In the article "The Ways We Lie" the author, Stephanie Ericsson, tells the tale of how frequent individuals lie in our world of today. Hence, she decided then to completely tell the truth for an entire week realizing, lying was somewhat of a natural instinct that many had to do at least once. Furthermore, Stephanie then began to categorize different types of lies in order to justify the reason as to why one would lie in that given type of way. Therefore, she placed lies in categories such as deflecting, white lies, omissions, facades, dismissal, ignoring the plain facts, group think, delusion, and out-and-out lies. In the end, she had gotten fired from her job, added stress to her personal relationship, and hurt others.…
Many people mistake the word “integrity” to hold the same weight as the word “honesty;” however, Oxford Dictionary defines integrity as: “the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles.” Therefore, we can conclude that being honest is only a part of having integrity, so just because someone says what he or she means, doesn’t mean that this person has integrity. In “The Insufficiency of Honesty,” Stephen L. Carter discusses the misconception that many people have about the difference between honesty and integrity by presenting examples of how people that are completely honest lack a sense of moral behavior. Through a clearly reasoned discussion, Carter raises some insightful points about how honesty alone cannot make someone or some action morally correct.…
Telling the truth all the time is nearly infeasible. Stephanie Ericsson’s essay titled, “The Ways We Lie” breaks down the activity of lying into subcategories of the different kinds of lies we tell on a daily basis. In addition, Ericsson’s essay manages to point out the elemental role that lying plays in our lives and our culture. We all lie, whether to abstain from confrontation, spare people’s feelings, conveniently forget, keep secrets, or even to justify our own words and actions. By clarifying the extent into which we all lie, Ericsson insinuates an abundance of ways in which we fib, by listing and describing each lie in its natural element.…
An Essay on Truthfulness, Deceit, and the Growth and Care of Erotic Love by Clancy Martin provides an interesting perspective on love, marriage, and happiness. Clancy Martin argues that a large majority of people cannot comprehend true love because of self-deception and deception to their significant other. There is a stigma that true love depends on complete and utter honesty and that is simply not true. Love is many things like eroticism, deceitfulness, and satisfaction but it is not complete honesty. He discusses how we as humans commonly lie and we are taught deception at a young age and this in turn carries into our adulthood.…
It is a way of escaping the reality of a problem or it is a last resort because you do not want to embarrass yourself by being honest. Moreover, the adage “honesty is the best policy” does not always ring true for many. Sometimes we have to lie in order to get to the truth. In Stephanie Ericsson’s “The Ways We Lie,” we find that lying is a natural and unavoidable act.…
But, most of the time the intentions were good, as Sylvia Tippmann claimed in The Virtues Of Lying, “their intention is to protect, benefit or help others”, not as much for hurting, stopping, or destructing others(Tippmann). And I’m pretty sure many of us know we tell lies for the positive reasons, not the negative reasons. Anyhow, Russell C. Smith has also stated…
A lie is a lie, and therefore we should be telling the truth no matter if the outcome is wrong or not. Ericsson showed that and explained that by telling lies, your only hurting yourself and would eventually not know what is real or a lie after a while. Telling a lie may fix an issue for just a short while, and finally becomes a more significant situation then if you had only told the truth to begin…
Lying… Is it okay to lie and if so, when should I lie? Many people think that it is sometimes okay to lie in certain situations such as protecting someone's feeling or possibly, savings someone's endangered life. Although others may argue that lying is never okay because you may lose your trust with someone close to you, which is completely possible and even though we all may be conflicted on the topic of lying there are positives and negatives to both sides of the spectrum. Most of us can agree that lying to protect someone's feelings is one of the most common reasons to lie to another.…
Why do we lie? What can the lies do to us? We lie because we don't want to hurt anyone's feelings or because we wanted to keep the people we love and know safe and protected. We lie because sometimes we just had to or because we had no choice. "We lie.…
In the essay The Ways We Lie by Stephanie Ericsson, she mentions on how she discovered that telling the truth all the time is nearly impossible because it would be living with some serious consequences. Throughout the history of the United States and other parts of the world, a high percentage of people tend to not be able to tell the truth when they are asked simple questions by members of their family or by their close friends. As telling the truth may have consequences, telling lies may have deeper consequences that cannot only hurt the person telling the lie, but it can affect the person being lied to. Being known as a liar can cause problems in a relationship because it will bring on trust issues and can also cause one’s partner to overthink…
In “The Ways We Lie” by Stephanie Ericsson she discusses and breaks down the activity of lying into different kinds of lies. Ericsson goes into great detail of about 10 of them, but there are many more. Some lies are for your peace of mind and maybe still bad for both parties, and some are for the better of someone else’s feelings. Ericsson believes that even if you feel you are perfect, nobody is and still tell lies no matter big or small, we do it and at times are unaware that it is considered a lie. Individuals nowadays get to a point where they are lying and don’t know whether to believe themselves or others.…
you find telling the truth way more easier than it is to tell the lie or “sweet talk” your way out of it. Lies no matter how big or small are going to add up and get much more confusing in the end. When speaking out on the truth its half of most people’s instinct or in my cases it’s not, but after a while and you focus on not telling lies it becomes nearly too almost impossible to lie .Someone or something gives it away and they are left already knowing. Like for example if there was a surprise dinner for someone at work and the person you are throwing a surprise to ask what are you doing for the weekend you say I have this surprise dinner I have to go to and you were just being honest and everyone was trying to be secretive about. If you are an honest person most people will come to you about information or feedback.…
I have personally felt that most of the time, the minor decisions between truth and lies are more stressful because they are more ambiguous, and that having a relationship with the person adds more ambiguity. If someone dropped their wallet on the street, I would have almost no hesitation in returning the wallet to that person because the consequences of my actions would be huge. I would gain money from that wallet, but my conscience would not be able to bear the guilt of that decision, which would ultimately outweigh the positive gain of money.…
Honesty is the avoidance of knowingly deceiving yourself or others. Honesty means not lying, cheating, or stealing, whether it is done with malicious intent or not. This holds true even in situations where dishonesty seems like the easy way out. Perhaps one of the least considered, and possibly most difficult, aspects of honesty is being honest with oneself. Everyone has moments where lying may seem like the easy way out.…
For example, if there is a person who does not like conflict, he or she may tell a lie to fix the problem (Ford 98-99). People will also lie to other people by leaving out less desirable information that might hurt the other person emotionally. Lisa Firestone wrote “Even lies told in the name of protecting others can leave you feeling pretty bad about yourself, because you don’t feel like an authentic, strong individual when you aren’t being honest” (Firestone). The most common reason that lies by omission are told is to prevent unpleasant situations from occurring, even if it causes one to feel guilty (Firestone). People who have a big heart or cannot stand the thought of hurting someone or embarrassing them typically will lie to the other person by leaving out the more displeasing details.…