How to stop financial corruption in the society

If you truly want to improve the world, first improve yourself.

You are given a garden to cultivate. Parts of the garden have deep, rich and dark soil that will grow almost any crop. Often those fertile patches are in the midst of rocks and and boulders, or lie under the fallen trunks of dead trees. A certain part of the ground is taken by bushes of wild berries that are delightful and sweet. All that is needed to transform your gift into a garden are at hand, but you must take them up and use them.

Your garden and its requirements will change from season to season. If you neglect to do those things appropriate to the season, your crops will not prosper as they should. To is too late to plant seeds as the first snows descend. You can not effectively harvest a crop in the Spring that will ripen in the Autumn. Even within the seasons there will be weather changes that are beyond your ability to predict, or control. A few people will be devastated by tornado-like winds, and a few will pass through an entire season with perfect weather. The weather for most will sometimes be good, and sometimes present problems. Timing is important, and patience. We have to accept what we can not control, but by careful planning and prudent action we can weather almost any storm.

In the Springtime when the sun is shining, but not yet hot, it is tempting to spend your time at leisure. There are plenty of juicy berries to eat, and it is pleasant to lie in fields of flowers making pictures of the clouds that drift by. If you don't plant the proper seeds, then the rest of the year might make your life very difficult. In the long hot days of Summer, you will want to seek the shade to escape the sweating sun. Neglect your fields and they will quickly fill with weeds that choke out the wheat. The miche cow must be milked, or you will not have cheese. Autumn is the time of harvest, will you have a bountiful crop to see you through the long, dark and cold days of Winter?

The improvident, the idealist farmers will spend much of their time looking at the horizon, yet they fail to look down at their feet. They will lean on their fences and gaze upon their neighbors farm passing quick judgement on their methods and crops. Should they not instead be considering the needs of their own garden? These farmers always seem to know what should be grown in other fields, but have they themselves planted wisely? They are a font of knowledge about how and when their neighbors feels should be plowed. They cluck their tongues when misfortune strikes others, though they may be the first to offer aide. Their charity is often given with doubtful sincerity as they think, "if only they had followed my advice". Will the farmer even have surplus to share if he has spent all his time and energy "working other people's plots"? Seeing a rich harvest grown up, they count their neighbor as only lucky. Those whose farms are more bountiful than this sort of farmer must have cheated in someway. All the while, while valuable time and effort is lost.

Any farmer or gardner can tell you that weeds spring up quickly and that they will choke out the plants that were so hopefully set out. We must be diligent or our fertile grounds will be barren. We must clear away the stumps of past failures, clear the rocky ground that might break our plow. We must be up before the sun rises and labor long after the first stars appear, if we want to prosper. Shelter must be constructed against inclement weather, and storehouses filled with grain. We must fertilize those areas of our ground that they might become fertile in the future. We must learn from our failures and expand upon our successes. No one can do that for you. You must work your garden yourself, though help may occasionally come your way.

In these ways you will build over many years a prosperous farm. Your crops will be large and rich. The garden will be well ordered, and filled with fruits. The plowed rows of all of your fields will be free of weeds and producing appropriate crops for all the seasons so that your storehouses will be filled to bursting. You will be comfortable in all seasons.

But how will the world be made better? Only if your garden produces surpluses can you feed those unfortunate enough to have been destroyed by a chance storm. If your farm is neglected, it will not even feed your family. The state of your fields are more instructive than advice. Other's will imitate and improve their own plots of ground based on what they see more readily than they will open their ears to unsolicited advice.

Master Kung, known in the West as Confucius, said in the Analectics (and I'm only paraphrasing here) that the superior man puts his life in order and lives it well. In this way he and his family will prosper, and will provide the foundations for a prosperous village. One village serves as an example to others, and so whole regions may improve their lot. Well ordered regions and provinces combined make for a peaceful kingdom free of famine, flood, and unrest. Such kingdoms may lead the barbarians to civilization, and establish a world of harmony and contentment. It all starts with an individual working to improve themselves, to free themselves from selfish envy, greed, anger, and unbridled lusts. Each of us has certain potentialities, but those potentials will go unfulfilled if not constantly worked at. Success is hard, failure is easy, and far too often we take the apparently easy path to suffering rather than the more difficult task of reducing and eliminating our own faults.