enlightenment. This means experiencing the world directly, not through concepts and language. Problem: How to teach this without language and concepts, when even Enlightenment itself is a concept?
Do you want to be a Guru? Then first read this!
The quote above is part of a longer piece that explains the problem of teaching and attaining Enlightenment and trying to overcome the language- and-concepts problem.
“Well you see," Roshi replied, "for most people, and especially for most educated people like you and I, what we perceive and experience is heavily mediated, through language and concepts that are deeply ingrained in our ways of thinking and feeling. Our objective here is to induce in ourselves and in each other a psychological state that involves the unmediated experience of the world, because we believe that that state has certain desirable properties.
It's impossible in general to reach that state through any particular form or method, since forms and methods are themselves examples of the mediators that we are trying to avoid. So we employ a variety of ad hoc means, some linguistic like koans1 and some non-linguistic like zazen2, in hopes that for any given student one or more of our methods will, in whatever way, engender the condition of non-mediated experience that is our goal. And since even thinking in terms of mediators and goals tends to reinforce our undesirable dependency on concepts, we actively discourage exactly this kind of analytical discourse."
And the student was enlightened.”
Did this Enlighten you?
An unanswerable question, used by a Zen teacher. The student is asked to meditate on the question until the mind is so confused it will stop and hopefully enlightenment will follow. Example: “Two hands clap and there is a sound, what is the sound of one hand?”
Sitting meditation.