I ran across MrBossMan’s blog the other day after he linked to my post on ZeeJustin’s response to getting caught cheating. First, I don’t think I agree with the overall premise of his response. His take is that there’s no such thing as ‘free will’ and that some set of cosmic forces brings us to decisions. I guess we could have a spirited debate over whether or not those cosmic forces could also bring you to a crossroads where you have exactly a 50/50 decision to make but this is a poker blog, not a philosophy blog so we’ll leave that debate for another day.
What I really wanted to address was MrBossMan’s contention that if ZeeJustin has said accepted full responsibility it would have made everything okay. That’s not what I said (though Felicia’s post – which he also linked to – could possibly be construed that way). What I attempted to do was show the faulty logic and emotional immaturity being demonstrated by ZeeJustin.
MrBossMan says that the rest of us don’t cheat at poker because we were told or taught not to cheat at some point earlier in our lives. He gives an example of getting caught cheating in 9th grade and extrapolates that into a classic; it was painful, humans are designed to avoid pain. Well . . . not so fast. There’s another factor that plays into how this animal called the human reacts to the world around him. That other factor is called pleasure.
Pain and pleasure, a classic battle fought out to control our actions. While pain is typically a stronger motivator, pleasure is no slouch. Now, I’m not attempting to say that ZeeJustin cheated because he got pleasure out of it. Hell, I don’t even know the guy other than his 2+2 postings so I’m not going to psychoanalyze the guy here on a blog. What I am saying though is that not every action is an attempt to avoid pain.
I’ve cheated at times during my life. Not at poker but I’ve cheated on tests. Hell, I’ve cheated on tests so blatantly that others are unable to believe my audacity (and cunningness). And, I’ve never been caught. However today if you offered me a 100% guarantee I wouldn’t get caught cheating, I would politely decline. I get more satisfaction (read: pleasure) out of the challenge of doing well than cheating. Cheating is easy in comparison so there’s no challenge.
Hell, if we were only motivated by avoiding pain . . . most of us would have given up poker a long time ago ïŠ
So, in the end, ZeeJustin’s actions aren’t excusable even if he takes personal responsibility. Taking personal responsibility is the first step though. MrBossMan’s 9th grade cheating incident did not prevent him from going on to future levels in our educational system, but had he not seen the error of his ways and reformed, continuous cheating certainly could have put a damper on his higher education plans. ZeeJustin’s problem, IMHO, is that he has refused to see the wrongness of his actions. Literally, he’s blaming PartyPoker for making it too easy to cheat. He doesn’t realize that cheating is a decision one makes (contrary to MrBossMan’s claims). Even if we break it down into factors of pleasure and pain, for ZeeJustin the loss of reputation, income streams, and even cold hard cash are not painful enough for him to see the error in his actions. That is a character defect. And character defects like that tend to demonstrate themselves via repeating past mistakes.