BAIS SELFLESSNESS (IV) ; corruption is miss-defined
(This the last of a four part essay on corruption)
CORPORATE MANAGEMENT
One common misrepresented assertion by leadership, is the emphasis of the unconditional unity of the governed. It is a commonly embraced mistake. It appears straight forward and basically advocated as reasonable. Who will have anything against unconditionally unifying different ideas to smoothen and ease the act of governance? Everyone will wish for such a luxuriously pacifying state, it makes things obviously easier.
But this is only a utopian dream. Man is too different to be that agreeable. Hence we would agree only for the instant purpose it serves. But in our agreement is a very obvious yet subtle disagreement that serves only our purpose. There must be that inevitable sense of compromise holding together human unity for it to be comfortably binding. To rely on this circumstantial relationship as the foundation of any policy is to have faith in only one direction of wind to steer a ship on the high seas.
People will always rely on their very own selfish judgment first of all and when the whole community of the governed are being considered, unity is then too unreliable to be an exact policy. Shrouded in his old traditions are man’s thoughts, which are fundamentally tutored to be bias to his very own personal ideals.
The principle of ‘the longer it lasted, the longer it lasts’ was not coined after some rare scientific experiment or sociological evaluation. It is a human certainty that is as old as humanity. Over an extended period man has managed every area of his activities in ways he considered appropriate to his immediate circumstances, with regards to his particular orientation. This is as traditional, as it can be simply broken down to its barest.
An individual’s thoughts and deeds are guided by what is traditional to his own immediate physical and emotional environment. These are major determinants in the reaction of man in every given setting and basically predict his actions, or in-actions. The perspective of the misguided will always be hunted by their traditional orientation and this will pull their sentiments in directions they unconsciously do not have complete control over. In devising an acceptable line of thought for any group, it is essential to consider their prior orientation.
It is important to weigh their special particular sentiments and adjust their methods of choice to their comprehension as well as capabilities. Neglecting this fundamental option is always counter productive and to a considerable extended destructive too. The nature of man’s assorted cultural settings has schooled his customs and ensuing norms in a huge collection of highly imaginatively imposed regulations, even as they evolve.
None evolves without some form of basic communal want that is being advocated for or protected from undesired possibilities. In achieving these quests of managing an embraced system, man’s norms simply develop. They develop into a standard form of behaviour and the immediate community normalizes these as is usual and expected. These norms have shackled the capabilities of any form of government within a society.
They are not necessary ill-conceived enacted laws; which they evolved into with stealth, when not put aright fundamentally. They are mainly conceptions of bias origins. Norms hinder the progressive work in any liberalized institutionalized society. The ethnic origin of man’s sentimental choices has made him unreliable as he is. Man is naturally prone to constant bias at times of decision making. He is completely incapable of continuously taking decisions devoid of sentiments.
Man embodies a life of abject subjective choices and all his apparent or obvious efforts to appear otherwise are actually just as bias. Man is a slave of his feelings and he is in a state of this perpetual captivity. The only possible escape is when he is subjected to his own communal cooperative dictates, which ensures that he functions within a life sustaining spherical confine of behavioral norms, which govern his actions.
This established confine, loosely but recognizably, keeps human action within a manageable state at all times of relative organization and thus man’s bias excesses are managed. This is a mythical spherical form, not unlike his limiting atmospheric earth. And is as complex as it is likewise simple in its revelation.
It is this common compromise that is reflected in the stated communal cooperative organization, which when legally united, forms a defined administrative body that can act as a managerial unit. This group’s natural behaviour incorporates management. The constant bias apparent in their functions actually binds and thus ensures their continuous existence and apparent success as corporate management, based on its practicability.
Man’s state of affairs is too complicated to be given a definite solution at every twist and turn. But true to his nature, man will always respect his need to be bias to his selfishness and when this is determined by norms his very sentiments hold dearly, he is selfless. In the mazy hedge of his emotions and decisions underlines the fact that, if he seeks to succeed he must only show this dogged ‘Bias selflessness’.
Unity is too circumstantial for a policy,
Tradition orients a people’s sentiment.
Ethnic norms always cage the polity;
In constant bias corporate management.
BAIS SELFLESSNESS (III) ; corruption is miss-defined
(This the third of a four part essay on corruption)
COOPERATIVE ADMINISTRATION
One unique feature of religion is its tenacious adherence to fixed and definite principles. These principles are the basis of its existence as a religion and are fundamentally the seed that gave birth to its very essence. The idea will most probably not make rational sense but the most rational being will support and defend it sensibly and at the peril of his own sanity, physical comfort and even his very existence.
