Capture-The-Flag

While working with kids the other day, there was a moment when one team won, another lost, and the immediate reaction from the losing team was that the winning team cheated. To be honest, both teams had cheated, but that was irrelevant to a bunch of 5-10-year-olds. Only the team that benefitted from the cheating was wrong. In some ways, it's a microcosm of today's society, with everyone fighting to get ahead at one another's expense, but the only people who speak up are the ones who don't. For kids, the repercussions last only until the next game, but in this scenario, the young girl, wise beyond her years, felt that the stigma may stick. 

At the end of the day, a kid on the losing team brought it up to me and mentioned that he was pretty sure she did cheat. I told him that it was only a game and we had played so many others during the afternoon that he shouldn't let it bother him. A few moments later, in a game of skill, a very smart boy tried to win the game by breaking the rules. The difference was, he asked first. It dawned on me that we may have a misconception about cheating. 

We often view cheaters as the lesser people. The people who aren't as smart, aren't as athletic, aren't as successful, aren't as devoted, and aren't as good. Then why aren't they? Is it because we value their success less? No, because those we know have cheated, aren't the successes. They are the ones who have been caught, so they don't pass, they don't win, they don't achieve, they aren't devoted, and they aren't as good. They are then stigmatized, just like this young girl feared she would be. But why?

People love to talk about their own integrity, honor, ethics, morals, and overall good character, but these people are generally not the pictures of what we view as successful and those who are that brag about such things are quite regularly outed as frauds, with reputations that will always be questioned. But again, their success is not necessarily negated, so have they really "lost?"

Is it possible that cheating is so ingrained into our society, that the only time it's not acceptable is when the cheater is caught? Think of male machismo and relationships. Cheaters are often revered by men who are monogamous. Athletes who get away with something and excel are rewarded with massive amounts of money until they are caught. Anyone who has ever spent time in a college setting knows that cheating isn't only the norm, it's completely out of control, sometimes even embraced and accepted by the very professors who advise against it. The farther you go up the economic and political food chain, cheating is a way of life. 

Maybe a game of Capture-the-Flag isn't only an insanely chaotic children's game, but the perfect metaphor for today's societal values.