何毓琦的个人博客分享 http://blog.sciencenet.cn/u/何毓琦 哈佛(1961-2001) 清华(2001-date)

博文

Corruption, Favors, and Human Relationships

已有 1678 次阅读 2024-10-26 03:44 |个人分类:生活点滴|系统分类:海外观察

It is not an overstatement that the entire world runs on human relationships  - implicit contracts, accepted social behavior, quid pro quo, and yes, corruptions. We do things for family member that we would not do for strangers because family members have done the same thing for us in the past, Parents and children feel obligation to each other. Friendship also means an implicit understanding of helping each other in times of need as well as reciprocal favors such as dinner invitations and gift giving. Quid-pro-quo is a loosely understood social norm, but NOT an implied contract between otherwise strangers over specific and explicitly related acts of exchange. That is CORRUPTION - paying bribes to people to do legal or illegal acts they otherwise will not do for unrelated or related people. While the distinction between these acts of human relationship are understood easily and operate rather smoothly to enable our civilization to work,  the defining boundaries between normal social realtionship,.favors, and corruption are not always clearly defined and remains fuzzy which is the reason for lawsuits and endless disputes. But that is what makes life interesting as well as complex. Endless history, books, and novels have been written and will continue to be written about these human relationships, noble as well as failings. That is LIFE!



https://blog.sciencenet.cn/blog-1565-1457033.html

上一篇:Guest Block Article from my First and Best friend in the US
下一篇:Why are abortions such a passionate controversy?
收藏 IP: 96.237.235.*| 热度|

3 郑永军 许培扬 王涛

该博文允许注册用户评论 请点击登录 评论 (2 个评论)

数据加载中...

Archiver|手机版|科学网 ( 京ICP备07017567号-12 )

GMT+8, 2024-12-4 23:08

Powered by ScienceNet.cn

Copyright © 2007- 中国科学报社

返回顶部