Many of us write about how to find fulfillment. Add our plentiful commentary on acceptance, gratitude, achievement, loss, depression, defeat, and victory.
Somehow, at least one thing is left out.
Cheating.
In childhood, it was unimaginable to me. Yes, kids cheated on tests, threw snowballs at moving buses, and found miscellaneous ways to raise hell.
Yet the adults I encountered all appeared decent enough, unlike the fraudulent and dangerous types in news reports. TV was the box where bad guys lived and did their worst, not in my neighborhood.
My dad had a small business, which offered a different story. Mercury Lighter Service was a side job he created, fixing cigarette lighters.
Milton Stein and my mother, Jeanette, learned to repair most of those that were broken.
My parents performed their magic on our dining room table after dinner, after my father came home from his supervisory position at the post office and his second job, keeping the books for my Uncle Sam’s business.
His enterprise was not without its share of upset.
Like deadbeats.
He muttered the word, sometimes changing it to “another deadbeat.“
I asked him what he was talking about. “Adults don’t always pay their bills,” he replied. There were many reasons, including the desire to cheat you.
Such men—it was always men—seemed outliers to me, not regular, honest folk. Perhaps I wanted to envision the world as a benign place. Later, I discovered that the people of the planet were more complicated.
Here, however, is something close to the truth. It is part of a footnote to the Enchiridion, itself a discourse recorded by Arrian, from the teaching he received as a student of the philosopher Epictetus:
Those who have the ability sufficient to raise themselves from a low estate, and at the same time do it to the damage of society, are perhaps only few, but certainly there are such persons.
They rise by ability, by the use of fraud, by bad means almost innumerable. They gain wealth, they fill high places, they disturb society, they are plagues and pests, and the world looks on sometimes with stupid admiration until death removes the dazzling and deceitful image, and honest men breathe freely again.
Stupid admiration. An interesting phrase. The crooks would be easier to recognize if each took the same name and a differentiating number—something like Stupid Admiration #1, #32, #47, etc.
The swindlers can be hard to identify and receive high praise from sycophants and those who want to ride the master’s coattails to wealth.
Does it appear to you that criminals have mushroomed? How do some of them do so well at profiting from their corruption?
Consider the word “con men,” short for confidence men, meaning they gain your confidence so they can take what you have.
The rascals flatter you, recognize that you want to be seen, approved of, and admired. Swinders offer a vision of the future in which your life will be better. They will help to make it, too.
One thinks he is lucky to have found such a person, a kind of father figure and wizard put together. I was taken in by such a one once, years ago.
It happens, but why?
Almost everyone, deep down, wants to be cared for. No wonder that wounded men on the battlefield cry out for their mothers, as they have since the beginning of time.
They search for a place in a trusted group, people who resemble them, think as they do, and brace them against the possibility of others, either different or suspicious.
Laughter, love, kindness, and locked arms fulfill an ageless wish. Togetherness means more when it promises the security of survival. The saying goes, “I will be there for you.“
The fraudster plays on all this and more.
Today, many people ask what they should do to thwart dishonesty and bad faith. Many are afraid, confused, depressed, or all of these.
They hope for a leader, a savior, a person to lean on; someone who can win the day, take the group’s prize to the car wash, soap away the darkness, and bring the light.
If you could sell guaranteed trust and a supportive community on a street corner, you would make a fortune.
The world will always need saving. It always has.
That said, most of us have faith in the basic decency of humankind. My dad didn’t give up his small business or hide from others because of a few underhanded debtors.
Milton Stein went to WWII in a uniform he believed in. To him, it represented the rightness of the fight. He returned still faithful to my mother, and she to him.
Remember, it is always darkest before the dawn.
And then there is love.
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The top image is a Poster for the American Drama film The Cheat (1923).
The second item is an Advertisement for the American Comedy-Romance film The Confidence Man (1924), starring Thomas Meighan, from the March 29, 1924, cover of the Exhibitors Trade Review. Both are sourced from Wikimedia Commons.