Religion is not the faith in the principle that embodies it, but faith in the mystical entity that signifies it. The dictates of this mystical entity are conveyed in the principles adhered to at every physical and mental cost, with an attempt to constantly de-emphasis self and enhance the prominence of the symbolized entity of the faith; be it human or inanimate, or just mystical.
The formation of an organic entity to personify religion gives religion an attitudinal face. The revealed and related activities of these faces give the religion a logical form. Very few persons have really enjoyed the true luxury of choosing a religion. From time immemorial, religion chose man and found him; by force, by region, by clan, by race, by trade, by tradition, by history, by birth, by orientation or de-orientation, ironically.
Nothing calms and still agitates man like his faith in something he regards to be bigger than himself. Religion had given him reason to reason, and answers to ponder and wonder, erroneously or correctly. Religion is honestly a matter of acceptance and conviction, yet confusion as well; individual opinion. One irony of religion is its singular and as yet, unduplicated ability to truly unify all its conquests in a common course without relying on any democratic dictates.
There is nothing democratic about religious overtures. It is the most dictatorial from of human management ever used or applied by the human race. Truly, the obvious belief in its perceived non human origin would have ensured that it is seen as not human and thus beyond the comprehension of humans. But the fact remains that it is basically and entirely administered purely by human beings. Whether influenced or not, the instant choice of believing, complying and adhering is always human.
Hence man administers religion. This, as stated, has been largely successfully done within the religious communities, all in the absence of a democratic fabric. The fact that the back bone of every faith and religion is still the same today as it was at its onset and infancy for millennia past, points to another key feature of religion; it is unequivocally dynamic in every nature.
Religion maintains its structure but adjusts and fits itself rather well in all its many diverse travels, moulding both its conquests as itself to accommodate its conquests and still remains its unique identifiable self. This isn’t easily replicated. And as such this democracy that is being clamored for and that had, with such trendy popularity, thrust itself into more societies, is rarely recognized for what it truly is; a new religion.
It is relatively new to all other religions and foreign to their dictatorial and parochial principles. One can choose one god from another, democracy preaches. One can change anything one does not like, democracy teaches. All this as long as majorities agree that it should be so. Majority rule is the true definition of democracy. One individual’s choice takes the back seat and watches helplessly but vocally, for as long as he and his like opinioned cronies cannot convince the most from the other divide to accept their own opinion and stance.
They wait for democracy to choose them, like the religion with many deities it functions as and it is. Democracy doesn’t point at one deity; instead it has minor ‘gods’ that expire with their tenures. Governments don’t listen to a particular ministration but to their collective individual might; collectively expressed. Governance is stirred by the dictates of a few individuals.
A consensus is established when the empowered individual works with the majority. In practice this has been altered to fit circumstances and does not float down stream in most instances, but is pulled up stream, against clear popular wishes by certain pressures it must register, accept and comply to. If it desires to remain relevant in its present state, then it must succumb.
Each time a government is determined, it simply implies that power had been given to a small group. The government is a custodian of represented power. Its mandate, man-power and management have to be cooperated with by the people; if it is to be successful. Where there isn’t such cooperation, then its success is not established and tangible but just fragments of its imagination. Common sense shows that people based governments had administered within the confines of its own dictates pulled and pushed to fit its own determined policies.
Even popular governments have sipped from this pond of self-righteousness. The success of any given governance endeavour is strictly determined by the cooperation it gets and its objectivity; the former is as prominent as admits the latter. Their symbiotic romance harmonizes the polity and practically vindicates cooperative administration.
Religion is not as democratic as dynamic,
Thus government stirs to any ministration.
Civil cooperation and compromise laid thick,
Practically vindicate cooperative administration.
BAIS SELFLESSNESS (II) ; corruption is miss-defined
(This is the second of a four part essay on corruption)
LEADERSHIP’S INTERESTS
So many times the blatant fact is assumed but not proven, that the rich are arrogant and that humility is with the poor. But ignored is the reality of pretence being more evident in the poor or the less privileged. Isn’t it predominantly so evident that ‘Humility is the worst form of conceit’? Deceit is disguised in readied pretence predominantly. The vice of the rich being arrogance is akin to that of the poor, humility under duress.
In the weakness that is prominent in the poor, lies a quiet strength that is subtle. In the rich’s arrogance is sincerity and in the poor’s humility is a sinister compromise. But a virtue that makes a unique blend of these perceived extremes is leadership. Learnt or taught, experienced or developed, entrusted or made, given or denied, earned and won; leadership formulates its deed.
