Topic: Is honesty always the best policy?
Honesty
Should one always speak the truth? Is telling the truth at all times the better option? Consider a person who is a. This person is likely to have a good reputation and be trusted by others. Furthermore, he or she will never be caught in a lie. On the other hand, consider both the act of lying and the person who lies. Lying is defined as “believing or thinking one thing and consciously expressing another” (Shibles). One lies by expressing something other than what he or she thinks or believes. Lies could be told for various reasons. The primary reason is to conceal the truth. A person might obscure the truth to maintain good relationship with others, to avoid hurting their feelings, and/or to protect innocents from harms such as tortures or death. Some other reasons are to hurt or fool someone, to be funny, or to develop some sort of reputation. If one lies and the lie is discovered, he or she could lose others’ trust and respect. Earning them back could be difficult or impossible because the people that the liar had deceived will be reluctant to trust him or her again. Therefore, for any of the above mentioned cases, except when protecting an innocent from harms, being honest is always the better option. Lying to save people from fates they do not rightly deserve, e.g. protecting an innocent person about to serve a jail sentence for a murder, is a noble and just reason to lie. The other reasons for lying are not as just or noble, so honesty is the better option.
Two of the reasons a person could lie include maintaining good relationships with others and not hurting their feelings. For instance, before leaving it is considered polite in the society to thank the hosts and hoste...
... middle of paper ...
...r, or imprisonment. Imagine a person being subjected to such fate due to their religion, e.g. the Jews during the Holocaust. For all other cases, being honest is the better option because it eliminates a person’s fear of their lie being discovered and promotes trust among people.
Work Cited
Alchin, Linda. "Anne Frank Timeline." Dates and Events. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Apr. 2014. .
Davoudian, Shiva. "II. California Homicide Law : The Basics." Loy. L.A. L. Rev. 36 (2003): 1383, 1391. Web. 18 Apr. 2014. .
Shibles, Warren. "A Revision of the Definition of Lying as an Untruth Told with Intent to Deceive." Argumentation, 2.1 (1988): 5. Web. 18 April 2014.
It tells us how often we lie or tend to lie under different situations and scenarios by taking real world examples. Kornet explained and analyze the result of various studies by Bella DePaulo, a psychologist at the University of Virginia and her colleagues. As lying and deception becomes an integral part of every individual, it is important to know its impact and its results on our life. We are lying about one or the other thing at almost every moment of our life. It can be at workplace, in a relationship, or even friendship. Kornet concludes this article by saying, “The ubiquity of lying is clearly a problem, but would we want to will away all of our lies? Let’s be honest.” I completely agrees with the author as we have to take a step against lying and deception and to be honest in our lives. Kornet’s article provides really good studies and after analyzing those studies one can think of his/her lying habit and how often he lies in a day. I myself tried and thinking about how many times in a day I lie, and found that I lie a number of times in a day. This article is really interesting and I encourage everyone to read this article. After reading this article, you will come to know the actual truth about lying and its
In society, some people are looked at as liars or “bullshitters,” as stated in the article, “Is Lying Bad for Us?” Honesty is not always the best policy, and in certain situations, liars are best not to tell the truth when protecting the innocent, or protecting oneself. Because of this, lying should be looked at as a standard in society and something that people recognize in every day life.
Would lie to save yourself from punishment , or tell the truth regardless of the consequence?
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 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.
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...
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.
The. Secondary Sources: "Diary of Anne Frank." World Book Student. World Book, 2014 -. Web.
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
With different views on when it is OK to lie, the people continue to debate. But personally, I respect Kant’s views on the idea that lying is bad. Lying weakens the purpose to serve justice, destroys the liars’s dignity, and messes up the records. But I think that rare situations justify lies. I believe lies to save someone's life or just to protect someone from a big danger is the only type of lie that is justified. Those situations are the only times I think it is OK to lie. It might seem that lying to get yourself out of trouble is a situation that makes the lie justified. But I think that is a selfish reason for your own good and that people are thinking less about the society and more about their own good. Lying to get out of trouble is one of those many lies that are not justified.
Honesty is the best policy. It is a virtue that we all must aim for to have a peaceful and serene life. It is a foundation to a healthy relationship dealing with the people in our lives, whether they are our parents, friends or brothers and sisters. There isn’t a healthy relationship without trust and that is how you gain honesty. Being honest avoids trouble and makes your life easier instead of worrying about things that you have lied about and implying stress on yourself.
It's actually easier to just tell the truth. There are many reasons for this. One reason is, people don't have to think of lame excuses, making it much faster. Another reason is, people who tell the truth won't get in as much trouble when someone finds out that they lied to them.
Secondly, it is okay to be untruthful if you are trying to protect people. In certain situations, it is safer, and more practical for you to tell a lie rather than putting a loved one in jeopardy. To illustrate you may be in a situation where you are in a serious or dangerous situation, and you do not what anyone else involved, to keep them safe. For example, if you are getting held up for ransom, would you tell the truth to a loved one and get them involved, or lie and keep them safe? The obvious answer is to keep them safe at all costs, even if it means lying. Also, you do not want to put someone in harm’s way, so it would be ...
"Honesty is the best policy," is a phrase many people still hear regularly. Most people tell their first lie when they are kids. Telling a lie is an exceptionally strange propensity because naturally everyone knows how to tell one. Mass numbers of individuals lie for various reasons that include the need to provide self-protection, the lie is oblivious to the liar, and to enhance another's feelings.
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