Definition of Cheating

Merrium-Websters’ on-line dictionary defines the word “cheat” simply as ‘using trickery to escape observation.’ The word cheat dates back to as early as 1590 and is a transitive verb (a verb that requires both a direct subject and one or more objects). Other definitions of the word cheat include: to deceive or mislead somebody, especially for personal advantage, to break the rules in a game, examination, or contest, in an attempt to gain an unfair advantage, and to have a sexual relationship with somebody other than a spouse or regular sexual partner. What does this mean in terms of our personal lives or needs? What does this mean to me, the writer, personally? To be honest I am not sure. My upbringing and moral codes tells me that cheating in its standard form and definition is wrong. However, my sense of reality tells me that I do it, and have done it, knowingly many times and many ways through out my life. Cheating is an ugly fact of life, we all know it, but how do we harness it and when do we use it appropriately? Cheating can be good and it can be evil, what mechanisms do we use in our rationality to tell when the timing is right to cheat or lie? In our everyday lives we are all guilty of cheating in one way or another. If we were to define cheating solely by the definition provided above then we are all guilty of cheating for every little white lie we have told, guilty of cheating every time we play “hookie” from work and so on. For me to personally define cheating it would not be for those little white lies we tell to save face or stave off embarrassment, or for those one or two days a year we call out of work just to take a small break from the grind of the office. Cheating is defined personally by me as any actions an individual takes to impede upon someone else for their own personal gain. For example, a cheater is that shady “friend” that always cheats at your card games or the individual you know who is nice to your face but