Leadership swings like a pendulum, in an arc that represents its own distinct interests; interests that subsequently direct its course, its aims, its objectives and its final achievements. Leadership is resourceful and commands resources in a manner that reveals its interests. If not in practice, it does eventually when it has run its course or ends its tenure, term and time.
Resources abound all over and finders are keepers. But then resources are nothing if they do not translate into a means of leadership. If authority has responsibility, then responsibility has authority. If leadership has resources, then resources have leadership. The resource is not beneficial if those who earned it do not lead it. If it leads them, then though resource has leadership, leadership doesn’t have resource and simply put; he that earns doesn’t get to pay his bills. When the earners are different from the payers, then a contest ensues.
A struggle ensues and subsequently grows out of a tussle for basic rights, borne out of an obvious desire to lead the resources that had been earned or won, by earners or payers, respectively. The disconnection is so evident in the chaos that ensues and nothing is as crippling in any clearly established setting as the corrosive effect of disorganization. It wears and tears with a persistence that suffocates and extinguishes the positive force in any establishment. Hence a contest fundamentally disorganizes.
Competition does not exist alongside cooperation within the same concurrent pair of settings. The presence of harmony represents compromise for shortcomings. And leadership must give a little here and there to enable it keep the flame of the force that powers its establishment. What makes conflict prominent is not the competition itself or even the perceived immediate material dividends of success imbedded in such contests. The attraction is the recognition that comes with it.
Most of the led are not bothered with who leads, but what leadership delivers. In a like manner, most of the leaders are not bothered about what their leadership actually provides but what the led think of what their leadership provides. This is leadership’s interest as it reveals itself now. This interest response easily to pretence and thrives solely on the feedback it gets from those around it. Most times the feedback is filtered through its cronies, who surround leadership and concentrate on giving it the kind of response that ensures their own personal existence and comfort, while not necessarily forwarding the actual response that strives to reach the leadership.
Leadership is thus misled and its interests with it. The elite are not as unsympathetic as they appear. They are as humane as every other being of every other economic class and status. The reason for this conclusive perception is however not far fetched.
The unquenchable desire to always have and keep protected that power gotten, has made the elite appear heartless. They strive to ensure that the sorts of lifestyles they enjoy are not reversed on any account. They have come up a steep road they see again and again; altered here or there, but very easily recognizable.
It is quite easily recognizable as a similar road that would take them downwards, if they are unwary of this fact too. Wealth and fame is like health and game. The big and strong appear fit but will become ill and die if careless and unlucky. The famous are loved today and hated tomorrow like a winner today loses or ends his winnings tomorrow. Mindful of the cold they could get, the elite will rather kill to stay warm, unsympathetically so.
The common man’s simplicity has made him blind to the difficulties associated with or being daily considered by the elite class. His decisions are mostly straight to the point, so much that the complications evident in being something else is not recognized and appreciated but instead simply taken at their clear face value and not scrutinized with proper analysis.
Evaluation is in itself an act of analysis and the two cannot be pinpointed divorced successfully. The led criticize easily for this same reason and leadership does not, for the same reason. The interest of leadership has to take a lot into consideration and most times, some of the things considered can not be publicly highlighted but still are very essential. Compromise at that level is mandatory, for every single detail. It is for this reason that a state of leadership is attained in the first place and will even be remotely and extensively exercised.
Arrogance is in the Rich’s vices and virtues.
The Earners’ and Payers’ contest truly rests,
Not on dividend, but on recognized dues;
Paid by all the leadership’s own interests.
BAIS SELFLESSNESS (I); corruption is miss-defined
(This the first of a four part essay on corruption)
PERSONNEL ASSESSMENT
Once too often we have faulted corruption for many of our woes. The cliché morale of the thief being the best guard is lost to our hypocritical high sense of fairness, justice and professed faiths. Truly and generally speaking, corruption gives undue advantage to the most undeserving individual. But then, that phase; “undeserving individual” is the vaguest in the most corrupt settings. Most times the individual deserves but is termed undeserving for reasons that are plainly put, manipulated.
The reasons are manipulated by individuals that undeservingly use their own privileged placing to emphasize bureaucratic procedures. This is practically the simple origin of corruption in the most organized settings, as we commonly recognize them. We have stereotyped our views of the organized human sector as a very complex hive of related human activities that are geared towards specific functions. This is true, but these same organized entities are basically made up of simple people firstly.
