Let's get one thing straight, right from the get go, right from the off...
WE ARE ALL CORRUPTED.
You don't think you are?
You are incorruptible?
An untarnished soul?
Life is politics.
Is corruption - from the moment you avoid telling the truth for expediencies sake, to choosing one choice over another for self serving purposes, at the expense of another.
It doesn't make you bad, it makes you human.
...and bizarrely, this is a quote from Saul Alinsky, which clarified to me to what the quality of corruption, is...
“....The real arena is corrupt and bloody. Life is a corrupting process from the time a child learns to play his mother off against his father in the politics of when to go to bed; he who fears corruption fears life.”
― Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals
And this is a truism that can be unnerving...
Firstly, you have to admit to yourself- from your tower of principled invulnerability - that's is all just a self built illusion..
For to admit we are all corrupted, is to then admit that it's all just by matter's of degree.
It changes the moral battle lines, and blurs them into shades of gray, rather than the easily identified black and white ones..
There are no absolutes.(....< except that one...😂)
I'm happily corrupted, btw, and I have absolutely no issue with it.
I would go further and say that I've happily ran towards corruption throughout a lot of time in my life... for there lies danger, experiences, learning, fun... and excitement quite happily resides in the house of corruption.
To have an issue with your own corruption, is to have a life filled full of guilt.
And that serves no one - most of all, yourself.
Does being corrupted make you a 'bad person'?
Hell no!
From my own experience, I would say my own corruption has led me to a greater understanding of life, and to see past it, allowing me to not pass judgment and moralize on others peoples actions, if they are not abusive to others.
(You can be corrupt, without causing harm).
Alternatively, I can also moralize easily on the corrupt actions of others that do cause harm.
Why? Because I know the difference between corruption and evil.
It's not the same.
All too often misinterpreted and conflated together and automatically being the same thing.
You can't be evil without being corrupt- but if we are all corrupt- then it follows that we can all be evil?
No.
Evil is a choice for weak people for whatever sad, loser reasons that they want to blame it on.
....pesky Alinsky...
“Those who are most moral are farthest from the problem.”
― Saul D. Alinsky, Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals
To be morale is a fine quality to possess, but never shouted from atop the altar of hypocrisy.
Unless you have swam in the waters of corruption in all its forms, from the various shades light and dark, then how can you possibly understand it?
And how can you measure one type of corruption, from another?
If all it's shades are living under one all encompassing umbrella, then you can only fail to see the subtleties of it.
Corruption is an insidious, slow corrosion of the self when it's not identified- and then you can be in very real danger of being lost to it...for it takes no prisoners.
It holds out no 'truce' flag.
No, you have to see it for what it is, and name it.
To not do so is to live a 'moral' life, but always through a thin veil , not thin - invisible, and that is forever present.
You are corrupt without even being aware of it.
Once named, it holds much less power over you, for it's not that powerful , not once it's held up into the light of consciousness.
(although it might forever chat quietly to you, in the background. In my case, it never goes completely silent...)
If left unchallenged it will corrode your soul utterly and lead you down roads that many people are not strong enough to ever come back from....
Politicians,anyone?
Enjoy the swim by all means - but know the waters you are swimming in - and get out of the waters before you get tired, for it's soul deep, tiring...
Get out before it drags you down, and then forever drowns you...
Accept your own corruption.
.....Then what?
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I would not trust Alinsky's word ... I'm sure Hillary and Obama were very happy with him, but I'm not.
This isn't an endorsement of Alinsky, but at least someone else who understands who/what he was. If you actually take time to understand those you oppose, you make for a more worthy opponent.
Heaven forbid you might actually have common ground somewhere! ;)
He was many things that I don't like, but throwing the baby out with the bathwater is never a good idea.
Rules for radical is a 'must read', not to beat the philosophy, but to take the intelligent things from it.
Stupid, he definitely wasn't.