Corruption and Abuse of
the Fuzziness of Human Understanding
University of Western
Sydney, Australia
Abstract: Being a source
of the richness of human interpretations of the social world, fuzziness of
human understanding is, at the same time, vulnerable to abuses which exploit it
in practices of corruption, and in so doing tend to corrupt vital processes in
human understanding. This article draws on social fuzziology to argue that
'delusive' fuzziness is an essential contributor to corruption, by means of de-fuzzification
or re-fuzzification in the interests of manipulation, and not of understanding.
Key words: corruption,
social fuzziology, delusive fuzziness
Introduction
'Corruption' is often seen as a simple
object conceptually, even though its roots may be hard to find and remove.
Corruption, in this view, is a clear departure from what ought to be clear
rules, legal and ethical, driven by interests and purposes that are outside the
clear framework of the system at issue. Clarity (well defined and policed) is a
high value, in this system, and lack of clarity is likely to be a contributing
cause or condition of corruption. From the point of view of Social
fuzziology (Dimitrov and
Hodge, 2002) the case is not so simple. 'Corruption' like all terms describing the
complexity of social reality needs to be seen as fuzzy, so that what is
labelled as corrupt in terms of a certain social agent's framework may not be
seen as such in terms of another agent's framework: and conversely, what is
seen as legitimate practice in one framework can be seen as a major source of
corruption from another point of view. This situation happens very commonly
when one of those frameworks is the dominant perspective in a given society,
supported by its rulers, who are in a position to call what they do 'the law',
and therefore by definition not 'corrupt'.
There is a second problem with the common
view of 'corruption', from the viewpoint of social fuzziology. The supposed
cause of or contributing factor to corruption, lack of clarity (or 'fuzziness')
is in fact an essential resource for the health of every society, so that
fuzziness can be a casualty, not a cause, of corrupt practices.
Exploring Fuzziness
Social Fuzziology explores the inherent
fuzziness in our understanding of society and ourselves as its creators and
products at the same time. 'Society' is not simply an object out there, to be
understood well or poorly through theories and categories, and 'corruption' is
not a raw fact, but always socially constructed, as a value and a set of
practices. Society and corruption are co-constructed objects, a collective but
not necessarily consensual set of meanings, expectations, roles and duties
constraining the actions of self and others, as agents and affected
participants, on-goingly created by interactions over time that are mediated
through kinds of communication, which always appears to some extent fuzzy to
the human mind. 'Society' in this sense exists as a network of fuzzy images,
sustained by human thought and action. Society itself does not exist outside
these processes. A group of human bodies is not a society, and without
reference to these processes we cannot understand what any society does, as an
entity or as an effect on actions and behaviours of individuals who compose it.
The constant interplay of human dynamics
at the three major scales of their manifestation: individual (intrapersonal
dynamics), social (interpersonal dynamics) and existential (universal
dynamics), results in the emergence of spinning webs and 'whirlpools' of social
interactions, which constantly reproduce forces and energies in order to
strengthen or weaken the self-propelling capacity of these dynamics. There are
so many intricately interwoven factors and conditions engaged in the
realisation of this capacity of self-propulsion, that it is nonsensical to look
for or to apply precise descriptions and definitions when explaining or dealing
with their embodiments, infinite in their number and diversity.
Fuzziness has a crucial presence in our
knowledge about ourselves and society. It is present or denied to different
degrees in different theories of society (sociology, politics, history etc.) so
the recognition of the role of fuzziness in any theory becomes a part of the
evaluation of its adequacy. It is also present in the minds of social agents -
politicians, prophets, advertisers, heads of media organisations, managers of
companies and corporations, heads of academic departments, and also in members
of the public, concerned citizens and activists, parents, children, lovers,
friends: those who work together or against each other in everyday life, as the
prime victims and targets of corrupt practices.
Social fuzziology is a scientific study
of fuzziness of human knowing, experiencing and understanding. It is also a
form of art - the art of coping with fuzziness inherent in our thinking, the
art of searching for meaning while stuck to apparently irrational life
trajectories - trajectories that inevitably approach death and physical
disintegration. This fact makes it especially vulnerable to manipulation, at
the hands of those who use its freedoms for their own purposes, and in the
process damage the precious human resource of fuzziness.
The fuzziness in our understanding of
society has roots in the self-referential nature of our awareness of human
dynamics. It is an awareness of what happens inside and outside us as a living
movement in which we are also included, without fixing it or standing apart from it. It is
an awareness of life as it unfolds through each of us, through our society and
through the universe, a profound awareness of human dynamics working within us.