Organized settings are made up of separate persons that function in miniature micro niches of their own selves, family, clan and communities that are basically informal in nature. Their daily functional relationships with each other, has them exploring means to get the upper hand over the next person.
These efforts are loosely enhanced by acts that interpret into seeking undue advantage. This is not obviously encouraged, especially since most of those concerned get the bad end of the deal. But these same disadvantaged persons actually cheer the visible fruits of these very acts that are detrimental to them.
The so many gains of corruption are thus revered in the same communities that abhor it. The irony of it all is the fact that this is not quite literally contradictory, but genuinely existing opposites on the same plane of existing functions. The most vocal perpetuators of the ills of this derogatory human vice are consciously the same advocates of its human face.
The cheat is thus ‘heroed’ and put up on a pedestal of esteemed status. Then he is encouraged to unconsciously lead the trend, while he consciously leads the community. Given the very same opportunity, most of the clearly disadvantaged persons will readily make others as disadvantaged in their stead too.
The trended old ways recorded had much earlier reported that the simple origin of corruption itself, is definitely ethnical. The primitive ways of doing things had ushered means of seeking undue advantage. The ancestor, the elder, the in-law, the parent, the ruler, the intermediary and the interpreter are all doctored, by all means possible to ‘water down’ their resolve to ensure ‘due process’ is followed or adhered to, in a manner that appeared to be seeking undue advantage.
Payments are not stated in their clear terms, but insinuated. Or better still, most times not; but still expected in ‘Cash’ and in ‘Kind’. Cash is too definite, it puts exact value. Kind is loose and the gratitude shown lingers on for so much longer.
The generous nature of the action lies. Its will is a whim and its benefactor a fool and a tool that only necessitates the whole course of action. The action is not a perceived selfish push, but rather a pull with a bionic human horizontal-gravity-like pull, attracting all to maximize the ever elusive gains to excel by all means workable. The lie in the perceived generosity is just too evident in the visibly covert insinuation, so insultingly offered.
The sense of value marks out the level of priority of the people. What is valued and why it is valued and how it is valued? All makes out the essence of the people’s priorities. The fabric of society is hugely dependant on this. It is what differentiates civility from anarchy and stabs common sense behind its back.
Education when pursued for the sole aim of attaining a status is thus achieved with the same aim. While civility suffers in this course, a state of prosperity is attained. This sort of valuing has characterized our trusted modernity with such unequalled prominence, that nothing else matters to a generality of humanity. Humanity is nothing but what man’s deeds makes it and man after all becomes what he worships; it represents him.
What a majority represents insinuates a national character, a popular norm; which is embraced mainly because of its success, its viability and reliability. Corruption has thus developed into a national character for this same reasons and it is now a norm embraced mainly for its success. Its viability and reliability as it were, against what is otherwise termed proper. The people are after all one whole package with a single identity. To assess a nation, the main consideration is its very visible people.
The branding of the entirety of a company’s service is labeled by its personnel, the staff that functionalize the firm’s activities. Hence, to assess the personnel by means other than their very own, only really serves to disconnect the staff from their firm and then tradition runs a different race from the present, this should matter. Maybe it is then so apparent, that corruption is either wrongly branded or just plainly wrongly defined.
Corruption shouldn’t give undue advantage
Only when bureaucracy hinders advancement.
A nation’s constituent as one sole package
Needs its traditional personnel assessment.
POEMS: Judas; Peter, Saved, Live, Tale & Avant Garde, Cause Célèbre
JUDAS, PETER
“In faith I betray.”
“My faith I fail to say.”
“I put cost to my trust.”
“Mine in fear I just lost.”
“Silver pieces I sowed.”
“An ear my dagger mowed.”
“Son of man amidst us I show.”
“Son of God amongst us grow.”
“The master I so truly know.”
“To His end I didn’t follow.”
“One of the dozen chosen.”
“A special place I was given.”
“I failed myself not He.”
“It was as it was to be.”
“And my life I chose to kill.”
“After my tears, I humbled my will.”
SAVED
Saved as caught fishes,
Within their own wishes;
To leave waters so free,
Entrapped in fine twines.
Enslaved, seasoned free;
Saved from these times.
LIVE
It was the morning,
She was wide awake.
Eating rich breakfast pudding,
Picking the latest buy to make.
Her thoughts wonder before;
When cold, homeless and hungry,
Fasting and praying away her woe,
With God’s long wait she was angry.
Obedient as humanly possible,
Obvious promises she had made.
In luxury and comfort she’s unable
To live up, as time altered the shade.
