Stupid stats knocked me off my train of thought, if that's not a mixed metaphor. If it's not a mixed metaphor, then I'm still on the train. Not on train therefore not mixed metaphor. I wonder if one of my premises is wrong.
Reading my comments led me, via FukiBlog, to a Julian Sanchez review of The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead, by David Callahan, New York: Harcourt, 304 pages, $26
I have a slightly different point to make, based on this passage:
Sometime in the late ’70s, according to Callahan’s narrative, a nefarious cabal of "laissez faire ideologues" began remaking American law and culture along Social Darwinist lines. The ever-increasing disparity between the jackpot rewards for a few winners at the top and the more modest returns to the average professional, as well as managerial pressure on employees to be more productive, increased the incentive to cut corners to get ahead, even as the steely-eyed government watchdogs who had long held cheating in check were declawed. The cheaters soon reached a critical mass, creating a sense that "everyone is doing it," that cheating is positively necessary just to keep up, and eroding the social and professional norms that had hitherto made the average person reluctant to defraud clients and colleagues. Hence the "epidemic" of cheating we see today.[I did something right this time, format-wise. I wish I knew what.]
There’s probably something to this argument. It certainly will be part of any correct account of why people cheat.
Social Darwinism - actually, I don't intend to defend whatever that is, but I will defend the social philosophy of Herbert Spencer which is accused of being that. Spencerian social LaMarckism would hold that the next generation is capable of learning from the experiences of its predecessors and that cheating is not a sure-fire path to success. Even if current social attitudes allow it. The cheating culture will be swallowed by one that values honesty and hard (and smart) work because that is what Nature requires: adherence to her rules, especially those that engender trust and cooperation among human beings.
My father-in-law, a typical Minnesota DFLer (Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party - our Democrats) has a saying he coined for his own use - and it goes a long way toward explaining his own success as an office manager and professional investor: Be kind and do good work. It's the Secret of Life, ladies and gentlemen. Go ye and do likewise.
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