Such awareness implies an approach which is different from simply observing,
fixing and comprehending social processes as if they are 'over there' (outside
of the observers' mind). In becoming aware about the social dynamics, our
experience and understanding of them remain inseparably connected with the
innermost nature of each of us, and this experience and understanding gradually
(or suddenly) transform one's individuality while taking hold of it.
Therefore, to grasp the fuzziness of our
social experience, of what we know and understand about society, means to grasp
the fuzziness of one's unique individual experience, of one's own knowledge
about oneself. This kind of fuzziness changes (moves, evolves, transforms)
together with the changes (movement, evolution and transformation) of each of
us.
When fuzziness moves, transforms and
evolves, we have a greater chance to see an increased number of its limitless
embodiments and sharpen our awareness of:
the dynamics of our inner nature
the webs and 'whirlpools' of our social interactions
the evolving dynamics of the natural environment and our vital
inseparability from these dynamics
the ways in which life-supporting rhythm manifests through us and the
environment
the creative power of our inspiration and intuition
the enigma of the spiritual continuity of existence.
Social fuzziology digs into the fuzziness
of our understanding of all these phenomena as they cross our inner being,
while responding to the turbulent dynamics of social life. It also traces the
deformations of these capacities in normal social functions, in what is
recognized widely as 'corruption' and in practices which attack the environment
which social fuzziness needs in order to act with justice and health.
Delusive
Fuzziness and Corruption in Tandem
There is a paradox in the role of
fuzziness in social life, especially in dealing with such complexities as arise
in various sectors of public life, in nations and corporations, large and
small, and in every social agent or group at every level. On the one hand,
fuzziness of thinking is indispensable for anyone seeking to understand this
world better. Fuzzy knowing will not give certain truths for uncertain
situations, but it will be a creative kind of response. This fuzziness can be
called reflexive, since it reflects and resonates with the uncertainty
of knowing and the known. However, often the level of fuzziness generated seems
unmanageable to people, a hindrance to understanding and action. In this
situation they become vulnerable to a widespread quality in modern life we
called delusive fuzziness.
It is the delusive fuzziness
that accompanies almost any act of corruption in society.
Delusive fuzziness differs from reflexive
fuzziness in two respects. It always involves re-fuzzification from a prior act
of de-fuzzification. What does this mean? Let assume that the person X
has some fuzzy knowledge about a complex real-life situation (process, state of
affairs, event). If X plans to undertake actions of corruption, X tends to de-fuzzify the fuzziness of
his or her knowledge about this situation, that is, to formulate as crisp as
possible for himself (herself) certain goals and algorithms how to achieve them
(for example, to (mis)appropriate a certain amount of money, to tarnish
somebody's name, to deceive or discredit another person or a group of people,
etc.). As far as, the goals and algorithms must be kept in secrecy, X
re-fuzzify them, that is, prepares delusive versions of them which can be
shared with those who may be interested in what X is thinking or doing in
relation to the situation under consideration. The re-fuzzification is always motivated
to deceive and manipulate the receivers, driven by strong interests and crisp
analyses of power in the relationship. The tactic of de-fuzzification and
re-fuzzification makes use of the fuzziness imbedded in human understanding of
social reality in attempts to misuse or abuse it, and thus to accomplish
certain pre-planned acts of corruption.
Most speeches and promises of charismatic
leaders in business and politics are full of delusive fuzziness and thus
impregnated with seeds of virtual or actual corruption, designed to evoke a
high degree of fuzziness of people's understanding and hide motives and ideas
very different from what the speakers imply or suggest. Delusive fuzziness not
only obscures a complex picture of reality, it distorts our self- understanding
and makes corruption blossom.
Examples
(1) The Enron scandal is now one of the
emblems of corruption in modern big business. We will look first at an instance
which is not in itself corrupt, yet illustrates the mind set that bred
corruption, which emerged in the press after the company had collapsed.
