Humanity's curse is the fact that ego functions as a rather successful stand-in for heart. Ego creates and takes advantage, giving the barest minimum required to receive such advantage. Heart, on the other hand, when it is actively leading a life, is generous to a tee, full of excess. For me, a corrupt society is one that, through design or over-development, privileges ego over heart – our own society being perhaps the prime example – whereas so called primitive and barbaric societies tend to be of the heart, with complex codes of honour to protect them from the monoculture of ego and individualism.