Corruption from the ethical point of view
Mexicans face numerous challenges, including a stagnation in the construction of democracy and a state in which human rights can be respected by rulers and governed, where we find the truth and the solution to the authoritarian past they had and in the that problems such as homicidal violence, drug trafficking, organized crime and impunity are faced with socially acceptable policies.
Corruption in addition to being a political or economic issue is, above all, an ethical and moral problem that demonstrates the crisis of these values in society. While from the etymological point of view, morals and ethics have the same meaning (custom), they are not equal. Ethics is more than a set of norms, it is a thought and reflection of these, instead morality does constitute a set of norms that govern our individual behaviors in accordance with the time in which we are living. Ethics tries to explain moral behavior, studying their changes over time; trying to define what is right and what is wrong. Ethics not only describes people’s behaviors, but also tries to give reasons how they should be.
In this sense, as corruption is a socially generalized practice, one might wrongly think that it is accepted by social moral. However, it is a reality that is also generalizing the rejection of it because it affects social values, it makes coexistence difficult and above all it comes to present as an obstacle to the development of the country. In rational terms, corruption can be understood and you can even explain the reasons that cause it, but cannot be justified or accepted by morality.
The root of corruption is not in the context or in the environment that causes it or allows, neither in the ability or not to condemn it, but in the ethical bases on which social, political life and public service are built. It is a very illusion and banal appreciation that assumes that individuals only behave correctly and respect the rules of coexistence when there is a system capable of repressing and punishing their behavior. No society has the capacity to administer sanctions in a generalized way if all its members decide not to respect the norms, the sanctions are conceived as an exception not as normality. From there, the distinction and moral and ethical responsibility of each individual begins; since it is not the same to do evil than not doing all the good due, or that yield to corruption to achieve something that is fair and what you are entitled to.
Man individually is the origin of all moral action, whether good or bad. Corruption begins in each individual’s mind, first as thoughts and then these thoughts become concrete actions. When these acts are repeated with regulators, they become habits, these habits in turn become the character of the individual. All people can get involved in acts of corruption through a variety of forms: perform corrupt acts personally or join corrupt people through which people can be negatively influences.
At this personal level, each individual can protect themselves from corruption by forming a good conscience, an awareness in which it is warned in advance and condemning the individual depending on whether their actions are good or bad. Apart from that, it is necessary that people recognize that corruption is a morally bad act, without this personal conviction, it will be very difficult to get people away from corruption. For the individual to protect himself from corruption, he must have a solid and unwavering basis of values to maintain a high level of morality and refuse to commit this type of actions, what we find in the words of singer Joan Baez cited in Fonseca ( 2015): “If you don’t fight to end corruption and rot, you will end up being part of it."
Unfortunately Mexico always appears among the main countries in the measurements of corruption around the world, which helps to generate that idea that by nature Mexicans are corrupt, but the reality is that true certainty about the reliability of the reliability of These measurements, because it is an event that occurs in opacity, that leaves no trace in official records and that its measurement is based more on issues of social perception than in concise data, although some are obtained by putting more attention in the effects caused by corrupt acts as in the same acts.
An example of this is the State, who establishes certain legal norms that, in principle, only sanctions behaviors that cause serious damage to society by affecting its structural bases. Consequently, the usual thing in social life is that the minority of persons be subject to legal processes; That is, most people do not commit crimes, and do not because they are afraid of the sanction, although the penalty has an exemplarity function, but because it shares the ethical basis of the social structure and the values that allow a social coexistence. If we all break the criminal norms, in addition to that it would be impossible to be able to sanction everyone, it means that society has lost all its ethical and moral values. In the opinion of the author Cristopher Ballinas Valdés in the magazine Expansión (2014) comments: “This practice is not limited only to the political class but to society, combating it is everyone’s obligation and helps strengthen institutions."
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