The Rector's Lecture (1)

"Why corruption is a problem?" Laluna conveyed a topic after reciting Basmalah and Salaam. "Corruption impacts upon individuals, groups and organizations—including the state—in numerous ways, "she continued, "While many of its negative effects are obvious, others are less so. In the real world, the impact of particular acts of corruption is often on several areas simultaneously, among others: society, environmental, economic, politico-legal, security-related, and international implications."

"And one night," says Laluna, "My light was focused on a campus located in the southernmost part of Suvarnabhumi. All eyes were on a Rector who was giving his lecture. He said, "There are so many ways in which corruption can negatively impact on society. Corruption tends to create a greater sense of ‘us’ and ‘them’ in society, both vertically and horizontally. The gap between elites and the public is often wider than necessary because corrupt officials are perceived to be creaming off a country’s wealth at the expense of ordinary citizens—i.e. a vertical divide. At the same time, corruption can increase divisions between citizens themselves—horizontal divide, as those unwilling or unable to pay bribes to obtain what they need become resentful of those who can and do.

A related fact is that corruption can increase inequality. While many citizens will tolerate reasonably high levels of inequality if this appears to be based on merit, they will resent it if based more on personal connections and bribery to obtain prestigious jobs and promotions. The problem is exacerbated if growing inequality is accompanied by higher levels of poverty, which is often the case.

If corruption means increased distrust of the state and its officers, there can be a widespread ‘return to the family’ and increased attachment to kinship. A potentially negative effect of this is that enhanced identification with ‘kith and kin’ can result in reduced social capital and growing estrangement between groups in society, which can lead to ethnic conflict.

High levels of corruption and the consequent low levels of trust in the state can increase the sense of insecurity in society. For example, if citizens do not trust their law enforcement officers because of the latters’ corruption, they will be less willing to report crimes to the authorities and to cooperate with those authorities; this typically leads to higher crime rates, and hence a greater sense of insecurity among the general public.

Officials themselves can feel more insecure because of corruption. If the political elite decides to clamp down heavily on corruption, even honest officials may be concerned that actions not currently seen as corrupt may in the future be classified as such, with the concomitant penalties; this can lead them to hesitate in fulfilling their normal and proper duties, or even to refuse altogether to perform them. In an ideal rule-of-law state, in which no legislation is ever retrospective, this problem would not arise; but few states nowadays, even in the West, adhere strictly to the notion of no retroactive laws.

Corruption can also endanger lives. This assumes various forms, one of which relates to flooding. Among the many advantages trees have is that they can bind soil; but in some countries, corrupt officials have on occasions turned a blind eye to the logging of trees along riverbanks in return for bribes. This has sometimes resulted in riverbanks collapsing following heavy rains, with the destruction of thousands of properties built at the water’s edge, and many lives lost in the floods.

The reporting of corruption can also have a negative effect on the public, since it can increase a general sense of disappointment, even despair. Finding the optimal amount and type of reporting is difficult, however; to cite a truism, ‘bad news is good news’ for the media, and few can restrain themselves from reporting as many scandals as they can, whether or not allegations have been thoroughly investigated. Irresponsible reporting of corruption can make people suspicious of the ‘watchdog’ role of the media, which has negative implications for the development of civil society.

Arguably the greatest long-term issue facing humanity is the environment. Unfortunately, corruption generally compounds the already existing problems in this area.According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), environment-related corruption includes, 'Such practices (as) embezzlement during the implementation of environmental programmes, grand corruption in the issuance of permits and licenses for natural resources exploitation, and petty bribery of law enforcers.' The UNODC has also identified sectors most at risk: they include forestry, oil exploitation, the trafficking of endangered species, and hazardous waste management.

The most researched and reported aspect of the impact of corruption is the economic. In an oft-cited analysis published in the mid-1990s, economist Paolo Mauro argued against those who had in the 1960s claimed that corruption—for instance, in the form of facilitation payments or ‘speed money’ to state bureaucrats to accelerate the issuance of permits—could actually increase economic growth rates. On the basis of a considerable amount of data, he compared growth rates with subjective assessments of the level of corruption in various countries, and concluded that corruption discouraged investment, which in turn decreased growth rates. While some have challenged this argument, the majority view is that Mauro was basically correct. For instance, in an article published in 2000, Shang-Jin Wei argued that foreign direct investment (FDI) is lower in countries with higher rates of corruption, as potential investors are deterred by it.

