Sunday, October 31, 2010

What Does it Mean to be a Corrupt Society?

We Indians are a corrupt and depraved society. Someone asked me how do you describe a corrupt society for which my description is a corrupt, depraved Society is one in which the people en masse have lost their moral sense. It is not one in which people sin. It is one in which people have lost their bias against sin. It is not one in which people commit adultery. It is one in which people condone and accept adultery. It is not one in which people commit immoral acts. It is one in which people accept and condone immorality to a significant level. It is a loss of moral values, moral knowledge, moral sense.
How do you know such a society when you see it? You listen to people's opinions on matters of morals. You note their likes and dislikes, their tastes, their preferences, how they entertain themselves. You note their humour, what they joke about, what they think is funny. You note their fads as a people. You note their preferences in entertainment. Let us be more specific. Suppose you look through the newspaper listings of the dozens of movies that are showing around town and month after month, year after year, there is never a decent one to be found. They all lash forth advertisements revealing their themes of lust, illicit sex and violence. On your television you flip through the dozens of channels that are available and again there is not a decent program showing. Every picture that comes up is either a bedroom scene or a scene involving violence or becomes one or the other within a few seconds. And this same situation goes on year after year. You wonder how this society can live on a constant diet of dirt and filth year after year and never get tired of it. You try going to some plays. You find they are all interlaced with profanity, obscenity, and crude language. You find nothing of depth or worth or merit in any of them. You turn on your radio. You run through dozens of stations before you find one that is playing something decent. To find a decent novel to read you have to choose an author from some past century.
Rarely anything written in this century is worth anything. Art and painting? You have to go to the art of centuries past. How about the conversation at coffee break at work? Both women and men freely banter with one another in the risqué, the crude, and the obscene. It is obviously the type conversation in which they most delight. Anyone who is not comfortable with this kind of thing is regarded as Puritan, Victorian or prude. You see a debate on pornography. Two people are defending pornography and two are against it. A question is posed. What is pornography? They can't agree. Another question is asked. Is a picture of a nude woman pornography? They are all agreed on the answer to this question. They all agree that it is not.
Reporters covering candidates for public office openly state that they don't report on the sexual conduct of the candidates. They say they don't believe that information is important or relevant and feel it is none of the public's business. Court of laws have started deciding on the live-in relationship despite the existence of legally wedded wife. What have we become? Insensitivity to all that is immoral or accept that immorality, depravation, corruption is all part of the game played by all and sundry.
A corrupt society is a society ruled by immoral, wicked men; criminals elected by the populace, supported by the populace, and shielded from punishment by their political allies. Look what happened in Commonwealth games or Adarsh society in Mumbai, or the former Chief Minister robbing huge wealth of a newly created state? Do we have answer for these intrinsic maladies?

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