The energy giant
Enron used the most modern technology to decide when to exert pressure on
politicians of USA, according to a report today by The Washington Post. The
Texan corporation used a computer program with the code name of Matrix to
observe the economic consequences for Enron's business of various modifications
foreshadowed in the legislation. The pressure groups entered into the program
all the details of the proposed law. If the costs were very high for Enron, the
lobbyists would begin to exercise pressure on the politicians. (La Jornada 11
February, 2002, p. 22, our translation)
In
this case, the executives of this corporation used 'the most modern technology'
driven by crisp programming to ask and answer the questions they wanted answers
on, and this alone provided the framework for the case their lobbyists tried to
turn into a program of action, thus turning, as far as they could, a bill
designed for the nation as a whole into a bill to serve the profit motives of
one giant corporation. To exert pressure in this way is not illegal in USA, so
it is not classified as 'corrupt', yet its tendency is manifestly to corrupt
the democratic processes. Some of the measures used - pressure beyond a certain
level, means of persuasion close to blackmail or bribes - may have been on the
edge of what the system would have accepted, if it had known. But equally
important to note is the reliance on the crisp thinking of the computer
program, which allowed these executives to hand over to a machine a series of
decisions that were properly their province as executives, employed (on high
salaries) to weigh many factors into complex decisions which should have
included ethical dimensions. The crisp logic, dividing decisions into ethical
and financial and ignoring the former, was the logic that ran throughout Enron,
and allowed the culture of corruption to flourish as it did.
(2) Delusive fuzziness also operates in
the political environment, often not recognized as 'corruption' To illustrate
we will take a speech made by President Bush on 22 September 2001, announcing
to Congress and the nation the actions he intended to take in the wake of the
attack on the World Trade Buildings and the Pentagon. This was a highly
successful speech for its immediate constituency, the US people, generating a
91% approval rating for the President who not long before was languishing in
the low 50s. Yet this speech, we will argue, was a corruption of the political
process, as serious as the fraud in Enron, yet entirely 'normal' and legal. How
did it work, and what can social fuzziology say about it?
The speech began: "Tonight we are a country awakened to
danger and called to defend freedom. Our grief has turned to anger and anger to
resolution. Whether we bring our enemies to justice or bring justice to our
enemies, justice will be done".
This speech pivots around a classic form
of delusive fuzziness: the use of abstract concepts separated from contexts of
application, so that they wait to be filled by speakers and hearers alike, in a
creative act that is also wide open to manipulation. The two terms repeated in
the speech were 'freedom' (9 times) and 'justice' (3 times). In delusive
fuzziness, not only is the scope of the term extended arbitrarily so that it is
not clear what it refers to (who is free? US citizens? Their politicians?
Others in the world oppressed by American policies?). Nor is it clear how
'freedom' applies in this case. For instance, Bush claims the motive for the terrorists
is their hatred of 'freedom'; Americans are asking "Why do they hate
us?" and he answers: "They hate our freedoms" (Sydney Morning
Herald, September 22-23, p. 11).
But Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir, a Muslim leader, offered a
different answer: 'the anger among the oppressed.' The point is not that this is a true and exact description
of the motives of the terrorists, but that this is what they say is their
motive, and Bush's statement is only successful with his American audience - as
it undoubtedly was - because 'freedom' had first been emptied almost entirely
of specific content, so that the extremely fuzzy residue could be more easily
applied to the motives of 'the
enemy'.
The second tactic used in the speech is
to use statements that initially seem crisp, clear and definite but which have
an unmanageably large and unclear scope: "Every nation in every region now has
a decision to make: Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists".
Its terms seem absolute and
black-and-white, with no fuzzy hedges. It constructs the image of the President
as resolute, decisive, making statements that are reassuringly crisp
(reassuring for those who see the situation as too unclear). But the apparent
crispness comes into conflict with other parts of the text. "Our enemy is
a radical network of terrorists and every government that supports them".
That is, the target itself is complex and diffused - the kind of fuzzy object
thrown up by globalisation. He gives some figures: "thousands of these
terrorists in more than 60 countries" - a large figure and highly
unspecific. Is USA for instance among these countries? Is he declaring war on a
third of the globe? If so, there is danger indeed, as he said at the beginning,
but much of that is created by the interaction between the crispness of his
choice, and the fuzziness of the world as he constructs it.
This speech, and the US policy it
announces, is delusive, in that the President will have been advised by many
experts how complex the situation really is when viewed on a global level. The
terms he uses are both apparently 'simple', pairs of binary opposites, but as
the public tries to make sense of them they are filled both with the fuzziness
of different people's knowledge, desires and fears. It is also very successful,
and typical of the rhetoric of many other leaders, in other administrations, in
other countries.
Activators
and Inhibitors of Corruption
In these as in other comparable
instances, the mass media plays a crucial role. They facilitate the spread of
corruption at the highest echelons of the governing bodies, injecting fuzziness
into human brains to go with an ever-accelerating tempo. Here is what one
former chief of staff of the "New York Times," called by his peers
"the dean of his profession", used to say to his colleagues: "I
am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected
with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of
you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the
streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in
one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone.
The business of the journalist is to destroy truth; To lie outright; To
pervert; To vilify; To fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and
his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it ... We are the tools
and vassals for rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull
the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and or lives are all
the property of other men. We are
intellectual prostitutes" (this quotation is based on a material
distributed through Internet at http://www.teamlaw.org/).
