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Sunday, November 5, 2017

The Gospel Writers

"The Gospel writers nicked stories from each other verbatim "

That's a phrase I found in a Facebook comment thread.  This is how people like to defend plagiarists. Plagiarism is not so bad, because Jesus, Shakespeare...  It pretends to be historically savvy but is quite the opposite.   

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What bothered me most in people defending their own plagiarism was the appeal to their status as victims and the use of the vocabulary of self-love and empowerment.  

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

So actually, they feel really bad.

I wouldn't, it would be oh gosh, I did not intend, withdraw that piece, and that would be it.

There are other things I do feel that bad about. Things I know I didn't do quite right, but didn't have the power or energy to do better. It's about things not done, though, not things I've actually done. Or conversely, things I have done but that are misinterpreted. I wrote a needs list for the department the other day: if we are to accomplish X, what things would we have to do, what steps would we have to take? It got taken as an assignment of work, what? you are ordering us to do all of these things? You have no right! And felt terrible because of the false accusation, I was only working on a roadmap that would get us to the point we had been told we should get to.

I don't know what to think but as I say, I can see that these people feel really, really bad.

I caught someone in a lie the other day and they really lashed out.