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An essay on the causes and effects of lying
An essay on the causes and effects of lying
The causes and effects of telling lies
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The Title of the book I read namely “Lying”, has been written by “Sam Harris”. It was published at Harvard Business School Press in 2011 and its revised edition in 2013.and consisted of about 22 pages in number. The unusual facts about the book and the author are that he has a Ph.D. degree in neuroscience, his writing has been published in over fifteen languages. He and his work have been discussed in Newsweek, TIME, The New York Times, Scientific American, Nature, Rolling Stone, and many other journals. At first, I thought that the author describes about the “Lye” but I felt that he uses his own different style to attract the attention of readers when narrating honesty, trust, and integrity. I chose to read the book because of several reasons. …show more content…
The author has described the reason for his motivation to write about when he attended a seminar and felt that lying, even about the smallest matters, needlessly damages personal relationships and public trust. He has considered lye as a deception. His thought that “The boundary between lying and deception is often vague” is very informative. The most important thing that convinced the writer to write it is likely to be an inspiration why do people tell a lie? The writer has explained clearly that people tell lies to avoid embarrassment, to disguise wrong doings and to exchange their …show more content…
In the book, the author has explained the mirror of honesty, white lie, trust, faint praise, secrets, lies in extremes and integrity in detail. He has explained that most of us are now painfully aware that our trust in government, corporations, and many public institutions has been undermined by lies. The author describes big lies have crystal rectifier many of us to reflexively distrust those in positions of authority. As a consequence, it 's currently not possible to mention something of substance on global climate change, environmental pollution, human nutrition, policy, foreign conflicts, pharmaceuticals, and dozens of different subjects while not a major proportion of one’s audience expressing paralyzing doubts regarding even the foremost estimable sources of information. Our public discourse seems for good riven by conspiracy theories.
I am with the author in many of his views. Many of the problems that arise within the society, or being caused due to differences in the behaviors and ethical values, are due to the thoughts of people who cannot think by being at other peoples’ places while handling the same situation. An obvious example, can be described here is the way people tease other people, and become offensive when vice versa is done by other members of the society
Shulevitz, Judith. The Liberation of Lying: What Wolff gets and the frauds don’t. 2008. Retrieved from
Richard Gunderman asks the question, "Isn 't there something inherently wrong with lying, and “in his article” Is Lying Bad for Us?" Similarly, Stephanie Ericsson states, "Sure I lie, but it doesn 't hurt anything. Or does it?" in her essay, "The Ways We Lie.” Both Gunderman and Ericsson hold strong opinions in regards to lying and they appeal to their audience by incorporating personal experiences as well as references to answer the questions that so many long to confirm.
Everyone struggles with admitting the truth. No matter how people are raised they still seem to fall into a situation where they feel lying is their only way out. Lying is the truth being hidden, therefore, withholding information is equivalent to lying. The truth may seem hidden but it will always reveal itself. In Frank Peretti’s novel, The Prophet, consequences such distrust, vices, and misunderstanding follow all the characters that lack truth.
Although it is considered wrong to tell lies, it seems that literature has offered us situations where telling lies isn’t necessarily bad. Of course, lying often has a tragic outcome, but not always for the person or people who told the lie or lies. Oftentimes, these unfortunate outcomes are directed at the person about whom the lie was told. Furthermore, these stories have explained that dishonesty can result in success for both the liar and the target. Maybe we have been teaching the wrong values to our children.
As John Ruskin once said, “The essence of lying is in deception, not in words.” This essence is debated in “The Ways We Lie”, written by Stephanie Ericsson, and “Doubts about Doublespeak”, written by William Lutz. In “The Ways We Lie”, Ericsson talks about the different ways people lie on a day to day basis. By comparison, in “Doubts about Doublespeak”, Lutz discusses the different forms of doublespeak that many individuals frequently use. Lutz considers doublespeak as a language that distorts the meaning of words in order to deceive another person, and only “pretends to communicate” (83). Although both authors agree that lying is about the use of deceptive language, Ericsson describes this use of language as occasionally being necessary,
Ericsson argued that “telling the truth all the time is nearly impossible” (159). Lies are part of everyday life, like drinking coffee for breakfast. For Barkley, lies became a stifling part of his life. The two authors explained how lies can impact a society.
