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Everyone in Cambodia, from top to bottom, still operates on a survivalist mentality. This is understandable because of our recent past. The country has found relative stability just 10 years ago when the final remnants of the Khmer Rouge were eliminated.

When one works on a survival instinct, one has a tendency to hoard resources, often to the detriment of others’ livelihoods, and to flee (to a more survivable place). The survival mentality promotes selfishness– help yourself before helping others.

Selfishness, as it addresses more basic human needs like food and shelter, takes precedence over selflessness, a quality identified with higher needs like altruism and idealism. That’s why Khmer leaders don’t like to lose their seats. Their survival would be threatened. We don’t live in a country where a president who earns just $400K a year in office could make tens of millions of dollars writing books, giving speeches and working for private companies when he is out of office.

Most of us are frustrated with the slow transition from selfishness to selflessness, from the individual fulfillment to collective fulfillment, from pragmatism to idealism, from survival to living. It’s going to take some time and patience. In the meantime, we have to avoid replaying same old tunes like a broken record, because it seems like whenever someone comes up with a bright idea that would radically transform Khmer society, the country is set back to year zero.

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Everyone in Cambodia, from top to bottom, still operates on a survivalist mentality. This is understandable because of our recent past. The country has found relative stability just 10 years ago when the final remnants of the KR were eliminated. When one works on a survival instinct, one has a tendency to hoard resources, often to the detriment of everyone else, and to flee (to a more survivable place). The survival mentality promotes selfishness– help yourself before helping others. Selfishness, as it addresses more basic human needs like food and shelter, takes precedence over selflessness, a quality identified with higher needs like moral idealism and political ideology. That’s why Khmer leaders don’t like to lose their seats. Their survival would be threatened. We don’t live in a country where a president who earns just $400K a year can make tens of millions of dollars writing books, giving speeches and working for private companies when he is out of office.

Most of us are frustrated with the slow transition from selfishness to selflessness, from the individual fulfillment to collective fulfillment, from survival to living. It’s going to take some time and patience. In the meantime, we have to avoid repeating the same mistakes and replaying same old tunes like a broken record.

When one considers the challenges that Cambodia faces, the issue of corruption always seems to jump out. Corruption is really a collection of often unfair, inefficient, and abusive practices arising from the extreme scarcity of resources, greed, and degradation of social and moral foundations of our society. We all know that corruption exists in Cambodia; it’s rather hard to miss. But in order to formulate an actionable plan to tackle this problem, we must be able to measure and quantify the various aspects of corruption and understand the complex interactions among the multitude of economic, social, political, cultural and religious factors that give rise to unwholesome practices collectively known as corruption.

Simply calling out wealthy high-ranking government officials and demanding that they end corruption is not going to get us anywhere. Corruption in Cambodia is an incredibly complex matter that requires a much more thorough and comprehensive approach.

Too much focus on the conceptualization of corruption can be counterproductive because it promotes finger-pointing and the distancing oneself from shared accountability. In the end, we’re all part of the web of humanity that commits all the good and bad deeds in the world.

As complex a problem as corruption is, I think there is, yet, a simple solution for it. Was it Gandhi who said, “Be the change you want to see in world”? This is one of the reasons I decided to move back to Cambodia. If you are mindful of your own thoughts and actions, you’ll find that in each and every day, you’ll have some thoughts and impulses that are good and wholesome and some that are destructive. As long as you’re able to keep track of your own thoughts, impulses and actions everyday, you’ll naturally become more moderate and compassionate. You’ll still make mistakes and commit unwholesome deeds, but at least you’ll commit fewer of them and have less crave for the excesses for yourself that lead to suffering for others.

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Have you ever handed a $1 bill to a beggar at the intersection and spent the next 10 minutes in your car complaining how lazy he was for choosing to beg instead of work to support himself? We all have. Truth be told, we’d never know the full story why he became bum. It’s always easier just to blame people and make assumptions about them than to make a real effort to help the less fortunate.

Last year the U.S. gave just $5.8 million in aid to Cambodia. This may be a huge amount for you and me, but in a country of 14 million people, it comes out to just $0.40 a person, enough to buy everyone a pack of chewing gum. Of course, people will point out to things like corruption and human rights abuses to justify the meager aid amount.

