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Effect of lying
The cons of lying
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More handpicked essays just for you.
Effect of lying
The cons of lying
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
You are Susanna Boyd, an English colonist living in Virginia. Just like most people in your town, your parents came to America as indentured servants and worked very hard for seven years growing tobacco for a rich family in Virginia. When your parents’ contracts were up, they received clothes, tools and money to buy new land. They have a small farm in Western Virginia where they grow corn and raise pigs. You have grown up with plants and animals your whole life, and you are looking forward to getting married and raising a family on your own farm.
JIn Ericsson¶s essay The Ways We Lie, she writes 9 descriptions and examples of lies weall encounter every single day. It¶s implied throughout the essay that humans often do not intendto lie, but we all do in various ways. We choose to make life easier by ignoring facts,confrontation, or potentially bad situations through a lie. A theme Ericsson focuses on isdeciding when to lie. The trick of thought when telling a white lie is that you begin to think youknow what¶s best for the person being lied to.
How do you feel when you lie? Anxious? Stressed? If so, then why are you lying in the first place? Personally I believe lying isn’t needed except for life or death situations.
As Ericsson puts it, “We lie. We all do. We exaggerate, we minimize, we avoid confrontation, we spare people’s feelings, we conveniently forget, we keep secrets, we justify lying. . .” (Ericsson, 2004, p. 120). These all exhibit forms of lies that people use every day.
In the essay "The Way We Lie," Stephanie Ericsson explains a few of the many reasons why we lie, "We avoid confrontation, we spare people's feelings, we conveniently forget, we keep secrets" (1992, p. 159). We want to avoid a big argument or fight that might make matters worse. We lie to protect another from the truth because it might be unbearable. A lie can come out of our mouth without much thought.
Although the truth is not always pretty, it is better to know than to be oblivious of the situation. As a friend, the best thing to do is provide the most genuine and beneficial advice to a friend. Lying only makes the situation worse. Another example of lying is ruining a relationship; it ultimately breaks the trust between friendships. I learned this harsh lesson in a way that really made me understand the importance of honesty.
A person that lies is basically wasting their time, because it is soon going to come out, whether or not the person would want it to. However, lying could be okay, sometimes in certain cases, such as life or death situations. If someone was in a hard situation, they might would lie. Simply because the person who lied would not want to tell the truth or get hurt by by telling the truth, in a hard situation.
This quote says that lying happens frequently; no one can resist it. It also says lying is deadly, which is also shown in the Bible within the story of Adam and Eve, when the serpent lies to Eve, convincing her to consume the sacred fruit. In modern society, lying is a common practice. A person may lie protect themselves, or to gain something wanted. This may be due to religious diversity or the decay of respect in society.
I guess the reason for my lie was I didn 't want to make the sustain awkward or make her feel embarrassed for making a harmless assumption. Maybe I’m the only person who does this, but unlike the narrator I find that lying isn’t as hard of a task for me. I don 't know if that makes me a so called bad person for lying so easily or whether the importance of honestly drastically
One of the greatest commandments written in history is “Thou Shalt not lie.” From a young age we have been taught of the negative effects of lying. We are taught, as toddlers, not to cheat on tests and punished for our dishonesty when caught. But as we grow older we discover that lying is not as terrible as we were raised to believe. Sometimes lying is safer than the truth.
Furthermore, telling the truth all the time has serious consequences. She postulates that lying, though a form of hedging, must have some merit. She cites a broad definition of a lie from Webster’s dictionary, and asserts that this definition includes many types of lying. She narrows in on a specific type of lie in the next section of the essay: the white lie.
Stephanie Ericsson justifies the habits of lying in “The Ways We Lie” using firsthand experiences and solid metaphors. Essentially, Take into consideration before you lie, because it could be at someone else's
On the one hand, I think lying is not always the answer; I personally avoid telling a lie because if you are going to lie you have to be carefully thinking about the consequences that those bring. I know that big lies can be a problem. For example, hiding your relationship with someone saying that you are single when you are not. That would bring so many consequences for yourself and for others too. That is why it is better to not tell big lies because that would affect you and other people negatively.
Lying has consumed a major part of today’s society. In fact, a 2002 University of Massachusetts study claimed that, “60% of adults can’t have a ten-minute conversation without lying at least once.” Everybody lies about different things depending on the situation. Some lie to protect others, and others lie to protect themselves. Other lies are told just to simply cause harm.
It is best to tell the truth, even to a murderer because it relinquishes responsibility over the situation. If one was to lie to the murderer, and he caught and killed the victim anyways, his death would be morally the fault of the person who lied. This is challenging to accept because the initial reaction is to protect the victim, but by doing so one assumes responsibility for them. It is irrational to lie when considering a world where everyone lies - the murderer would know he was being lied to, thus entering the building to kill the victim regardless. Therefore, it is more rational to simply tell the truth.