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| Photograph of The Winter Palace, St Petersburg, Russia. |
Recently I got an email about the
strikes of the fire service.*1They were striking about
pensions cuts - and the main criticism of their goal was that they
already had one of the best pensions packages in the public sector.
Which got me thinking - seeing as the public sector includes other
emergency services, teaching, civil servants, politicians etc. Why
shouldn't the fire services have the best retirement packages? They
do an incredibly necessary and very dangerous job. In my mind they're
also the least corrupt of the public sector (after all what would you
bribe the fire department for?)
This perhaps is an odd way to judge a
profession - but I spent chunks of my life in Russia and it's how I
view anyone in a position of power. The political agenda of
politicians if often for sale; you bribe medical professional to make
sure you get good care, good roommates etc.; you bribe the teachers
at your children's school to make sure they get the grades they
worked for; you bribe the admissions to make sure they actually look
at your application; you bribe the police to stop them from harassing
you.... It's endless.
If you haven’t lived in that culture
- it comes as a shock - it can be hard to comprehend the fact that no
one in the position of authority seems to have any principles. But,
how do you know if you have moral principles if they haven’t been
tested? If your quality of life, your freedom, your health, your
ability to eat doesn’t depend on you not having principles?
Having strong moral principles is easy
when the application of them is theoretical - it theory everyone
might as well be a good and honest person. In practice? Who knows.
It’s foolish to think that everyone has a price - after all there
are some amazing people on the world who have been tried and tested
and came out with their principles intact - but it’s equality
foolish to think that most people don’t have a price. If you can’t
make ends meet, if you haven’t eaten in a week, if you have
children to feed... what’s a little corruption in comparison to
that?
They say the best way to study humanity
in history is to put people it context of their society; in the
middle age execution was entertainment and killing cats was funny.
While for us those past times sound horrifying in the context of the
middle ages they are acceptable. We sometimes forget that context
doesn’t only depend on the year or the decade, but also on the
location. If corruption is wide spread and necessary to maintain your
quality of life, of everyone around you accepts as a way of life,
will you retain your principles then?
I was reading a travel article once,
which began rather charmingly with “Pусские - воруют”*2
And it’s true, but how do you know that you wouldn’t too?
1. In UK when they strike they do it
for 1-2hrs at a time and still respond to emergency calls.
2. “Russians - thieve”