I was visiting a friend earlier this year, and somewhere during the visit, we ended up getting into a computer adventure game. I am not a "gamer," but the game struck me as interesting but not particularly difficult. I was quite surprised when my friend suddenly paused the game, so she could go look for some "cheats."

In unrelated news, just a couple of days ago, the very public story broke about Major League Baseball's little "problem" with performance enhancing drugs. And no more than a week ago, I came across a snippet of an Oprah show, about bariatric surgery to have one's stomach size reduced, as a measure to lose weight. Meanwhile, I have been reading an assortment of hubs here at hubpages, and noticed a very large number of "money making opportunities," offering people to make $1000s while promising they "only have to work one hour a day."

It got me to wondering about the whole current (and rather pervasive, it seems) obsession with "taking the easy way" and using whatever shortcuts can be bought, stolen or manipulated to cheat our way to results, rather than actually work for them. Maybe I'm very old-fashioned, but I do find this trend rather disturbing.

So my idle mind started exploring this a bit further. We cheat on spouses and partners (usually when they seem "difficult" to live with, and it's "too much work" to get into therapy), we look for "magic pills" to lose weight (or get our stomachs reduced to the size of a walnut) instead of learning to exercise and eat right, we cheat on our taxes (if we think we can get away with it), we steal (at least) office supplies from our employers, we lie about our accomplishments, weight and job success on dating sites, kids break into the principal's office to steal tests, rather than study, and we look for home income opportunities where someone else (good luck!!) "does all the work" while we reap the rewards.

But that's not the whole of it: We consider these things "harmless."

"Normal," even.

What's interesting and puzzling to me is the stark juxtaposition of such actions vs. the predominant "Protestant Work Ethic" upon which US society was founded. And it's not limited to the US-- many nations supposedly put a value on hard work. Bill Gates didn't become "Bill Gates" by chasing money-for-nothing, yet an increasing number of people seem to be looking for his results without effort. And-- ironically-- they will often put lots of energy into finding "the shortcut." What gives?

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm all for "making the most" of whatever situation comes our way. But it strikes me that the end result of cheating and short cuts are a bit like a "false-positive." It "looks good," but rarely amounts to what we actually hoped for.

For example, a number of studies have been done on the "magic pill effect." Take a person who gets a drug that "magically" gets rid of their depression. In many cases, it turns out to not be such a great thing. Why? Because instead of waking up to discover they suddenly have a "perfect life," they instead discover that life still sucks because the underlying issues were never dealt with, they were merely masked. Or take someone who hops from relationship to relationship, in search of happiness... when true happiness actually requires work on the self. Or-- as studies have shown-- many of the people who have stomach reduction surgery merely end up with a new addiction because now they are just "thin people who hate their lives."

Yes, of course there are exceptions...

I spent a number of years studying and being involved in network marketing (or "MLM" or "pyramid schemes," if you prefer), and subsequently ended up writing about them for various business publications. Most of the industry (I said "most," not "all," before you folks in "programs" start screaming at me!) is based on deception, illusion and fantasy, and is driven by a huge number of people's belief that you really can make a huge sum of money with almost no work. And even though fewer than 1-in-200 participants break even-- let alone make money-- network marketing (which now has morphed into all manners of Internet-based "plans") attracts millions of people. This is not some "fringe" industry-- an estimated 25 million people are involved, in the US alone. And the numbers are growing.

For most people, there's an unaddressed "price" that comes with getting involved in such programs: an unexpected assault on their self-esteem. Not only is the most likely outcome "failure," but most people also end up feeling bad because they find themselves "having to lie" about "how well" they are really doing, in order to get others involved.

The more I look at these trends, the more I wonder whether they are they are the result of us having so "much" in every aspect of our lives, and feeling compelled to pursue even more? And because our expectations of what we "should" have in our lives have inflated to where no reasonable human being can keep up, we increasingly resort to cheating and shortcuts...