Argh, matey—the world, she’s a’changing around us. Yo ho, yo ho, a bottle of rum, and really bad eggs. As you probably know, Disney, Bruckheimer and Depp have once again rolled the dice on another pirate film. We’ve always liked pirates whether it’s Peter Pan’s enemy Hook or the crew from Treasure Island (made into a movie several times over the past century). We like them mostly because, even though they are supposedly “evil,” we like to think that they represent some sort of good. Or, at least they are fun. Depp’s character has made the portrayal into a multi-million dollar personal empire. Check out this clip from the hilarious Mitchell & Webb; they are bashing the Nazis—listen to what they say at about 1:28 in the clip.
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Get that—Pirates may have skulls, but they’re fun! Yay!!
Put does that love of piracy really help us? Three years ago, a recent survey reported that almost 80% of current high school and college students had admitted to cheating in some form on a graded assessment. 80%!!
Is it any wonder that we now find ourselves awash in questions as to whether our education system is able to sustain the country?
Recent surveys and reports are no better. The average iPod used by a young person (14-24 years of age) contains almost 2000 songs. About 80% of those are stolen—whoops, “downloaded illegally.” Got to get my terminology correct.
Worse, 95% of all music downloads are considered illegal, and this is 10 years after the arrival of the iPod and iTunes Music store. Not so sure these downloaders actually have good taste though—the current #1 most stol…forgot again, most illegally downloaded song was Brittany Spears’ song Telephone. Brittany Spears still has a career?
Movies are no better. Avatar has been downloaded over 16 million times. The black market for sto—grrrr, illegally downloaded songs is valued at $25 Billion. Meanwhile, Blockbuster has declared bankruptcy, an afternoon “value” movie now costs over $10 and DVD/blueray sales had declined 27%.
Much of this conversation drifts into an earlier post about what someone does or does not own. Let’s leave that alone for now and only make this point. If your plan for lifetime success is cheat and steal your way through, then you’d had better be prepared to face the consequences of the pirate. Sure, Captains Jack and Barbossa seemed to make their way through easy enough (as do fan favorite Mr. Gibbs), but for most pirates, they die sad deaths having never really tasted the success that they hoped for.
Think about how those lives would look if properly invested in their personal success through goal setting, visioning and hard work. Instead, they found themselves working on some leaky boat for a mean taskmaster, bad health, no one to really trust and generally a pretty miserable life.
Instead of following Jack’s wake, how about this—stop stealing music, DVDs, or computer programs. Stop putting yourself into situation where theft feels like the best idea, especially were your academic integrity is concerned.
We need to turn back the hands of time to defend our culture. The life of a pirate has never been seen as glamorous by most of our citizens. We need to defeat the idea that cheating is cool. Sure, it’s great to watch Johnny Depp work his magic, but let’s remember that in real life, Depp has worked hard to perfect his craft as an actor. He didn’t lie, cheat or steal his way into those millions. He worked for it!