Perceptions of high levels of corruption in a given country can render it either difficult or impossible for that country to be admitted to international ‘clubs’—notably the EU—that it is hoping to join precisely because it sees substantial potential economic benefits in such membership. Even once in such supra-national groupings, perceived high levels of corruption can have serious economic repercussions: Bulgaria, Romania, and Czechia are three relatively new members of the EU (the first two since 2007, the third since 2004) that have suffered major funding cuts from the EU since joining precisely because of the latter’s concerns about their corruption levels. In addition, both Bulgaria and Romania were blocked in their attempts to join the Schengen zone (an area comprising twenty-six European countries, between which there are no border controls) because some West European EU member-states—notably Germany and the Netherlands—were concerned that these South-East European countries had excessively porous frontiers with their non-EU neighbours, largely because of high levels of corruption among border guards and customs officers.

A serious economic problem the EU itself has experienced has been partly blamed on corruption. A 2012 TI report entitled Money, Politics, Power—Corruption Risks in Europe identified corruption in several EU states (with Greece being seen as a major culprit) as a significant factor in the emergence of the Eurozone crisis that erupted in 2010.

Corruption leads to decreased revenue to the state, as corrupt officials exempt citizens and firms from fines, taxes, etc. in return for bribes. In the EU’s first ever anti-corruption report, published in February 2014, it was claimed that corruption costs EU states collectively some 120 billion Euros a year. This was a rather similar amount to the sum (US$150 billion) the African Union estimated in 2002 was lost each year to corruption among its fifty-three member states—though the EU figure, while substantial, did not account for approximately one quarter of the total GDP of the region as the sub-Saharan African one did.

Several states, mostly transition ones, have in recent years introduced flat-rate income and corporate tax systems, often precisely to reduce the risk of lost state revenue. The rationale is that progressive tax systems involve more discretionary decision-making by tax officials, and hence provide more corruption opportunities, than flat-rate systems; both individuals and companies can declare lower income in progressive tax systems than they actually receive, so as to be taxed in a lower tax bracket (i.e. a form of tax evasion). Unfortunately, flat-rate systems are not watertight either, since individuals and firms can still collude with corrupt officials to report less taxable income than they should, thus depriving the state of legitimate revenue.

Corruption can result in reduced economic competition, as corrupt officials favour firms that pay them bribes—for example, to give them unfair preferential treatment in acquiring factories that a state is privatizing, or to secure contracts from the state. Reduced competition typically leads to higher prices and costs, as well as less choice, all of which are detrimental to both consumers and the state itself.

A factor with potentially serious negative economic ramifications for the development and well-being of a country is that social corruption (nepotism, cronyism, etc.) can discourage honest, well-qualified people, who become frustrated at not securing good positions or being promoted. Some simply stop working hard and using their initiative, while others emigrate to a less corrupt and more meritocratic country. Corruption can thus encourage a brain drain, depriving society of the people best suited to run the country and its economy. This phenomenon, sometimes called human capital flight, has been a particularly acute problem for countries such as Iran.

But conventional capital flight is also a corruption-related problem. Shortly after becoming President of Russia for the first time, in July 2000, Vladimir Putin convened a meeting of many of Russia’s wealthiest individuals, the so-called oligarchs, at which he informed them that he would not scrutinize the origins of their fortunes as long as they abided by four rules; one was that they repatriate the considerable sums they had sent overseas. While it is a moot point whether or not most oligarchs should be labelled corrupt, the meeting is noteworthy for clearly revealing the senior leadership’s concern about capital flight. This has been a problem for many other states in recent years, and corrupt officials at all levels, including the highest, are a major source of the problem.

It is not only the public and the state that can suffer economically from corruption. Corporations that bribe officials to secure contracts are sometimes exposed, with serious negative consequences. In 2013, the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) in the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW) deemed certain mining licences in the Hunter Valley to have been corruptly acquired. In light of this, the NSW government announced in January 2014 that the licences were being revoked.

[Part 2]

Bahasa

Spirit of the Age

"In an Islamic perspective, the emphasis has always been on Wisdom—and hence, Policy—because Wisdom arrives from the future. Then you'll argue, 'That's seemed from a mystical point of view, but, are there any philosophical ideas support it?'" The moon opened a theme after saying Basmalah and Salaam.

"Philosophers spend a good deal of time in reflection," she wnt on, "and hey produce ideas, at times strange ideas. Over time however, the ideas of Philosophers have changed the course of human events all over the planet: Philosophy is entirely identical with its time. So, if philosophy is identical with its time, is there a sense in which revolutionary philosophers bear the spirit of their own age in so far as they arrive from the future? Might it be the topos of exile of what mostly belongs to us, to our time; the distant within and the within in the distant. If the revolutionary thinker does indeed come from afar, his/her arriving must be the measure of our own distance from the future.

