You are more than likely a slave who has sold his or her life to the devil, and that is the simple reality in a world where actions are dictated by self-interest and fear rather than conscience.

That is certainly what the experience of Philosopher-King Author, Soren Kierkegaard aptly proves, not through mere words, but from a lifetime of confirmation.

The words of most people are disputed by their actions, but not in Kierkegaard's case. Most people cope with the psychological dissonance between their words and actions through self-deception, but not Kierkegaard, and that is what makes him a thinker who is as deep and as unique as Cicero was.

Deep thinkers predict the future when they analyze the past because everything man ever does is quite predictable and understandable and is merely obscured through self deception.

Take this passage for example, which essentially exposes the background of every single conspiracy mankind has ever manufactured, in effort to conceal the simple truth; it is Kierkegaard himself trying to figure out what is practically impossible to understand;

"How is it that all those who have in truth served the truth have always come out of it badly in this life, as long as they lived, and as soon as they are dead they are deified?

The explanation is quite simple: the mass of mankind can only relate itself to ideas, the good, the true, through the imagination. But on the other hand they cannot endure the living who give them reality, they are scandalized by them, put them to death, tread them down..."

Self-Deception has created a word where people are essentially Mutually Psychotic, whose meaning is exactly what it sounds like and if you need it to be defined, click here, I've done my best.

Kierkegaard described the very same condition using the interesting words, "windbag" and "windsucker". In his own words;

"Windbag is an excellent word; I envy the Germans for having it; particularly because it can be used both as an adjective and a nown. A. Schopenhauer makes excellent use of it, I might also say, what a quandary he would be in if he did not have the word, for he has to talk about Hegelian philosophy and the whole of donnish philosophy.

That is why the Germans have the word, because there is a constant use for it in Germany.

We Danes have not got it; but then neither is what it describes characteristic of us Danes. It is not really part of the Danish character to be a windbag.

On the other hand, we Danes have another failing, alas, a corresponding fault; and for this the Danish language has a word, a word which perhaps the German language has not got: windsucker. It is commonly used of horses but can be put to ordinary use.

That too is roughly the relation between them: a German to produce wind and a Dane to swallow it: for a long time past that has been the relation of the two countries."

Kierkegaard plainly said that the truth is resisted and replaced by a form of dementia, and he made his frustration quite apparent in this passage;

"I wish to tear the veil from human twaddle and from the conceited self-complacence with which men try to convince themselves and others that man really wants to know the truth. No, every man is more or less afraid of the truth; and that is what is human, for truth is related to being "spirit" - and that is very hard for flesh and blood and the physical lust for knowledge to bear. Between man and truth lies mortification - you see why we are all more or less afraid."

It is far easier for men to replace mortification with self-imposed dementia and to bury the truth by manipulating the herd and as Kierkegaard strongly implies, this is why most people are essentially enslaved by deception;

"In order really to be a great genius a man must be the exception. But in order that his being exceptional should be a serious matter he himself must be unfree, forced into the position. There lies the importance of his dementia. There is a definite point at which he suffers; it is impossible for him to run with the herd. That is his torture. Perhaps his dementia has nothing whatsoever to do with his real genius, but it is the pain by which he is nailed out in isolation-and he must be isolated if he is to be great; and no man can freely isolate himself; he is to be compelled if it is to be a serious matter."

And so, instead of "great geniuses" we breed deception and mediocrity because we are compelled to act as a herd.

And this is why people always cheat and abuse every process. You should read Kierkegaard's following words over and over until you get them because if we don't stop tolerating corruption, this world will continue to cross every single line of simple decency without adequate accountability and if we don't know where that leads, well then we are even dumber than Kierkegaard ever thought we were;

"Everything depends upon "how" a thing is put into practice, on the reduplication of the proposition in working form in relation to the proposition: of that I am ever more certain.

In fact one may say, in two words, that the difference between politics and religion is that no politics wishes to have anything to do with the reduplication, for that is too busy, too earthly, too worldly.

For reduplication is the longest operation of all, is really that of eternity (in the secular field it's called case law).

When Luther introduced the idea of Reformation, what happened? Even he, the great reformer, became impatient, he did not reduplicate strongly enough-he accepted the help of the princes, i.e. he really became a politician, to whom victory is more important than "how" one is victorious; for religiously the one important thing is the "how," just because the religious person is infinitely certain that he or his matter will be victorious, indeed that it has already won-he has therefore only to watch out for the "how," i.e. to reduplicate."

In that brief passage, Kierkegaard essentially informed us regarding "why" and "how" corruption is put into practice -through deception, fear, dementia and the like...

This ultimate debasement is a consequence of the fact that "sophistry and indulgence are reduced to a system, and mediocrity is legitimised" leading to all the corruption alluded to.

In essence, "the system" destroys "the individual" and it should be the other way around.

Kierkegard defines what it means to be an "individual" right here and you must read that to understand the relevance regarding the integrity of one and the corruption of the other.

Corruption is very common because the tyranny of the majority is not scrutinized as it should be because most people are simply too uninformed to adequately oppose it. Kierkeggard said it best in a passage titled, "On having an objective relation to one's own subjectivity";

The majority of men are curtailed "I's"; what was planned by nature as a possibility capable of being sharpened into an I is soon dulled into a third person.

It is a very different thing to have an objective relation to one's own subjectivity.

Take Socrates! He is not a third person in the sense that he avoids going into danger, avoids staking his life, which one avoids doing if one is a third person - not an "I." In no sense is that true. But actually in danger he has an objective attitude to his own personality, and when he is about to be condemned to death speaks of his condemnation like a third person. He is subjectively raisedto the second power, his attitude is as objective as that of a true poet to his ppoetic works; he is just as objective to his own subjectivity. That is an achievement. Otherwise one invariably gets one of two things, either an objective something, an objective bit of furniture which is supposed to be a man, or else a misselaneous hodge-podge of accidents and spontaneity. But the task is to have an objective attitude to one's subjectivity."

As Kierkegaard asserts, even "reason is a frightful sin because the appearance of nobility conceals deception."

Finally, this is my favorite Kierkegaard passage because it ultimately says everything about everything; religion, politics, law, history...etc., etc., etc...

"Were I a pagan I would say: an ironical deity gave mankind the gift of speech in order to have the amusement of watching that self-deception."

Next: Most people misinform through common ignorance.