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Explain the importance of integrity
The importance of being honest
Explain the importance of integrity
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“Honesty is the best policy”. This is an old cliche that everyone has probably heard thousand times both at school and home since we were young. In some school, it is written on the wall in a corner of the school so students will see it everyday. The reason why adults keep repeating this cliche is because they want to educate their children that honesty is an extremely important value that impacts our daily lives in a significant way such as building close and stable relationship with other people. However, as we grow up, it is not hard to realize that there is less to almost none people will mention this cliche in our group. Does it mean that we are old enough to know to behave appropriately without being reminded or we simply know that honesty …show more content…
Everyone is busy keeping up their own business regardless at schools, workplaces or dealing with family and friends’ issues. Being honest is really a good way to save your time and focus on more important stuff because you can just behave and present who you really are. In contrast, telling lies means that you have to create a different you that live in a different world, perhaps you do this to impress other people or get away of trouble, but it surely takes a lot of effort and time to make people believe the lies. Most of the time, it does not take long to expose yourself in front of people whom you lie to since it is really difficult to maintain a lie without making more lies. For example, a young, financially unstable guy who wants to court a beautiful girl in his class might borrow a car from his best friend and spend all of his weekly expenses in order to have a dinner with the girl in a fancy Italian restaurant that he will never go in his life. The guy thinks that by doing all that things, he will be able to impress the girl and win her heart. However, all of us can guess how the girl will react to this relationship after she finds out the truth since he has been cheating her from the beginning and it will be hard for her to put trust on him in the future. On the other hand, his dishonesty of his financial ability not only ruins his relationship but also costs him a fortune that he can only afford to eat bread for a certain period of
The article, “Is Lying Bad for Us,” accurately describes the intentions of a “liar.” The author says, “Though liars do not tell the truth, they care about it, while the bullshitter does not even care about the truth and seeks merely to impress” (Gunderman). This statement proves that lying should not be viewed as out of the ordinary, or unacceptable, and that liars should not be viewed as bad people. Lying can be shown as a way of protecting or caring
Plato once said: “Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty.” People are taught from a very young age never to lie or keep secrets. It would be easy for anyone to stand behind the argument: “Honesty is the best policy,” but in times of personal anguish, that decree is quickly disdained. What this argument fails to consider is that keeping a secret or lying is the justifiable in times of crisis.
An abundant amount of people would say they try to contain honesty, however, we are all liars, no matter how hard we try. Because of the pressure from society, we all are forced to make ourselves look and feel satisfactory with the rest of society. This is not just considering students in a school setting, but also parents and those at home. My cousin
The society that we live in today is built around lies. Banks lying to customers in order to feed the capitalist mindset, politicians lying to citizens in order to gain power, and charities taking donations with open arms however are stingy when giving back to the cause. The common reason why these organizations lie is to hide what they truly are. People also deceive others in order to hide who they truly are. From a young age, lying becomes engraved into one’s mind, we are taught to walk, talk, and lie.
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
Traditionally, it is agreed that any and every form of telling the truth is always the best thing to do. In the essays of Stephen L Carter and Stephanie Ericsson, this ideal is not exactly true. It is expressed in "The Insufficiency of Honesty" as well as "The Ways We Lie" that honesty is hard to come by and that there is more to it than believed. The authors convey their views by first defining what the concept is, picking it apart, and then use common occurrences for examples of the points they had made.
Telling the truth can have some consequences, but a lie can cause more damage in a relationship once it has been figured out. People believe that by just lying, a problem is solved, but problems start when lies are told. Lying destroys relationships and truth builds honest relationships which, can last forever. In both F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Rob Marshall’s Chicago, characters lie because they feel that it is easier. However, lying leads to a downward- spiral. The society we live in can either lead us to a complicated relationship with the truth or easygoing. The problem with constantly telling lies is that it starts off with one, then leads to another until everything you say is a lie. Being truthful
Through out history people have been influenced by what they want to hear and the way a current trend is happening. The evolution of mankind has drifted towards a different society than what we where born to sustain. We are emotionally driven human beings that want to feel accepted by the rules of society. Sometimes an individual can confuse actions or emotions towards trying to fulfill the standards society has imposed. I have analyzed two articles that incorporate how a society reacts towards integrity as well as honesty and the belief that an individual in order to be a part of society one must comply with the standards that are set. As I began to interpret what Stephen L. Carter explained in “The Insufficiency of Honesty” I examined they
I think it was my mother who taught me the meaning of honesty. Not because she was honest, but because she lied all the time. She felt that the easiest way out of any given situation was generally the best way out. And, for her, that generally meant telling a "little white lie." As a young child I thought it was kind of cool. And, naturally, when I would come to her with a concern or question wondering what I should do, she generally advised me to lie.