Plato is perhaps the paradigm case of the revolutionary philosopher in our sense of the philosopher arriving from the future. According to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, a German philosopher, the idea of the just polis that Plato formulated in The Republic was the most philosophically thinkable in Plato’s time. Even though Plato’s ideal was so far from the then given state of affairs that it seemed hardly recognizable to his contemporaries, it was nevertheless out of its thinking that Plato was able to comprehend the rational moment embedded in the sophists’ polis in which he lived. Having elaborated his ideal city, a city powerful enough to accommodate the philosopher, Plato was then in a position to cross the abyss between the ideal and the real in order to re-visit and once again embrace his own city as a whole. His thinking showed the city of Athens to be part of the world of the thinkable and in doing so it brought together the ever-changing finite body of the city with its eternal idea.

For this reason, the city that condemned the philosopher to death, could nonetheless be thought as part of an ongoing becoming that oriented it toward a future. For Plato this future was thought in terms of the polis of justice in which Plato the philosopher dwells conceptually and from which he arrives, albeit invisibly, to be welcomed by those who are prepared to think in the embrace of his thinking. Having arrived from afar in a way that also made it possible for him to dwell in the world in a radically immanent manner, Plato didn’t lose himself, like a tourist, amongst the shiny trinkets and the trivialities of market life. Nor did he abandon himself to the shallow wisdom of the local. rather, as the bearer of the ideal and in so far as he found the strength to withstand the infinite schism between the real and the ideal, his thinking entirely embraced the historical moment of his world and thus allowed the spirit of the age to manifest itself with his thought. Herein lies the determination of Plato’s thought as revolutionary philosophy that arrives from the future in its own precise moment.

In this respect Plato the philosopher came to give effect to the conceptual transformative power of the revolutionary practice of his time, in a way that Socrates before him, was unable to conceive. Plato’s thinking grew out of Socrates’ failure to convince Athens to re-enact itself in accordance with the principle of radical self-knowing. Although we can say that in his capacity as a revolutionary, Socrates also comes from the future, only the philosopher succeeds in thinking what the revolutionary practice announces but fails to achieve. So the thinking of the philosopher takes place in the retreat of the future that the failed revolutionary practice announces. This was the fate of philosophical thinking in Plato’s time.

So, what about Hegel's own view? Hegel took history seriously. In contrast to Kant, who thought he could say on purely philosophical grounds what human nature is and always be, Hegel accepted Schiller’s suggestion that the very foundations of the human condition could change from one historical era to another. This notion of change, of development throughout history, is fundamental to Hegel’s view of the world.

Hegel’s Philosophy of History contains a good deal of historical information. One can find in it a kind of outline of world history, from the early civilizations of China, India, and Persia, through ancient Greece to Roman times, and then tracing the path of European history from feudalism to the Reformation and on to the Enlightenment and the French Revolution.

Hegel accepts the view that the French Revolution was the result of the criticisms of the existing order made by French philosophers. France before the Revolution had a nobility without real power, but with a confused mass of privileges which had no rational basis. Against this utterly irrational state of affairs the philosophers' conception of the Rights of Man asserted itself, and triumphed.

Yet, the immediate result of this ‘glorious mental dawn’ was the Revolutionary Terror, a form of tyranny which exercised its power without legal formalities and inflicted as its punishment the quick death of the guillotine. What had gone wrong? The mistake was to attempt to put into practice purely abstract philosophical principles, without regard to the disposition of the people. This attempt was based upon a misunderstanding of the role of reason, which must not be applied in isolation from the existing community and the people that make it up.

The French Revolution itself was thus a failure. Its world-historical significance, however, lies in the principles it passed on to other and particularly to Germany. The short-lives victories of Napoleon were sufficient to bring about within Germany a code rights, to establish freedom and freedom of property, to open the offices of the state to the most talented citizens and to abolish feudal obligations. The monarch remains as the apex of government and his personal decision is final; yet because of the firmly established laws and settled organization of the state,what is left to the personal decision of the monarch is, says Hegel, 'in point of substance, no great matter’.

But Hegel obviously did not think of his Philosophy of History as merely a historical outline. Hegel himself said that ‘the philosophy of history means nothing but the thoughtful consideration of it’. While this may be his own definition, however, it conveys a less than adequate idea of what Hegel is up to in his Philosophy of History. What Hegel’s definition leaves out is his intention that the ‘thoughtful consideration’ of history should seek to present its raw material as part of a rational process of development, thus revealing the meaning and significance of world history.

Hegel says that the whole object of the Philosophy of History is to become acquainted with Geist—the spirit of an individual or group—in its guiding role in history. Without some knowledge of this idea, therefore, one can have only a partial grasp of Hegel’s view of history. In the Philosophy of Right, too, the concept of Geist is never far away. Hegel refers to the state, for instance, as ‘objectified Geist’.

