Submitted by antarchi on July 7, 2007 - 12:53.
Corruptness: lack of integrity or honesty; use of a position of trust for dishonest gain (from Definitions of corruption on the Web
Corruption is pretty normal nowadays. In the business world I can almost regard it as fair play: part of the sordid rules of that game. The latest Saudi arms deal was nothing surprising. We know that's how the world works, how the Blair government works, how the arms trade works. Shocking, perhaps, that we have become so inured to this that it no longer even surprises - let alone shocks - us. But it doesn't.
What does still shock (me, anyway) is corruption in spheres where you don't expect it, where the rules of the game do not demand it, where very few consider it, let alone engage in it. I don't just mean fiddling the books, which is indeed normal in every ngo and probably every institution (and maybe the rules of the game demand it). I mean deliberate deceit for personal gain, 'use of a position of trust for dishonest gain', in a world - such as the ngo world - where personal gain is publicly, demonstratively put in second place. Or that is the idea anyway.
The foundations on which our ultimate, unlimited faith in human beings rest are so incredibly fragile. The examples of human duplicity, brutality, ignominy are so horrifying and so widespread that it sometimes seems that those foundations must crumble. But we shore them up, determined that ignoble behaviour is always the result of corrupted rules of the game, of unfortunate circumstance, of the system, rather than the individual.
I had always imagined that the ngo world, even if corrupt in its own small way, was a relatively safe haven. When that too starts to rot; when the individuals appear to be moving the system towards corruption, rather than vice versa; when they look at the rot as if it is normal and the safe haven eats up the rot as if nothing has happened – then one wonders what on earth it is that we are trying to shore up.