Integrity is an idea that has been discussed by individuals with a verbal acuity far beyond anything I could ever hope for. With that in mind, I will not delve deeply or poetically into what integrity is or should mean. However, I will simplify the meaning of integrity; at the core, integrity boils down to doing what is right even if nobody is watching. See a piece of trash on the ground and nobody is around...pick it up. Driving down the road with no cops in sight...drive the speed limit. Arrive at a tollbooth and no attendant is working…pay the toll. An applicant is not readily available to sign a form for enlistment…track them down and ensure they sign it. I could write examples until infinity becomes paltry in comparison, yet I am sure I have made my point clearly; the greater good must be upheld regardless of who is there to ensure it is happening. It seems obvious that integrity should be a trait every individual is hardwired with from birth. However, integrity is a thankless trait; nobody is around after all. An individual cannot expect someone to clap, to smile, to thank them, to do anything actually. By definition, integrity should be something that is followed through with simply because an individual wishes to do what is correct, not because they expect accolades of any sort.
We lie all the time, lying is not something new to our culture. We lie to our parents, we lie to our friends, we even lie to our significant other, but why do we do it? There is not one set reason on why we lie but they can vary from an insignificant reason to something more nefarious. A good operational definition of a lie is “A lie is a false statement to a person or group made by another person or group who knows it is not the whole truth, intentionally.” (Freitas-Magalhães) We have been raised to know that lying is usually a bad thing, and it’s better to tell the truth, not to mention the circumstances get exponentially worse if you are caught lying. No one wants to be labeled as a liar, or untrustworthy. This may sound unorthodox but I personally think lying is perfectly fine; depending on the situation. If you have a prima-facie duty to be dishonest it’s perfectly acceptable. Ross says a prima facie duty or obligation is an actual duty. “One’s actual duty is what one ought to do all things considered.” (Carson) I’m not the only one who finds this too be true. Ross would also agree with me, He says “Lying is permissible or obligatory when the duty not to lie conflicts with a more important or equal important prima facie duty.” (Carson) As I was doing research on this topic I did read one extremely compelling argument on why we ought not to lie. Aristotle basically said a person who makes a defense for lying could never be trusted. (King.)
You pull up to the second window at the McDonalds’s drive-through to pick up the shake you just ordered and paid for, and the person working there hands you a huge bag of food while asking you if this is what you ordered. Do you A: Answer “Yes” and take the food or B: Answer “No” and tell him/her that you only paid for a shake? Yes this really did happen to me. What did I do? Believe it or not, I did the honest thing and gave the food back. But the real question is what would a majority of American’s youth do in a similar situation. There are two potentially dishonest acts in this situation, lying and stealing. In my opinion most high school kids are not above lying and/or stealing. The reason this is true is simply that many of today’s parents are not above lying and/or stealing. So after observing people that hold a high place of respect do things unmoral like this, their conscience says to itself, “Okay, lying and/or stealing is not really that bad, and is acceptable to my parents.” A majority of Americans youth today are morally confused, due to the un-honorable actions of their parents.
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.
Liars have rumors spread around about how they lie all the time. Nobody wants to talk to them because they won't know if they are lying to them or not. They aren't trusted as much as people who don't lie. Liars never get very far in life and always have a reputation of lying. It's much better to tell the truth and have friends who trust them, rather than lying and having rumors spread around making no one like them.
Telling the truth teaches one person self- respect for themselves and others as well. Telling the truth also sets a good example for others to do the same thing and make a “chain reaction”. People can make a “chain reaction” by passing on what they have done from one person to another, and before you know it, everyone is changing greatly, and the world is progressing tremendously. Lies are told all around the world, and they are told every day. One lie can often lead to another lie and cause you to be caught up in one big lie that will be hard to get out of if people do not tell the truth. If a person thinks that is okay to lie, they better think again, the truth always comes out no matter how hard a person tries to keep it in, or how much someone thinks that they can get away with lying. No person can keep in or hold a grudge with what they have done. After all, telling the truth is the right thing to do, and everyone should do it. Telling the truth is always much easier than the trouble of a