Corruption and Nationalism
The supreme treasure is knowledge, the middle treasure is children, and the lowest treasure is material wealth. Greed keeps men forever poor, even the abundance of this world will not make them rich. -Mongol Proverbs
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Now that some of the issues facing Mongolian society today have been discussed here, the question that still remains is: why aren’t these problems being dealt with? Why, after ten years, has the Mongolian government failed to generate mechanisms for dealing with alcoholism, unemployment, and the healthy maintenance of the family unit? Why, in this most brutal of climates, is there no subsidized housing for newcomers to the city, struggling households headed by women, or a home provided by the government for abandoned children? While I might offer a simplistic explanation that serves as a buttress for my own dissident ideology, that would be imprecise and uni-dimensional to say the least. I can’t begin to describe (or even grasp, for that matter) the intricacies of all of the goings-on in the post-Soviet Mongolian socio-political-cultural landscape. But I do know, like many fledgling governments, that Mongolia is still forging its own path and has its own fair share of mistakes to make (while the general population in desperation tends towards a nationalism bordering on racism), and free-market capitalism soothingly steers it on a course of unabashed corruption in favor of profit-driven interests.
Which brings us back to shamanism.
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