In “The Ways We Lie”, Ericsson describes the different types of lies: white lie, facades, ignoring
Lying is an issue that has been debated on for a long time. Some people believe that lying is sometimes ok in certain circumstances. Some people believe lying is always acceptable. In contrast, some believe lying is always bad. Keeping all other’s opinions in mind, I believe that lying is a deficient way of solving problems and is a bad thing. I claim that only certain situations allow the usage of lies and that otherwise, lying is bad. Dishonesty is bad because it makes it harder to serve justice, harms the liar individually, and messes up records. Furthermore, it should only be said to protect someone from grave danger.
Stephanie Ericsson’s The Ways We Lie, analyzes and reflects on how lying has simply become the norm in our society. We all lie, there is not one person in the world that does not lie. Most people lie because they are afraid of telling the truth, however what they do not know is telling a lie can lead them in the wrong direction because many things can happen when lying to a person. The person can find out when everything unravels that person will not have trust in you and you would be known as a liar. To every action there is a consequence, so why not deal with just one consequence when telling the
Lying is simply an act of not telling the truth, and this definition of lying will be used in future sections of this paper. There are three groups of lies t...
When initially asked about the morality of lying, it is easy for one to condemn it for being wrong or even corrupt. However, those asked are generally guilty of the crime on a daily basis. Lying is, unfortunately, a normal aspect of everyday life. In the essay “The Ways We Lie,” author Stephanie Ericsson makes note of the most common types of lies along with their consequences. By ordering the categories from least to most severe, she expresses the idea that lies enshroud our daily lives to the extent that we can no longer between fact and fiction. To fully bring this argument into perspective, Ericsson utilizes metaphor, rhetorical questions, and allusion.
Likewise, deception is also a theme presented in Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre. In Vernon God Little, Pierre presents the antagonist Lally as someone who is deceptive in order to manipulate others. Keller and Lally both give an impression different to the true one; they both pretend to be something that they are not. Keller poses as an innocent man and Lally pretends to be a news reporter for ‘CNN’. However, Vernon notices a calling card which tells us Lally’s true identity. When he is asked if it’s his true identity, he says ‘Oh p-lease’ rather than give a clear answer of yes or no; he avoids the question. Pierre’s use of language through Lally illustrates Lally’s lack of sincerity. Lally’s inability to give a direct answer shows that he is lying because surely if he was not lying he would have no trouble saying ‘no’ straight away. Also the reader can infer that Lally is suggesting that Vernon’s accusation is not serious and that no one would believe him. Lally says ‘Oh p-lease’ as th...
That, like unreliable narrators, individuals often ‘lie’ to themselves in order to cover up the actual
This essay by Sam Harris opened my eyes to new ideals about honesty and deception. I think it was a very well done piece and the author without a doubt was very deliberate in the rhetorical tools he chose to convince readers of his opinion about this controversial topic. Harris uses a particular sense of pathos to convince readers that what he is saying is right. For example, he gives the example that 10 percent of communication between spouses is deceptive (paragraph 24), and again when he asks, “What attitude could be more disrespectful of those we care about?” (paragraph 60). He purposely and subtly implements these claims which deliberately pull at the reader’s heart strings, making them more susceptible to his ideals.
In fact, we might not be able to blame anyone for lying and being deceitful because deception starts at an early age. “At age 2, only 30 percent lie, at age 3, half do. By 5 or 6, 90 percent of kids lie.” Then as we become adults, we lie less often and choose when to be deceitful when it best suits us. For adults, it was about one in every 5 conversations. Another big problem is that we have classifications when it comes to lies- we have real lies and white lies. The distinction on whether they are of equal value is up to each individual, Maurice Schweitzer, from The University of Pennsylvania, stated “there are lies that fall under societal norms and are not very harmful. There are other lies that are self-interested and are really harmful.” However, there are others like DePaolo, the author of “The Hows and Whys of Lies,” who see no distinction between lies and feel that no matter if the lie was motivated by good intentions or not, it is still