Daily Discussion No. 8: Honesty and DIS-Honesty: What Goes on in People's Minds?

Yesterday, I inadvertently ended up being one of the first people to come across someone trying to run a new scam, here on Steemit. I wrote a bit about it here.

Later, I was reading a post by @droucil which exposed an evident loophole in the code of a voting bot, which had enabled several people to make a lot of "money for nothing" through exploiting someone else's oversight.

Then, this morning, I came across a completely different situation, in which someone was clearly exploiting the Steemit rewards system for gain. Speaking of "Reward Pool Rape," look at the comment section of this post-- it's completely insane!

In unrelated news, I started writing this post from my place of work-- the small art gallery and gift shop my wife and I have together, here in our hometown. 

I was getting my lunch out from the back room fridge-- as I walked back into the gallery, a customer who'd walked into the store during the 15 seconds I'd been gone observed: "Wow, didn't realize you were here. Aren't you worried that people will just walk in and STEAL stuff?"

The Wave of Dishonesty?

I didn't really respond, but the whole sequence of events here on Steemit, followed by the customer's remarks made me ponder the greater issue of honesty and integrity... and dishonesty and exploitation. Earlier, I threw out a quickie post to get a feel for people's take on "integrity;" this is a much lengthier follow-up.

I thought about the customer's remark (which I left unanswered) again, and contemplated my feelings about it... and here's where I ended up:

"I am not concerned whether or not you're a thief and want to steal from me, or whether "people" want to steal from me, I am concerned about the fact that you walked into a random establishment and the FIRST THOUGHT that came into your head and you expressed was THEFT."

In other words, here we have an essentially "neutral" situation, and the first person walking in on it interprets it through the lens of perception of DIS-honesty.

Meanwhile, on Steemit

On Steemit we have been given this great social content platform and interactive community, which is designed in such a way that people can earn rewards-- and often quite good rewards-- through honest effort and diligence.

And yet we sit here with a huge number of incidences of people not seeing that at all, but instead looking for ways to defraud and exploit the system.

Which makes me wonder if the majority of people in our world-- if otherwise left to their own devices-- are inherently dishonest?

Which, in turn, makes me consider whether or not I'm a strange outlier, in that whenever I approach a situation-- online, or in the flesh-- the thought of cheating, or deception, or theft are not even part of my thought pattern. I mean, I don't walk into a grocery or a department store with the thought "What can I steal here, today?" I don't sit in front of a web site that sells something I want, trying to find a way to deceive it into giving me something for free.

But this isn't about me, it's about exploring the human psyche.

Hello! How May I Cheat You Today?

So what is going on in this minds of people whose approach to life seems to be to cheat, exploit, deceive, defraud, steal and so on? A general collapse of morals and ethics? Or a life that seems "so hard" to get by in that people take desperate measures? A sense of entitlement to getting "something for nothing?"  A natural predisposition for risk-taking? Selfishness? Leave a comment-- share your opinions and input-- be part of the conversation!  I want to hear from you-- and others want to hear from you, as well!  Share your thoughts and experiences below!  

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created by @zord189

 (As usual, all text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly for Steemit)
Created at 171227 23:30 PDT