These arguments about corruption, human rights abuses, and whatnot aren’t wrong. But giving a poor country like Cambodia $5.8 million a year is like slapping a band-aid on someone’s bullet wound and giving them a lengthy lecture on gun safety.

As long as people are hungry and uneducated, democracy and human rights mean nothing to them. Resources are extremely scarce here. Even in the absence of corruption, there still is not enough to go around. This is something that many outsiders, including overseas Khmers, don’t understand.

Survival comes first. If you were living in a situation where food is so scare that there are only a couple of spoons of rice for everyone and you were in charge of distributing the food in your village, would you not steal a bowl of rice for your own hungry children if you had the chance, even if your action left everyone else with only a spoon? Of course, you would. In fact, many Khmers learned to steal during the Khmer Rouge. An extreme state of despair can drive good people to do bad deeds. And they don’t necessarily give up the bad deeds after their needs are met.

While stealing a million dollars to build a luxurious villa isn’t quite the same as stealing a bowl of rice to feed one’s hungry children, most corruption in Cambodia occur at small-scale levels where public servants like teachers, policemen, and government officials try to supplement their $20-a-month salary with extra money to feed their families.

Fortunately, Cambodia’s biggest donors like Japan, who provides our country about $250 million in aid each year, have a more accurate understanding of our situation. Besides buying villas and luxury cars for a few government officials, the aid money also enable roads, bridges, sewage, and other public works projects to be built. Many Khmer lives are saved by the improved sanitation, education, and food and health programs provided by our generous donors.

These donors aren’t clueless about the need for less corruption in Cambodia. But they also understand that you can’t feed people’s minds while ignoring their stomachs. Khmer people eat rice; we don’t eat democracy or human rights. As problems like corruption and human rights abuses stem at least in part from the extreme scarcity of resources in Cambodia, solving these social problems go hand-in-hand with addressing basic needs like food, shelter, medicine, and education.

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I read a report today that some Hispanics are feeling betrayed by President-elect Obama choices for his top cabinet positions. Most of top cabinet positions have been filled by whites and Jews, with the notable exception being Bill Richardson, who is Hispanic. Obama is expected to name his once-bitter rival Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State.

By most estimations Obama’s choices so far is very close to perfect. He’s assembling a “dream team” of experienced and well qualified individuals to deal with the economic crisis and two wars abroad inherited from the Bush administration. His choices reflect his commitment to unity and getting-the-job-done over race politics.

I understand Hispanics’ feeling of betrayal since, like African Americans, Hispanics voted overwhelmingly in favor of Obama. At first glance, the racial composition of his administration may not reflect the “change” that he promised.

In his defense, however, the country is facing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and Obama simply cannot afford to appoint anyone but the most qualified and experienced people to the top posts. It just so happens that the most experienced people happen to be white and Jewish.

A major reason that there are fewer qualified minorities is that we seldom were given the opportunities to gain the necessary experience to fill the posts. Working under a black president, Obama’s white and Jewish cabinet members would be hard-pressed not to recruit minorities to their departments. These diverse and inclusive working environments, in turn, will enable minorities to attain the necessary experiences and credentials to become the leaders of tomorrow.

As a Khmer I would like to see at least one or two Asian Americans appointed to Obama’s top posts. However, even more important than Asian representation is that he or she is truly qualified for the job. I do not want to see Obama appoint an Asian just to show that his administration is inclusive of Asian Americans.

Tokenism is a deplorable arrangement that attempts to project a semblance of diversity while perpetuating the status quo. The token Asian appointments of past administrations have done little to advance Asian American concerns. Often, they were even less interested about Asian American causes than their white bosses.

Obama, on the other hand, is more concerned about laying the foundations for real diversity and real inclusion whereby all Americans would be given an equal opportunity to succeed. Far from betraying his minority supporters, I think Obama’s actions reflect incredible depth, foresight, and integrity in his thinking.

I’ve always been impressed by Obama’s exceptional intelligence and vision, and I think America is very fortunate that he, instead of one of the other candidates, was elected to lead the country out of the current mess.

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