The Genesis of corruption as a prevailing norm stems from the social accommodation of the ‘corrupt’ and the lost work ethics substituted by the culture of laziness and impunity.
Class consciousness as the thought of by Marx and Hegels will occur if and I stress again if the unholy matrimony between the oppressors and the oppressed is broken.
However, the divorcement of this alliance can be made possible by the existence of a common enemy (borrowing from the English law which seeks to protect landlords and house owners from surface water flow) either within or without. The common enemy theory I propose suggests that, where there are no areas of common interest between the Oppressors and the Oppressed, when the strains in economic and socio-political system reaches an eclipse, when the remnants produced from the pockets of the ruling class no longer satisfies the cravings of the people, the masses’ endurance to the polity is abandoned for a sporadic change.
This common enemy within is the effect of a battered economic system which poses a threat to life. the struggle for life would make the society return to the Hobbesian state of nature where life again becomes “brutish, nasty and short.”
Economic realities will give rise to political consciousness.
This is the history of all countries that has experienced development and classified as first world or developed countries. A friction must first surface between the ruling and the non-ruling class, the subjugating and the subjugated, as it was in the case of France prior to the French Revolution. The first and second estates which consist of the priests and nobles enjoyed certain privileges and rights, exempted from the payment of tax and and enjoyed high level impunity.
This awareness among the oppressed class is not spontaneous, but gradual and systematic. It arises when efforts at maintaining the status-quo could not be achieved by the ruling class, since it does appear that the existing socio-political order cannot provide succour to the aspirations of the masses.
In the 21st century, this unwanted order is displaced by two triggers vis-a-vis; education and technology. The displacement of this order is the function of ultimate economic reality being experienced in the form of mass unemployment, poverty, injustice and violence plus the knowledge or awareness necessary to propel a change and the technology which help actualize it e.g, social media, weapons, cyber attack etc.
A change in Sp F(Er + K + T). It is however knowledge that plays the most important role in the change process if such other variables such as religion and culture must be defeated. For these two are the most potent tools for subjugation.
Such pathetic examples of religious or cultural domination abound in sub-Sahara Africa and have become the melting point for institutionalizing corruption and impunity that goes with it consequently, leading to poverty and underdevelopment.
Hence, I propose a rather hilarious definition of corruption but evidently visible to us all: Corruption is a blatant robbery of people’s properties in broad daylight, a lethal blow on their right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness with the conscious approval of the masses. Corruption is a state of mind and approval from the inner consciousness.
It is an agreement between the government and the governed to deprive the governed their rights, defraud nature and other God-given common estate through the weapons of religion and culture, which easily permeates the mind of the oppressed in the absence of knowledge and where the status-quo is maintained.
As it is the case with many revolutions in history and in recent years, the Arab uprising, it is established that until the impact of religion and culture fades away (not eradicated) due to the aggravated common enemy and other triggers, then the stage will not be set for revolution and change.
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