The subject of corruption has been on my mind recently, for reasons that I cannot get into and probably never will be able to articulate, but the inspiration hardly matters. If you had asked me a week ago was “corruption” meant, I would have stated roughly what most people might, which is that it has to do with things like bribing a government official. In other words, a way to bend the rules in your favor by doing something for someone else.
My notion of corruption has broadened, or at least changed, quite a lot in the past few days. Now, I think of corruption as what is going on inside a black box. In a normal system, if “A” goes into the box, and you can expect “B” to come out, then “B’ emerges. However, if “X” emerges, there’s something foul afoot inside. It isn’t operating as expected. The innards of this hypothetical box are………….corrupted. Because the outcome does not comport with the expectation.
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