1/31/12 – Cheating Culture, Callahan, Lecture 1For Thursday 2/2, Review 134-166, Read 167-258; Quizzable on bothSo why is cheating up (especially since other forms of immorality aren’t?) See p. 14 top: list. It’s a real puzzlePeople who wouldn’t dream of stealing a pack of gum continually commit felony on their income taxes.1. The Winner-Take-All Society – The top 1% of all households have more wealth than the entire bottom 90%. There is today infinitely more to gain or lose when it comes to getting into the right college, grad school, job, etc. (pp.19-20)A—grades, the stress of a GPA and the difference between a B and an AB—drug testing in athletes2. Higher inequality has led to more divisions in America, undermining the sense that we are all in this together. No, not even with “social security.” There isn’t any more “social security.” No more guaranteed benefit pension plans (do you know what they are?). We are all investors in the market, owners of our own individual lives and retirement portfolios. No shared fate. When people are scared, they don’t care if they’re fair. That’s not the way people think.A—One of the good things to come out of 9/11 was that for a small amount of time, we were “all in this together.”3. Conversely, the yawning gap between winners and losers is also having a lethal effect on personal integrity.” This point is crucial. More and more people will do anything to be a winner.4. Trickle-down Corruption: if you’re an ordinary middle-class person struggling to make ends meet, then you might just make-up your own moral code.A—Story of Elly & Auto Antenna, being invited to cheatIt’s really easy to cheat in everyday life, there are lots of little ways to cheat and the temptation gets greater when there is a sense that the system is fundamentally unfair.5. Cheating becomes the norm. People start to feel like everybody cheats, so that people who play by the rules put themselves at a disadvantage. What competitive high school student is willing to tolerate a lower class ranking than other students who are cheating?6. So, at least in some fields—and they need not be in your life, you need only read about it—one begins to suspect that everybody cheats, and that is demoralizing.7. When whole areas of life seem given over to cheating: baseball, Olympic sports, much of the financial markets, much accounting, tax paying, what else? I think we reach a tipping point. The sense that everybody cheats at everything. Or would if they could, And then social trust disappears. And morality changes.8. We live in a new gilded age of greater inequality. In 1965, the average CEO made 50x more than typical workers. Today its over 1000x. And it hardly seems to matter if you do a good job.2/2/12: Callahan, the Cheating Culture: Lecture 2Shit to knowFor Friday, each of you is to come prepared with an example of cheating you have personally encountered, heard about, read about, and be prepared o discuss it for a few minutesReview 196-258, CallahanFor Tuesday 2/6, read some BS article about Brazil? Last chapter of book, still BSActual Learning:A review of a major point: When there is an increasing gap between winners and losers in our society, when winners take home millions, and losers just get by, when society seems to be divided into winners and losers with no one in the middle, there is a greater incentive to cheat. This is when it becomes increasingly important for government to enforce the rules of the game. At the same time, it is precisely this situation in which the winners are able to exert greater influence over government, primarily through campaign contributions, to make sure that rules are weakened and not enforcedWhen the rules are not enforced, those on the losing side are inclined to cheat: the losers in order to make the game more fair, the winners to win even more.9. Lets review the “rising importance of money to undergraduates,” this time with an emphasis on explanation. 80% of 18-25 year olds see getting rich as a top life goal for their generation10. What has to change for a goal of “a new life philosophy,” to be less silly, more serious. What has to change is the level of fear. The more we fear, the more our thinking divides the world into two, winners and losers. And we become willing to do “anything it takes” not to be a loser. And this starts in school.11. We have also turned more worshipful of the strong—namely the rich and famous. Callahan says this means that it’s a small step from believing these people deserve their power to indulging the abuse of that power.12. My research on freedom leads me to a somewhat different conclusion: we worship wealth and power when there are no other values left, when we are afraid of being mere tools of this wealth and power, and come to see the world as divided in two: those who have wealth and power and those who don’t. For those who don’t we have contempt, and we will do anything to join those who do. And that includes cheating13. Summers, times at Cape Cod. Older people are working menial jobs, and they even look like they know they’re losers. Specially compared to “Wealthy Ryder.” The old and the poor have lost at the game of life, and they act like they know and believe it and are personally ashamed.Trickle-Down Corruption, c. 6’People look around and see that other people, particularly people at the top, don’t play fair. What is actually law breaking may not be really immoral.43% of respondents say that they had cheated, would cheat, or thought it was okay to cheat on taxesThe actions of the winning class send a message to the anxious class, not just that the world is unfair, its that people who cut corners get ahead. For Ex, the UMCP student who shall remain unnamed (she appeared before the Honor Council) whose parents told her to do “whatever it takes” to get into Harvard.2/7/12 – Cheating from the Starting LineFor Thurs: Read Milgram, Obedience to Authority pp. 1-88 (c 1-7)Cheating among HS and college students is the one area of cheating that is comparatively well researched, as it can be studied.With cheating among HS and college students, one is seeing a larger portion of the iceberg. So it’s not necessarily worse, we just see more. And perhaps the young are more honest, less sanctimoniousF. Scott Fitzgerald – “there are no second acts in life.” He argues this is incorrect, that there are always second actsPP. 97-198 –