Two things happened this week that vividly illustrated to me how a lack of integrity in giving and taking credit perpetuates illusions and creates disillusionment, at least, for me.
Most of the time problems with dishonesty come from one person taking credit for another person’s work and then claiming this work as one’s own without properly giving credit to the originator of the work. While it is legally true that ideas cannot be patented or copyrighted, I’m making a distinction between what is “legal” and what is “the right thing to do” (or one may say, “ethical”).
This week, for example, I was directed to a web page that has a beautiful prose on awakening. As I read the piece, I was impressed with the author’s inspiration and insight. I read many of the comments from others who had also read the piece, and they were obviously as impressed as I was.
I did an internet search on the piece, and discovered that the author was not “the author”. In other words, the writing was shared by a person, who did not clearly state that this writing came from another source and that the person was not the original author.
Perhaps the person did not know who the original author was, and did not intend to pass this writing off as one’s own with giving proper credit. However, I had very little trouble finding the actual, original author of the piece from my rudimentary search methods. I find it hard to believe that the person sharing this piece would have had much trouble identifying the source, if only this person tried.
What I found more disappointing than not identifying and crediting the original author of the piece, was the fact that the person sharing this writing did not do anything to dispel the perception from others commenting that there was an original author that was unidentified or unknown. People who were impressed enough had written compliments to the person about how beautiful the piece was in the “comments” section, and the person sharing it did not point out that the piece was written by someone else.
After I contacted the original author of the writing and commented on the shared page about the authorship of the writing, the person gave the actual author proper credit. If I hadn’t done this, I wondered how long this person would allow this illusion to perpetuate.
The original author responded to me, saying, “…I have found the piece posted on countless websites where it has been altered and falsely credited to a number of other individuals, which I found especially disheartening since I wrote the piece during a very difficult period in my life and it was an expression of my very soul. One woman in particular was actually claiming that she was the author. Such is life.”
Why should “taking credit where credit is not due” be typical of life?
IT SHOULDN’T!
Now you may be wondering, after I wrote what I’d written above, that giving credit must be a wonderful thing. Indeed, proper citing or giving of credit is an act of integrity, but not when credit is falsely given, and especially not when credit is falsely given for personal gain.
For example, this same week, I wanted to consult a book of poetry by a sage that I thought was an English translation of the original Persian work. I had a question that I felt unsettled by, and I heard that many people loved this Persian poet mystic and consulted his poetry as an oracle.
So, I consulted the book of poetry by concentrating on my question and then opening the book to a “random” page. I was very moved by what I read! It brought tears to my eyes.
I did an internet search on the Persian poet mystic, longing to learn more about him and his poetry. That was when I discovered that the book I held was not only not a translation of this Persian poet mystics work, it shouldn’t even be published as a work by the poet mystic. The poems were, instead, “inspired” writings of an American poet mystic who speaks and reads no word of Persian.
But tell that to the publisher… maybe the publisher and the author both realize that being truthful won’t sell as many copies of the book as taking creative liberties with what the word “translation” means.
I felt disillusioned upon learning this. The author didn’t have the integrity to truthfully portray what this volume of poems really are, based on “common perception” of the word “translation”, and instead, made effort to pull the Latin derivative the word translation in an attempt to justify what I consider misrepresentation.
I was disappointed that the author did not have the courage to take credit for his own work, and instead, passed it off as the work of a more famous person, in order to sell his book of poems. This is a pity, because the author’s inspired writings are actually quite beautiful, and now these words are tainted by the veil of dishonesty.
Why should “giving credit where credit is not due” be a viable business strategy?
IT SHOULDN’T!
Therefore, this week I learned that part of “authentic authorship” of our lives require owning up to what we are and what we are not.
