There's an expression I've heard in baseball that if you aren't cheating, you aren't trying. It's actually something I see in lots of sports where athletes try to gain any advantage they can, even bending the rules. Some even think the breaking the rules is justified if they can win. My "old-man league" struggles with this as the top team (not mine) has league officials playing, they get a favorable schedule and new players seemingly outside of the rules.
However you might feel about that, I think that you need to win or lose on your own merits. In my mind, and it's something I try to get my kids to understand, if I haven't achieved it on my own, if I haven't done the work and earned it, I didn't win. If I took a shortcut in the race and was the winner, I didn’t really win. I cheated.
I think that one of the great failings of modern society is our lack of willingness to fail. I think that too many people from athletes, to the average worker, to the CEO is so unwilling to fail that they'll cheat to make it seem like they won. Enron, WorldCom, even many other companies still in business regularly manipulate numbers so that someone in management can get a bonus or keep their job. They're so concerned about the result, they don't care if they’ve earned it.
Articles like this one on students cheating, contracting their work out across the Internet, make me think that things are getting worse. That the next generation doesn't want to earn anything, they just want it given to them. I know that I see forum postings almost daily on SQLServerCentral.com that appear to be homework questions, with little to no thought being put into how to answer the question or solve the problem. My typical response is to give a hint and ask the posters to try and write their query or solve the problem and then ask questions where there is confusion. Microsoft is also trying to stop some companies from cheapening its certifications.
I'm not sure what to do about this in the long term. It seems like a fundamental degradation in the morality of people, willing to do anything to succeed and get results, regardless of if they've earned things. It's not based on politics, religion or anything other than the natural human desire to gain something with little effort. We've grown more successful, with more leisure time and more rewards in life with less effort over time. That, along with the high standards of living our children enjoy for their lives and less work required of them for most of their young lives, doesn't help.
I have no idea how to change this in the world at large, other than more emphasis throughout society on the way you succeed rather than the success.
Steve Jones
The Voice of the DBA Podcasts
The podcast feeds are now available at sqlservercentral.mevio.com to get better bandwidth and maybe a little more exposure :). Comments are definitely appreciated and wanted, and you can get feeds from there.
or now on iTunes!
- Windows Media Podcast - 33.8MB WMV
- iPod Video Podcast - 26.8MB MP4
- MP3 Audio Podcast - 5.4MB
Today's podcast features music by Everyday Jones. No relation, but I stumbled on to them and really like the music. Support this great duo at www.everydayjones.com.
I really appreciate and value feedback on the podcasts. Let us know what you like, don't like, or even send in ideas for the show. If you'd like to comment, post something here. The boss will be sure to read it.