Are Corruption and Greed Hardwired into Our Brains?

A friend of mine recently asked me to join the Zeitgeist movement. The movement has already gathered about 150,000 devotees around the world in about six months. It's basically a concept thought up by a group of social engineers that envision a world of the future that works for all.

They say that we now have the technology to feed everyone in the world, and eliminate our reliance on fossil fuels. In the world envisioned by the engineers there would be no churches, no politicians, no government, and no money. All of the resources would be shared and only a few people would work when they wanted to in this "resource based" economy.

Since there would be no money and everyone could get what they wanted, there wouldn't be any corruption or greed. It sounds like a Utopian vision of the future, but the organizers insist that it is not. They say that there would still be problems to overcome, but to take the human element out of it, all the decisions would be done by computers. There would be no leaders. An interesting concept, but would it work?

It all sounds good but I don't think that the people in power in all of the isms in the world, communism, socialism, capitalism, and fascism would give up that power so easily unless something really extreme happened that would result in the collapse of those systems that we have now. This would have to be something like a war, a disaster, or climate change, and I don't think that many people want to go through that.

So I don't think that such a worldwide society will happen in our lifetime, and maybe not ever. And would it really be better if it did? Some scientists think that greed and corruption are sort of hard-wired into our brains and can even benefit society. According to Medical News Today:

"Moral corruption and power asymmetries are pervasive in human societies, but as it turns out, that may not be such a bad thing. Researchers at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and Edgar Duenez of Harvard University found that power and corruption may play a role in maintaining overall societal cooperation."

They also found that the people that are in charge of enforcing the laws of society often aren't punished when they themselves break them. Think of politicians preaching family values and then cheating on their wives, or those who advocate fiscal responsibility and don't have it themselves. Many times these people in power escape punishments when they themselves do wrong.

The bottom line is that law enforcers are compensated for their ability to be above the law. The findings may have far-reaching implications in many fields of science. They may even allow us to see how greed and corruption may benefit society by forcing those who aren't in power to co-operate with each other.

So the societies that we have now may be what we are stuck with, even though it's nice to envision a future society that works for all. But that would be just some form of socialism wouldn't it?

Source: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/211606.php