Kekich Credo #41 - There is no such thing as “just a little theft” or “just a little dishonesty”.
Many words come to mind when I see the words theft and dishonesty. They include stealing, deception, robbery, burglary, petty theft, cheating, and lies.
By definition theft is the act of stealing. It is the felonious act of taking and removing personal property with the intent to deprive the rightful owner of it. In the United Kingdom the Theft Act of 1986 was introduced to make it an offence to obtain property by deception.
Someone is guilty of robbery if he steals from a person using force or makes them think force will be used. Theft means taking someone’s property without the use of force. Burglary means entering a property illegally in order to steal property from it. Petty theft refers to a criminal act in which property belonging to someone else is taken without that person’s consent.
Dishonesty means lack of honesty or integrity. A dishonest person has the disposition to defraud or deceive. A dishonest person is one who cheats or lies.
Academic dishonesty is defined as cheating, plagiarism, fabrication and sabotage. Cheating means to act dishonestly or unfairly so as to gain an advantage. This often occurs while playing a game or when writing an exam. Plagiarism is copying someone else’s work or ideas and passing them off as one’s own. Fabrication in the academic sense is to lie or make up a concoction in order to deceive. To come up with some false evidence. Sabotage means to deliberately destroy or damage something to gain an advantage.
To tell a lie is to speak falsely or utter an untruth knowingly. The person lying intends to deceive. They are making a statement that they know to be false.
There are several ways that lies are told. There are white lies which are told to avoid hurting someone’s feelings. There are lies of omission when a person fails to correct a pre-existing misconception or leaves out important information in order to hide the truth from others. A bold faced lie is an obvious, shameless lie that the liar makes no effort to disguise as the truth.
There are also lies of exaggeration. Some people believe that when you exaggerate, you are not really lying. You are just overstating things. Lies of exaggeration are embellishments people use when they are trying to appear more capable than they really are.
A panic liar is a person who lies in order to avoid the consequences of telling the truth. They are afraid of embarrassment and they are afraid to admit they made a mistake. Habitual liars are people who tell falsehoods out of habit. Compulsive liars were often placed in an environment where lying was necessary in order to avoid confrontations with the truth.
As this Credo says, there is no such thing as “just a little theft” or “just a little dishonesty”.
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