The article begins:

The French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal once claimed that “mutual cheating is the foundation of society.” For as long as there have been rules, it seems, there have been cheaters.

I would like to know the context of Pascal’s statement. He was, after all, a Catholic scholar and I find it difficult to believe that he was so defeatist. This statement, like “every law was meant to be broken,” indicates (with a wink and a smirk) that cheating is natural to human beings.

When we are faced with human depravity, we tend to defend our sensibilities in two ways. First, we try to shrug it off by convincing ourselves that it is inevitable or normal or inevitable. Second, we try to find a psychological explanation.

What’s going on here? Doesn’t anyone play by the rules? On Wall Street, the one-two punch of greed and competition is to blame, says journalist James Stewart. His coverage of the 1987 stock crash and insider-trading scandals earned him a Pulitzer and became the foundation of his bestseller Den of Thieves. All that money sloshing around, he says, “can drive people into a frenzy. . . . You’re thrown in that competitive situation at a very early age and exhorted to win at all costs.” And that win-at-all-costs ethic, critics say, is the foundation of the cheating culture.

In Hollywood, “you can get away with your embezzlements and your lies, and your murders, but you can never get away with failing,” according to Dominick Dunne, celebrated chronicler of the powerful and notorious. The pressure to succeed–and the fear of failure–Dunne says, is the perfect prescription for cheating. It may also be the root of widespread cheating among students. Consider: Seventy-four percent of high school students admitted to “serious test cheating” last year. That’s more than double the number who admitted this in 1969.

Certainly an overemphasis on success leads to cheating. I see this in high school students and their parents, or example. Sometimes we even get parents defending or even abetting the cheating by their children and offering the excuse, “Well, she has to get into college and she can’t do that without a good grade in this class.”

Obsession with success and the willingness to sacrifice integrity show a degradation of priorities and a false sense of happiness – a willingness to sacrifice transcendent goods such as honesty, truth and integrity for the sake of temporal, imperfect, and insecure goods such as money and success. Obsession with success brings constant dissatisfaction and cheating does nothing to alleviate the unhappiness caused by a disordered life.

Of course, there are other reasons for cheating as well:

But pressure to succeed isn’t a complete explanation. Undeniably, there is an almost romantic appeal to “beating the system”–particularly if the system, whether it’s the speed limit or the stock market, is perceived as rigged or unfair. Take the tax code, for instance. Nearly everyone thinks he or she pays too much or that others don’t pay enough. So Americans cheat to the tune of $195 billion a year, according to the Internal Revenue Service. That amounts to a whopping $1,600 per taxpayer.

While the first cause of cheating is a false sense of true happiness, the second is a false idea of the purpose of authority. “Sticking it to the man” has been in vogue since the 1960′s. Actually, it has been part of the American culture since the American Revolution when True Whigs held a philosophy that held all authority suspect. Americans hold that individuals need to grab all they can for themselves while authority attempts to keep them from it.

However, the truth is that authority is intended to lead us to authentic goodness, especially when our own weaknesses or ignorance would make attaining that goodness more difficult if not impossible. Often our attempt to “stick it to the man” or to “beat the system” are like my two-and-a-half-year-old’s stubborn refusal to wear pants.

And think about the reasons people give for cheating. We steal cable because “the prices are a rip-off.” We fudge insurance claims because “the rates are sky high.” We pocket office supplies because “the company can afford it.” All these rationalizations suggest people are perversely cheating to restore fairness. Is this tolerable?

Yes, sometimes the explanation of why we cheat is just that we’re selfish and whiny. We tend to think we are never getting enough because we are never satisfied with what we have.

So, whether we are revealing our messed-up priorities, our hubris, or our selfishness, we sacrifice much when we cheat. Cheaters destroy their personal integrity – the virtue of being who you were created to be. What’s more, since human beings are created to receive Truth, cheaters do great harm to justice between them and others, therefore isolating them from the bond of trust that creates a society. And what do we gain? A stapler? A few hundred dollars that we’ll spend foolishly anyway? A good grade that won’t even be remembered ten years from now? Even those people who rise to positions of power and prestige by cheating live with the constant fear that they will be found the fraud.

Furthermore, all sin does harm to society

No wonder many are now asking if there’s been a major shift in cultural standards–whether cheating and deceit have become accepted tools of the trade in the never-ending quest for success.

We have an innate sense that cheating is evil. U.S. News & World Report, the consummate supporter of bad science, explains:

Yet there is tension here as well. As great as the urge to cheat may be, we also have an almost hard-wired hatred of cheaters and a deep-seated urge to punish them. In fact, studies have shown people will go to great lengths to ferret out and punish cheaters, even when doing so is costly and offers no material gain. According to sociologists, this instinct to punish rule-breakers may date to hunter-gatherer societies, which were highly egalitarian–there were no hierarchical leaders. So when it came to sharing food, for instance, these minisocieties had to work as a group to punish any freeloaders.

It amazes me that everything can be traced back to the “hunter-gatherer” era of human history, as if this era (inexplicably) forever defined human nature. Truth be told, every time the “hunter-gatherer” era is used as an explanation for modern human behavior, the connection is based on a total guess. There is no evidence. This pseudo-scientific explanation is a “socially acceptable” alternative to the acceptance of natural law. We know that cheating is bad because human beings were created for Truth.

As Catholics, we know through Divine Revelation that human beings once knew the perfect life, but that Original Sin damaged our intellect and our will. Therefore we are tempted toward sin and deceit, yet we still hold goodness as our ideal. Cheaters never prosper – not because they are never successful but because they sacrifice the reality of who they are meant to be for the myth of what they wish they had.

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