Cheaters

I read some very disturbing news today. A book I had just finished called, "Imagine" had suddenly found its way back in the news, and for all the wrong reasons. The book dealt with how the human mind thinks creatively, and it's author, Jonah Lehrer, admitted to some pretty egregious improprieties.

He lied. In one chapter he wrote about the craft of how Bob Dylan wrote music and lyrics. In it, he supplied several insightful Dylan quotes. The only problem was, Dylan never said any of them. The author fabricated them to make a few salient points. In essence, he cheated.

Of course, this is far from the first time we've heard about a writer trumping the system. We all remember Jason Blair of the NY Times. In 2003, it was discovered that he ripped off several other writers in his many accounts of the War in Iraq. Once again, he cheated.

This made me think of so many others in unrelated fields who have gone down the same path.

Wall Street immediately comes to mind. Bernie Madoff was just the beginning of the Ponzi scheme era. He was quickly followed by Galleon Group's Roger Rajaratman who was made famous my making billions on inside trading tips. That's right. He couldn't rely on his own ability as a prognosticator, so he stole the news. The current flavor of the day is the head of Peregrine Financial Group who admitted that his client's profits were falsified and was actually quoted as saying:

"I was forced with a difficult decision. Should I go out of business or cheat? So I cheated."

We're all aware that sports isn't immune to cheating. Just ask Barry Bonds and the countless number of baseball players that have been in Jose Canseco's book or those found on an underground watch list for using anabolic steroids or human growth hormones. They couldn't stay young forever, so they needed an edge. And they cheated.

When I was a kid, there was an old adage that I had originally heard from either a teacher or my father that stuck with me throughout my life:

"Winners never cheat, and cheaters never win."

I took that one seriously. Although, its truth and relevance can certainly be called into question. Perhaps it needs a slight edit. "Sometimes winners cheat and don't get caught, and cheaters actually win for a little while." I still remember being in a grade school classroom during tests and watching kids looking over each other's shoulders, or passing their completed exams around. This wasn't for me.

Cheating can even occur in areas thought to police the existence of cheating itself. Like the police. It was only last year that an enormous ticket fixing scandal was broken in NYC where a large number of tickets suddenly disappeared off people's records in exchange for who knows what.

So, what's going on here? Have economic times and fierce competition gotten so intense that people are cheating more than ever. Probably not. It's just that our surveillance systems have gotten much better. The internet has certainly helped in that regard, as nothing posted is ever sacred. So remember that Twitterheads.

The real question to ask is why do people cheat in the first place? Is it greed? The pressure to succeed? I'm not buying it. It's trite to just attribute these actions to simple human nature. So I'm going to throw out my own theory.

Cheating has been around with us for so long, its become part of our fabric. We may not always see it, taste it, or touch it, but we know its there. It's in the air. We don't need maps.

So here's what happens. The cheating actually feeds upon itself.

No matter which industry you're in, there will always be someone cheating. It doesn't make it right for us to do the same. However, it does change our thinking from common decency to having an insatiable need to even the playing field. That's what it's all about.

Some Wall Street firms believe that they can't compete with outsize returns from their competition, so they need to narrow the advantage. Aging athletes need to stay viable. But once a large selection gravitates to steroids, others don't take them to make them superior. They take them to stay even. And if writers know that someone else continues to get those superior writing assignments or book deals because they cut a proverbial corner, well, they must be afforded the same opportunity.

So, the common notion that cheating occurs to get ahead is and has probably been a misnomer for decades. If everyone cheats, everyone stays even.

And sometimes the goal is just survival. It's just a shame what people will resort to just to keep up with the Jonses. What really makes it disturbing is that there's almost no fear of getting caught. But some of them do. They just don' t care. It's almost as if they expect you to understand their modus operandi; their terrible plight.

But the truth is.....we almost never do.