In German the word 'Geist' is common enough, but it has two distinct,though related meanings.It is the standard word used to mean ‘mind’, in the sense in which our mind is distinct from our body. For example, ‘mental illness’ is Geisteskrankheit literally, ‘mindsickness’. Geist can, however, also mean 'spirit’ in the varied senses of that English word. Thus ‘the spirit of the age’ is der Zeitgeist.

Philosophers are challenged to experience philosophy as such as the happening of Zeitgeist. Through its happening, Zeitgeist has explicitly become the age of key Hegelian concepts understood, not as themes, but as happenings of thinking itself, whether of history, the future, manifestation, alienation, recognition, otherness, reconciliation or philosophy. Zeitgeist is an invisible agent or force dominating the characteristics of a given epoch in world history. Zeitgeist can be interpreted as an atmosphere that exists or arises in every society, which seems to be a 'mysterious' consensus, which is characterized by being able to change relatively quickly or dynamically, not statically, characteristic of a certain historical time level, as a whole, in all areas of life.

Then, what are the implications of the Zeitgeist? Since 2001, Google has published the yearly Google Zeitgeist. Google Zeitgeist is a collection of talks by people who are changing the world. On the basis of a statistical analysis of its search queries, the company provides a number of interactive graphs depicting what people have been most interested in during the past year. In an explanatory note, the developers write how in their view, the zeitgeist—being 'the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era—becomes visible 'through the aggregation of millions of search queries Google receives every day.

Hegel believed that culture and art reflected its time. Fashion has become what art had wanted to be: the Zeitgeist expressing itself in visible form. Its stage is no longer the aristocratic salon or the gatherings of select society at the theater, opera or racecourse. Fashion is now made, worn and displayed, not by the bourgeoisie or the aristocracy, but on the street. The great cities–London, Berlin, New York, Paris, Tokyo, Rome–are the theatrum mundi on which it makes its entrance. Baudelaire’s irresistible passerby, carried by the crowd, with a flourish of seam and frill, past the spectator-poet, his red-haired beggar woman, craving cheap costume jewelry, are early symptoms of this change of scene. They indicate a new relation of beauty and ideal, one which continues to exercise a latent effect until the end of the following century.

Hegel believed that culture and art reflected its time. Fashion has become what art had wanted to be: the Zeitgeist expressing itself in visible form. Its stage is no longer the aristocratic salon or the gatherings of select society at the theater, opera or racecourse. Fashion is now made, worn and displayed, not by the bourgeoisie or the aristocracy, but on the street. The great cities–London, Berlin, New York, Paris, Tokyo, Rome–are the theatrum mundi on which it makes its entrance. Baudelaire’s irresistible passerby, carried by the crowd, with a flourish of seam and frill, past the spectator-poet, his red-haired beggar woman, craving cheap costume jewelry, are early symptoms of this change of scene. They indicate a new relation of beauty and ideal, one which continues to exercise a latent effect until the end of the following century.

In June 2020, barely six months since the pandemic started, the world is in a different place. Within this short time frame, COVID-19 has both triggered momentous changes and magnified the fault lines that already beset our economies and societies. Rising inequalities, a widespread sense of unfairness, deepening geopolitical divides, political polarization, rising public deficits and high levels of debt, ineffective or non-existent global governance, excessive financialization, environmental degradation: these are some of the major challenges that existed before the pandemic. The corona crisis has exacerbated them all. Could the COVID-19 debacle be the lightning before the thunder? Could it have the force to ignite a series of profound changes? We cannot know what the world will be like in 10 months’ time, even less what it will resemble in 10 years from now, but what we do know is, we do something to reset today’s world."

Laluna closed the topic by singing,

Roda jaman menggilas kita

[The wheel of time is crushing us]

Terseret, tertatih-tatih

[Dragged, limping along]

Sungguh hidup terus diburu

[Truly life continues to be hunted]

Berpacu dengan waktu

[Race against time]

Tak ada yang dapat menolong

[No one can rescue]

Selain Yang di sana

[Other than the One out there]

Tak ada yang dapat membantu

[[No one can assist]

Selain Yang di sana *)

[Other than the One out there]

Afterwards, she said, "The Age continues to revolve beyond human control. Indeed, every man should use their hearts and minds to be able to answer the call of the age—Zeitgeist, otherwise they will be crushed by the wheels of time. And Allah knows best."

Citations & References:
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit, Cambridge University Press
- Paul Ashton, Toula Nicolacopoulos and George Vassilacopoulos (Ed.), The Spirit of the Age, re.press
- Alexandre Kojeve, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, Cornell University Press
- Peter Singer, Hegel - A Very Short Intoduction, Oxford University Press
- Barbara Vinken, Fashion Zeitgeist, Translated by Mark Hewson, Berg

*) "Menjaring Matahari" written by Ebiet G. Ade

Bahasa