When a poor man stole money for making ends meet, this wrongdoing might be justified. But what if the man is obviously not hungry and has already had a good life, then consequentially that man would have been insane. And when corruptive behavior is done en masse and people are undeterred to the consequences, then the society and its culture might be sick as well.
What went wrong with our society? Why do so many public officers, included law enforcers, implicate in corruption? Why does everyone, ranging from execu-thief, legisla-thief to judica-thief, seem to break the law for money? Will the rest, who don’t corrupt included you and me, do the same as we have same opportunities?
Some identifies that something has been wrong with our education, especially in ethics. The present curriculum is not adequate to build anti-corruption characters. To solve this, our kids should be taught anti-corruption subject from the beginning. Corruption Eradicating Commission (KPK) and Ministry of Education and Culture have signed memorandum of understanding on anti-corruption curriculum. Moreover, Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) and Paramadina University have kicked in anti-corruption lecture in class.
Certainly, these efforts must be appreciated. But the question is whether the corruption practice coming from the lack of anti-corruption knowledge. The police, public prosecutor and justice undoubtedly know and understand the law well. All corruptors of this kind know what they have done and its consequences. Besides, RI is a religious country. The practices are fanciful. The preachers perform the services wall-to-wall and tell us to do good. All RI’s kids know that the bad guys will send to and be burned in hell. So in terms of moral value and religion, the people’s understanding of misconduct is not the case.
Accordingly, another approach is needed to sort out the mess. Let me introduce the long-known ideas of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (last name is pronounced chick-sent-me-high). The premise is the journey of mankind is invariably seeking for happiness. As Aristotle of Greek said that, more than anything else, men and women seek happiness. With many modern knowledge, system and contraptions which make life easier, healthier and more pleasure turns out not the sought-after answer. And Mihaly’s long-time research might have found the way.
He proposes optimal experience is the best way to reap happiness. And in contrast to our intuition, the chance of happiness is more in working rather than at leisure. And the best moment in our experience is when we stretch our capacity to the limit for certain goal. If the work is too easy we get bored, if too difficult we become anxious. This is called optimal experience. Mount climbing, music composing, writing, managing project or even our daily routines can be set for the optimal experience. Everything we do, we can make it so demanding that our minds stretch to their limits. Google guys have the motto for this: work should be challenging and the challenge should be fun. And to make the best of experience, Mihaly further suggests autotelic experience. It’s derived from Greek word; auto means self and telos means goal. We get the satisfaction in specific goal we choose and in the process we enjoy the journey wholeheartedly.
This brings us to our problem of corruption and the effort to cope with it. We are mistaken money or wealth for happiness, because we don’t know how to achieve happiness. And the fact is money never gives satisfaction. The evidence reveals that corruptors hardly stop making illicit money, even though they have got a lot of nest-egg and landed in top level and honorable position. Reversely, people, who enjoy continuously their challenging jobs and feel content, necessarily put aside ill-gotten money.
In my opinion anti-corruption curriculum which will be taught to the pupils/students is definitely not effective. Instead, they should have known and trained the idea and technique of optimal experience for the joy of life and autotelic experience for the meaning of life.
* * * * *
