It Is Really About Maturity
The game is on, players are having fun, except for the person in last place, who decides they don't want to lose - so they cheat - and justify their cheating as a misunderstanding of the rules, or claim the game is rigged, or accuse other players of cheating, etc., etc., etc.
The cheater does not cheat primarily because they are dishonest; they cheat because they lack the maturity to practice honesty, they lack the maturity to play the game fairly, they lack the maturity to respect others.
Self-imposed ignorance describes a lack of maturity, as well. Acknowledging facts and behaving according to those facts is not part of the metric for the immature mind; rather, facts are barriers to such people, instead of guides. Epistomology teaches us facts are self-evident; they do not require proof. Accepting facts at face value requires the maturity to accept the world as we find it, while immaturity refuses to do so, often leading to much whining and crying (I wonder if Boehner owns stock in Kleenex...).
Greed is an expression of immature selfishness coupled with a conscious lack of respect for others, for rules/laws, for consequence. Those who practice greed do so because they refuse to care about anything except feeding their own appetites, and reject maturity and reality in the process.
Is maturity a choice, then? For most of us, yes - it is a conscious decision made every day, hour by hour, minute by minute. Maturity is the art of combining self-discipline and knowledge - of self, of the world, of the facts as one finds them - and allowing this gestalt to manifest in one's behavior and perceptions.
We are not fighting ignorance, or greed, or misinformation, or cheaters, in this world of ours; we are fighting immaturity.
Republicans cannot seem to win elections without rigging the game (voter suppression, purging voter roles, black box machines, etc.), and while this is dishonest, disingenuous, and displicable, it speaks more to their maturity level, than to anything else, for were they mature, cheating to win would not be a viable practice, especially when the stakes are so very high.
Perhaps we can refine our approach to dealing with Republicans, if we consider the possibility it is maturity they lack, rather than knowledge, or wisdom, or honesty. And it is this lack of maturity in which their behavior is rooted, manifesting in a manner which parallels the drama one experiences with a child who is deep in the throes of a temper tantrum...
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