Mark Twain said “If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything”. The validity of those words rings true till this day. The effects of a lie or lies always seem to lead to a path of extreme detriment. Although I have experienced both sides of a lie I often wonder if the reasoning behind lying is always just. Do people lie to protect? Or is a lie an extension of deceit? These are questions that many people can relate and reflect on because we have all been lied to. Whether you were told white lies about the Easter bunny and Santa Claus or someone lied to you about their whereabouts any false statement is quite simply a lie. The effects of a lie are what I have the most experience in and it is those effects which caused me to be a liar in turn. Living a lie or maintaining lies an individual has told over time is a tiresome process and a difficult one to bear. My experience in dealing with a lie began at a young age. I was often enamored with associating with people older than myself and I frequently felt I had to establish that my experiences were equal or greater than theirs.
Growing up in Alabama where the weather changes as quickly as a couch potato's remote and football is the epitome of life lead to an interesting childhood. Scarred knees, dirty clothes, and climbing willow trees were part of my every day life. As I progressed through middle school I began to associate with kids older than myself because we would indulge in playing basketball during recess. Although I was eleven at the time I could hold my own on the basketball court against the fifteen and sixteen year olds. It was during these times at the basketball court they would share their experiences in life amongst us and I often felt left out. Being t...
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...ons and anguish filled my heart as I listened to the pain of love. The effects of this lie broke my heart at the time as well as my trust and it took a long time to overcome the trust issues that were a result of this lie.
The effects of a lie are one of the aspects of lying that tends to be overlooked. People lie for different reasons or people find different ways to justify their reasons for lying. Nevertheless, the main component that remains true is that a lie is a false statement. A false statement can change the course of a person's life or it can be used to hide any number of activities, but maintaining a lie and ultimately having a lie exposed is what causes the most harm. Whether lying about meeting someone or lying about being involved in a particular activity people need to realize the power of words and the effect that they have on any person involved.
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.
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.
In “The Ways We Lie” by Stephanie Ericsson, the author uses her knowledge to talk about the different ways of lies and how those lies affect the liar, as well as the people who had been told lies. According to the author’s essay, there are 10 types of lies that people encounter every single day: the White Lie, Facades, Ignoring the Plain Facts, Deflecting, Omission, Stereotypes and Cliches, Groupthink, Out-and-Out Lies, Dismissal, and Delusion. Throughout the essay, it is connoted that people are lying in various ways even though they are not intended to. I had been taught that lying is a bad habit. According to Ericsson, there are many types of lie and I did three of them in my life: the White Lie, Omission, and Out-and-Out Lies; however, I can defend my lies for good purposes.
Richard Gunderman and Stephanie Ericsson each have written a piece explaining the impacts of lying on society. In Gunderman’s article, “Is Lying Bad for Us?” he outlines the health effects of lying, and how there are serious “mental and physical consequences,” (Gunderman 1). Ericsson’s essay, “The Ways We Lie,” focuses more on the different types of lying, and how each has a different impact. Although Gunderman’s and Ericsson’s pieces of literature both relate to the negative impacts of lying, their different thoughts of how lying impacts society, including types, health, and solutions, outweigh their similarities.
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...
I’ve learned how a lie can get so far from just reading a book, “Pretty Little Liars.” A very interesting book, if you love mystery and secrets. What I can remember is that it’s a book of five girls that gossip and lie like any other girl, except one day one of them goes missing and then all of sudden their lies and secrets are spread out. Lying can go so far, lying can lead to so many problems or even more lies. While lies can lead to people not having trust in you or even leads to loosing respect to a person.
The only thing that differentiates a good lie from a bad lie is their reason and outcome. A good lie may be used to protect feelings and even go as far as to save a life which relates to the
Are everyday rituals, such as, facades reflected as to being a lie? Simply preparing for a meeting or interview does not come off as lying, although another type of façade such as when someone asks, “Are you okay,” after a death of someone close to you, in reality it is a form of a lie, because you are not being honest. In Stephanie Erricsson’s article “The Ways We Lie,” she discusses many different types of lying, that most wouldn’t even consider. Ericsson claimed, “But façades can be destructive because they are used to seduce others into an illusion” (409). Depending how a façade is used, the outcome can be beneficial or damaging. There are facades that are used to cover up one’s true feelings, in order to protect an individual and then there is a type in which one puts on a mask to cover up how awful of a person they are. Charity, a former friend, deceived me with the qualities of everything she was not, my mom is a great example of when it comes to hiding when she is saddened. In this article “The Ways We Lie,” Stephanie Ericsson has a great point of view on the destructiveness of facades, although, it can very well be used in a good way just as much as in a bad way, in fact, like my protective mother, using facades for mine and my sisters own good and then a conniving friend using facades in
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
There are always consequences for lying, whether it happens immediate or nebulous, a punishment will occur. Some lies cause other people to hurt that have nothing to do with the situation but still get punished. For example, someone stealing an answer key to an important test in class will make the class suffer by taking a much harder test. Another example is a basketball team having to run for a teammate’s lies. Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible is based on the Salem Witch Trials of 1692, and it proves this exact point.
What are lies? A lie is defined as follows: To make a statement that one knows to be false, especially with the intent to deceive. There are several ways that lies are told for instance, there are white lies, lies of omission, bold faced lies, and lies of exaggeration. No matter what type of lie that one chooses to tell many people believe that lies do more harm than good.
Lying always makes the situation worse even if it is for your good, it will always come back to hurt you.According to Immanuel Kant , “a lie ,even if it does no wrong to any particular individual,always harms mankind individually”. This proves that lying always harms someone even
I once believed that lying was the only way out of hurting another person but after lying on many occasions not to get caught got me nowhere. I would lie on numerous times to my boyfriend that when the relationship got serious and committed he couldn’t help but throw my past lies in my face, especially during an argument. So after 2 years I have learned to always be honest regardless of the outcome. And so far it has worked to my favor.
People lie everyday to, in someway or another, keep themselves out of trouble. Many teenagers will lie to their parents about what they are doing for the evening, how much of their homework they have done, or how that glass vase got broken while they were out of town. We even lie to our significant others about who that other boy was that called the house or what exactly we did with our friends last night. All anyone is trying to accomplish by this is to stay out of trouble when we know we’ve done wrong. But we never think of the effects of lying. Although we think we’re being sly, parents are usually smarter than we give them credit for! And eventually our boyfriends and girlfriends will find out! Then the problem becomes the issue of trust. If you lie, there is no trust. That can be one of the serious consequences of lying.
Growing up, we are always told to never lie because it is the worst thing you could ever do. “Lying will only lead to a horrible situation with less than mediocre results. While lying is not always good, it is not always bad either. Samuel Butler once said “Lying has a kind of respect and reverence with it. We pay a person the compliment of acknowledging his superiority whenever we lie to him.