On the decision to victimise one's own self

There was a discussion in one of my History of Economic Thought classes that stuck out after all this time. Partly because my short term memory failed me to the point that I could barely remember any lesson, partly because the whole discussion was so fascinating. The question we were supposed to discuss was this:

"How can Indonesia be freed from the curse of corruption?"

Note the words "freed" and "curse." It was as though we had no intention of actually taking responsibility over the culture for corruption that we have cultivated over the years, nor are we willing to admit that there needs to be an active response from our part to stop corruption from infiltrating every level of our social activities. No, the question isn't "How do we rid ourselves of the ingrained culture of corruption in our society?" I thought that was hilarious... Like, how are we even supposed to make any progress if even in the grand halls of our higher education institutions it is implied that people aren't directly responsible for their immoral actions but that rather those horrible deeds are inflicted upon them? To be completely anthropocentric for, like, a minute, we always have a choice. The good and bad of those choices aren't always clear cut, but that's the purpose of education, to help us distinguish which is which.

Also, it shouldn't be hard to decide not to be an asshole, because ultimately being corrupt is just another degree of you being an asshole. Though it does pose the question whether corruption can actually lead to the betterment of society like in American Hustle (we'll talk about that eventually).