Recently I have run into several situation of plagiarism. Not in an educational or professional sense. Nope these situations have been plagiarism on things like online interactions and sermons. Its just odd to me. People copying things pretty much word for word for no other reason than the pride of having someone think the words were your own. No money, no grade, just pride.
Yeah plagiarism is stealing from some one else but you aren’t really hurting anyone if you use their sermon or sermon illustration without giving them credit (especially since many are put on the internet to be used), or you take an statement from somewhere on the internet to bolster your opinion and pretend like it is yours. Typically in such cases you aren’t taking money from the author’s families’ mouths. Yet you are making yourself look like some brilliant idea was your own. As if you created the content. It seems to smack of pride to me and the thing is that I not only really like people who create content but also those who just point to the created content. We usually call the pointers “resource people.” Resource people have a high value. I really appreciate knowing people who can point me to good content. I contacted two such people today for some recommendations. In fact, as I mentioned before, I heard a podcast describe how pointing is of extremely high value in our society now (consider Pinterest, an entire website dedicated to pointing). So why lie and claim something is yours when pointing to it is just as valuable.
Just smacks of pride to me.