This statement may sound over dramatic.
Noam Chomsky, the distinguished linguist and critic of American imperialism,
describes the process more dispassionately. His book "Manufacturing Consent: 'The Political Economy of the Mass
Media" 'traces the routes by which money and power are able to
filter out the news fit to print, marginalise dissent, and allow corrupted
rulers and dominant private interests to get their message across to the
public... The raw material of news must pass through successive filters,
leaving only the cleansed residue fit to print.' (Herman & Chomsky, 2002)
What
Chomsky describes is a massive simplification - removing alternative voices and
facts - which de-fuzzifies the news before adding the specious re-fuzzification
of 'sensationalism'. He claims that these filters are not neutral attempts to
adjust the complexity of the world to the simple capacities of the mass reader.
Their negative role of filter is designed to allow the voice of government and
powerful interests full sway. In the case of the 'war on terrorism', newspapers
throughout USA as in Australia and other countries devoted massive coverage to
the viewpoints of government spokespersons, and almost none to those who had a
deeper knowledge of Islam in all its forms in a complex world.
Hardt and Negri (Hardt and Negri, 2000)
deal with the crucial topic, of how 'global citizenship' can become a reality,
with a majority able to participate with understanding in the debates facing
the globe. (p. 398). We suggest that one part of the answer to resist
corruption is to make available some of the basic insights and strategies of
social fuzziology. The authors have in mind what they call 'the multitude'. We
have in mind also all educated citizens, who are typically kept entrapped by
the information they derive from the media and other sources, and whose
training does not alert them to the need to react differently.
This is because acquisition and making
sense of social information crucially differs from the analogous processes in
science or engineering. In the latter we collect information in order to reduce
the fuzziness imbedded in our knowledge of nature (reflected in various
branches of the natural science) or human-made environment (reflected in the
engineering science and technology). The approach of reducing fuzziness does
not work with social information because society is not separated from us. We
are society - it consists of us, and we also constantly create, destroy and
accumulate an infinite amount of social information by sharing our experiences,
our thoughts and views, feelings and emotions, beliefs and dreams.
At the
same time, society crucially affects us in the process of exchange of social
information encapsulated in its numerous multimedia incarnations. What we hear,
watch, read and write influence our experience, the ways we think, feel,
believe, dream, aspire, and thus create or destroy our capacity to be global
citizens, may help us disclose or, on the contrary, may prevent us from seeing
the multifaceted acts of corruption in society.
As shown in (Dimitrov, 2003) the self-organization
of human dynamics, their evolution and transformation work only with authentic dynamics.
Unfortunately, the social dynamics are not authentic: the unequal distribution
of power in society, together with the suppression and fear it causes, impede
the authentic expression of human dynamics. People are forced to play games,
pretend, exhibit vanity and pride, reputation and fame, ambition and honour;
all these qualities inevitably require the social arena to express and gratify
themselves while strengthening the roots of corruption in society. At the level
of an individual, these qualities can be harnessed - it is not too hard for an
individual to behave authentically. When communing with ourselves, we are able to
genuinely express our thoughts and feelings, honestly reflect upon our
experiences, and see ourselves as we are - with no masks to carry and roles to
play.
One needs to be aware of the obstructions
which society tries to create on one's understanding of social reality. All
kinds of manipulation, propaganda and brainwashing act as powerful catalysts
for the emergence and development of corruption in society; they bombard our
minds, obscure our consciousness, and weaken our ability to navigate into
social complexity. When aware of this, we can sharpen our vigilance and create
tools for disclosing the acts of corruption and minimizing their effects on our
lives. The more advanced we are on the way to wisdom, the more clearly we
recognize any act of corruption. And the higher and purer our moral, ethical
and spiritual attitudes, the more strongly we resist social forces trying to
involve us into a corruption-oriented behaviour.
References
Dimitrov, V. and Hodge, B. (2002) Social
Fuzziology, Heidelberg and New
York: Springer Verlag, pp.133-136: http://www.springer-ny.com/detail.tpl?cart=106075409243263&isbn=3790815063
Dimitrov, V. (2003) A New kind
of Social Science: Study of Self-organization of Human Dynamics, Morrisville: Lulu Press: http://books.lulu.com/category/245
Hardt, M. and Negri, A.
(2001) Empire, Harvard University Press
Herman, E. and Chomsky,
N. (2002) Manufacturing Consent: 'The Political Economy
of the Mass Media, Pantheon Books
Go
to Vlad' home page
