According to Art of Living Foundation founder Sri Ravi Shankar, there is a fundamental difference between motivation and inspiration.

And the best way for corporate leaders to practice business ethics is not to motivate employees, but rather inspire them, he added at a business and ethics conference in Jakarta. Motivation relies on external factors, such as the promise of rewards and the incentive of personal gain, and as such, it is short-lived and unsustainable.

Once fulfilled, the employees will replace their motivation with another form of dissatisfaction, and so on, in a never-ending cycle of want. The company ends up with a bunch of employees that are almost always unhappy and certainly rarely give a hundred percent.

Inspiration on the other hand comes from within -- the desire to put one's heart and soul into the company, not because of greed or what one could get out of it while still employed there, but because one has a sense of belonging to the place and a sense of achievement when the company succeeds. Inspiration therefore, is key to the company's lasting success.

This difference between motivation and inspiration interests me because the failure to practice good ethics in this country, on all levels of Indonesian society, is due to our dependence on external factors to shape our ethical values and determine our actions.

We do not act. We react. Leaders do not inspire. They blame. The majority of our people are over sensitive and easy to offend. They are not secure in their values and, like the high-maintenance spouse or employee, in constant need of reassurance, recognition and acknowledgment.

How does this dependence on the external affect the state of our ethics or lack there of? Ethics are the moral principles that guide our behavior. If our leaders and figures of influence display faulty ethics, then we, society as a whole, will suffer and be dragged into sharing the same views. We become an unethical nation. And our democracy is nothing more than the democratization of bad ethics.

Hence the plethora of uninspired rules, regulations and irrational reactions we healthy-minded citizens have to put up with in this country. The examples are so numerous and ludicrous they would be hilarious if told as fictitious jokes.

For instance, in the Batu regency in a pathetic attempt to minimize prostitution, female masseuses are now required to put padlocks on their trousers so they cannot be tempted to offer their sexual services. This reflects a way of Medieval thinking that puts the blame on external factors for an inherent weakness -- in this case prostitution is caused by the female temptresses and their easy-access clothing.

Banning the religious sect Ahmadiyah as heretical, again reminiscent of the Inquisition and persecution of old, is the majority suppressing the minority. Far from inspiring the faithful, what we have is a manifestation of fear, narrow-mindedness and insecurity that it will become the most followed religion. It is a case of blaming others for one's own lack of faith.

This desire to control, whether by closing down Youtube and other attempts to censor the Internet and public opinion, preventing musicians from singing songs critical of corruptors, suing the media and intimidating others, is far from displaying power and merely a reflection of powerlessness borne of a lack of ethics.

What, after all, are ethics if not the moral compass inherent in individuals with sound minds and good judgment? The compass that has nothing to do with religion and piety but has everything to do with wisdom and self-knowledge? And the understanding that real power comes not from the ability to control others, but to control the self.

That this country is rich in religion and yet poor in ethics is one of the reasons our development as a nation is difficult to achieve and sustain. It is because of this, Indonesia is cursed with a dearth of inspiring leaders and an overdose of lawmakers motivated by greed and religious leaders motivated by fear.

When blame is still the way we strengthen our faith and greed or suspicion, and when blame is the source of our motivation, our values rest on a very fragile foundation indeed. For it is a foundation based on ignorance, and unless we lighten up as a nation, we will find ourselves dragged back into the Middle Ages where women wore chastity belts and heretics were burned at the stake.

The writer is a journalist based in Jakarta. She can be reached at www.desianwar.net and quotidian.desianwar.net.

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