In tears and sweat teeth gnash,
Bearing man’s trials on hand.
Fear of the unknown so harsh,
As pride sits on faith so hard.
Man seek the great illusion,
Misspelling the obligation to live.
Shunning God, His only illumination.
Evil backwards only says Live!
TALE
The tale of two lives;
All one to a person gives.
A life of haves and receives,
Another of wants, needs and lives.
Living able and able who gives.
AVANT GARDE, CAUSE CÉLÈBRE
(A very famous trial ahead of fashion)
“Wake up, you’re dead.
What says your plea?”
“Pray, I am in bed.
You come and flee.”
“Arise, you sleep not.
Your dreams all end.”
“Pardon, my reason is rot.
I am no fiend.”
“I ask not for I know.
State your stewardship?”
“To those above I, I bow.
For those beneath I, I reap.”
“Did they smile above,
Were they glad beneath?
“With every pain I solve,
With every single breath.”
“What of all the lands
And all that is of it?”
“With my mind and hands
I cared for every bit.”
“What of I, thy Lord?
Did thee walk My path?”
“I knew not only one word,
Couldn’t tell lie from fact.”
POEMS: Eggs, Paths, Inkatha & Doesn’t God Have Mercy?
EGGS
Of all the eggs man hatches,
Bred chicken’s he most matches.
To have laid and consume such;
Grow, yield or still change much.
None knowing its own whence
Or where’s much timely when.
Unlike its master whose knives
Pick off its yet feathered lives;
It has no say in what brings
The very end of all things.
PATHS
Births aren’t starts,
Conceiving on facts.
Gestation’s little price,
Only the baby truly cries.
Bubbling youth bursts,
Adulthood courts lusts.
Stereotyped in existence,
Coloured in conscience.
Death can not be all,
All gather and will fall.
Like time of all births,
Vague are the real paths.
INKATHA
Soaked in the pride of birth,
Who is scared of this death?
Knowledge softens our carriage path,
Burdened with the spherical earth.
DOESN’T GOD HAVE MERCY?
Lit to glow and to flow,
Row down this miserable show.
To perch on the rock I know,
Time again only to flow and row.
How He copes and again sow
Belies His mercies for my loose soul.
POEMS: Prostitutes, Still it is Love, What Love & Somebody’s Fool
PROSTITUTES
Most prostitutes are normal bodies,
Hard workers doing their oddities;
Which seem unpopular so visibly,
So they can continue to feed boldly.
Circumstances they try to overcome,
Upturned obstacles making them so,
Resembling every other fleshed bone
With less hypocrisy and shyly so sour.
They are not traders selling a bodily asset,
They rent out for material gain and power
Like the more popular, with more respect;
Unlike political integrity, with less shower.
STILL IT IS LOVE
Plucked feathers litter the cage of marriage
Like dead leaves beneath all family trees.
Age’s breeze stirs their lightness in rage,
Exposing the polygamy in love to its knees.
Once tender leaves dry and carpet a shadow,
Every chicken’s bastard is seen so real.
The spouse’s love remains a wife’s sorrow;
To acknowledge its still love, love is still.
WHAT LOVE!
Lived a time solo
In anywhere hollow.
Leaps to go further,
Crawls as any other.
Grows into time,
Ripe for one crime.
The only one ever
And it’s done forever.
Into sight steps
Love and it helps.
For common quests
Meet there guests.
Legs scratch creak
And mate a pick.
Love only matter
And don’t murder.
After that instance
Breed will enhance.
Death is all healed
As the mate mealed.
For one love act
Fed nature’s pact.
The only one ever
And again never.
SOMEBODY’S FOOL
Tomorrow came, sun shining.
Yesterday left with its dining.
Readied for the certain raining
And aged by much experiencing.
Yet very much the stone in a pool,
For everyone is someone else’s fool.
Boys to Men #1: Woman...Raise Thyself!
Disclaimer: Before I begin this ‘personal views’ narrative, I would like to put this right up front: Though I am a product of the decades where Women’s Lib and Women’s Equality were paramount…I cannot in good faith admit to being a feminist or a crusader for women’s rights. Nor can I admit to feeling I was undervalued as a person because of anatomical differences.
Gift of Life
Ten years ago, a successful liver transplant changed my life. I wasn’t the recipient but thanks to the untold kindness of complete strangers, I am still blessed with my father in my life.
He held my babies when they were born and now chases them round my house. He screams, they scream, they beg not to be tickled while simultaneously goading him with taunts.
