Have you ever lied? Average people lie at least once during a 10-minute conversation and tells an average of two to three lies. In the society we live in, lying is a common behavior and it is a part of human nature. Therefore, it is much easier to lie since we would rather fix the trouble in our life and escape the bad consequences. The lies can separate into two kinds: black lies and white lies. Black lies leads to a negative consequence such as hurting people while white lies usually protect others to make them feel better for instance when you receive an ugly sweater you wouldn’t say “it’s ugly i don’t want” because it’s rude. In short, we try to lie because of our own reputation, so we cover the truth, for own positive gain, running away from punishments or protecting others.
We are surrounded by lies every day in our lives. The most recent lie I came across was that people lie for their reputation. (I went around people asking why they lied). I asked many people but i had many answers that were similar but lying about their reputation was only brought up once. Which I thought it was interesting how people lie by adding an exaggerating bit to their story to make it more interesting.
This part of the essay made me think of the Big Fish the movie we watched in class. Edward Bloom would tell lies about the people in his stories to make the story more entertaining for the people who were listening to the story which is not a immoral thing to do since it does not hurt anyone. Whereas people who lie about things that never happened to brag to other people feels unpleasant.
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Such as Marion Jones, she lied to her fans before she was caught for using illicit drugs for competition. She never told the truth since she knew that her reputation was going to be ruined and also she took all the gold medals even though she knew herself that using drugs would be an unfair advantage to everyone else that were competing, but kept using it until she felt it was right and that took 7 years before admitting that she did use a illicit drugs (she enjoyed all the fame and glory for 7 years then admitted to everyone so i thought it was a fitting example to put in this essay). Marion Jones lied about using the drug and took all the credit of “her” records (getting all the money from the gold medals she had won and the sponsors that supported her).
People who lie for their own positive gains (I am going to try being the devil’s advocate). The lawyers who protect the criminals. There can be some lawyers that lie for their selfish gains, when a client has a lot of power and money then the lawyer can be paid lots of money as well as get advantages. Many people around the world mostly lie to achieve the things they want and make their plans go ways they plan to. A classic example of a group of people that use exaggerations are politicians.
Politicians will say and do anything to persuade the citizens that they are right, and that they will do all they promise to do, if you vote for him or her. They try to convince us all the time, and often succeed, that they will make changes. Just think about the many times we’ve heard, ‘If you vote for me, I will lower the taxes’. Also, in school this seems to happen often such as students lying to take the test later, fake being sick to be excused on certain projects, or students who take advantages of nice teachers. Students in school lie to gain good scores, but the only reason that they lie to gain good grade is because of the social expectations.
The parent of many student expect their children to go to a good college where they can find a good paying job so they can live a happy life but in order to go into a good college they must have good grades but since the stress of AP classes are overwhelming they tend to look for an easier way to lessen the stress of the expectation and that is by gaining advantages from certain classes by lying.
But in my opinion cheating and getting the grade they don’t deserve is not a good way to deal with the pressure that they are feeling because other students who don’t cheat also feels the same pressure but tries even harder to reach their goal and i think it is unfair for the student who actually overcome the pressure and push on through with their own strength (taking on the rough course head on).
In addition to the last paragraph the people who lie to run away from punishments will be the perspective of the criminals that hire lawyers to get away from their punishments. I’m going to share a personal experience I had when I was little. When I was in Korea, I was coming back from school with my friends when we walked by a tiny toy store that had displayed the toys outside.
One of the goofiest friends just walked up to the toy that was displayed and took one so easily and walked casually along the road so I thought since he did it i can do it too so I took the displayed toy from the shop and never looked back. We all said our goodbyes after laughing and talking about the thrill we just felt. I walked in my house with the toy in my hands but my dad was in the living room watching tv and noticed a new toy in my hands and asked where i got the toy from.
I lied and said that a friend gave it to me (I’m a bad liar) my dad is keen on these kinds of things so he knew that I was lying. (I guess he followed me to my room) I went into my room and tried to hide it because I didn’t want to get caught and be in trouble. But my dad caught me red handed while I was trying to hide the toy so he asked all these questions and I told the truth. After telling the truth we went back to the store and paid money to the store keeper.
During the process of stealing and lying i felt my heart beat fast and when I was caught hiding the toy the shame that covered my mind made me feel really bad. In my mind not only having the guilt from theft to deal with emotionally, but also the lying afterwards, and the fear of the theft taught me a life lesson never to steal again. Also, I learned long ago–after the incident–that it is much more preferable to tell the truth from the very beginning, even if the results for me aren’t all that positive. I also try to decide on actions that won’t put me in a position in which I’ll have to lie to someone in the future.
And, once people start to fear being found out, they will not have the courage to enjoy the life they are living and will not get much out of life. If we spend our time worrying about our lies being found out and the unavoidable confrontation that will expose the liars to people as “who are willing to lie, and who can’t be trusted” then our time would be wasted. Many people will judge the liars harshly that they’ll never trust the liars again, and when fear enters our minds, everything grows out of their normal proportions. (This was the exact toy in the exact packaging)
When we lie to protect others, it is called a white lie. White lies are those untold truths which we tell in order to diminish the feelings from being harmed, embarrassed or when they are in distress. By telling a white lie, we balance out what we and others perceive/think or feel. We usually tell white lies to assist others, as well as beneficial for us.
Generally, both the person who is lying and person who is being lied to benefit too, normally white lies help sustain our good relationship. If you consider all the harm that telling the truth would do and take away the harm caused from telling a white lie, then this gives more of a positive response when told a white lie. A rather helpful and an acceptable lie. These lies are intended to avoid hurting, or to offend another one. For an example we also talked about acceptable lies in class. You gave us an example of when a student gives you a ugly necktie you wouldn’t express your real thought about the ugly necktie.
You would rather say thank you and never wear the necktie. If you told the truth (morally correct) it would hurt the person’s feelings since they prepared the necktie to be nice and friendly. But I’ve been only talking about the positive side of a white lie, when giving a white lie we assume that all is positive but lies in general can ruin our relationship with the person even though we know were lying to make the person feel better, we may ruin the relationship we have with them.
Also, gaining the trust of a person is very hard so if we keep lying to them then we tend to push them away because some people may not like being lied and what the true answers from their friends. I’d rather have someone tell me a painful truth than have someone else telling me things, only to have me find out about the lie.
As a result, I’ve researched many types of reasons why people lie. And I really enjoyed seeing different types of perspectives on lying. When I went to talk to people (to gain their thoughts on why people lie) I’ve learned many different lies that people say which i put in this essay because I thought it was interesting how people thought differently than I did on subject of lying. This essay allowed me to view a wider perspective of lies that people say and read different articles on lying.
