In "The Ways We Lie" by Stephanie Ericsson, Ericsson talks about how lies exist in aspects of our life every single day. She describes the different ways that humans lie and justifies why people doing so. These lies discussed in this article include the white lies, facade lies, lies of omission and lies that focus around stereotypes. White lie is a common way that people lie to others, because the lie would be better than the truth. Sometimes, the truth will cause more damage or dangerous than a simple harmless…
The ways lies can impact or affect the lives of the people who tell them are explained in “The Ways We Lie” written by Stephanie Ericsson in 50 Essays. Ericsson talks about the types of lies and how it impacts the person who tells lies. For instance Ericsson Three Common Lies Ericsson uses are The White Lie, Deflecting, and Omission.…
8. I would say Ericsson’s tone for the most part stays light and at some points even humorous. She uses just enough humor to keep the reader hooked and entertained but not too much so it doesn’t mock. I also think there is almost a hint of guilt in her tone for her lies and for they war all people lie to each…
The debate over the acceptability of lying is a complicated one. Some feel that it is morally wrong and only ever worsens a situation. Others feel that it is acceptable in cases where feelings could be hurt, or if a person’s self-esteem may be lowered. However, there are instances in which lying happens simply to avoid the consequences of a person’s actions, and most would agree that it is morally wrong. Instead of going back and forth between “lying is wrong” and “lying is okay sometimes,” a better use of our time would be learning to improve our honesty with ourselves and with the people around…
In "The Ways We Lie," by Stephanie Ericsson, the author depicts the many ways humans lie and justifies the reasons for doing so. There is the white lie, which is basically telling an untruth . Facades are basically changing your personality while ignoring the plain facts, as the title implies, is a false action done with the intent to deceive. Deflecting is not answering the question at all; it is being up-front about comfortable issues and not revealing the couple of very important issues that changes everything. The omission is simply when you don 't say anything instead of lying. Stereotypes create lies from actions of a certain group. Group think is to believe something just because others believe it. Out-and-out lies are straightforward, and dismissal is simply avoiding the lie all together. Delusion is lying to oneself. Ericsson believes lying is important in order to not hurt people’s feelings and to be successful and happy. I agree with Ericsson to an extent. It is true that lying may cause hurt feelings and a simple, harmless miss truth would have solved that problem. However, the author also states that she tried to go weeks without lying and she found it almost impossible. So basically, the author believes that society is full of compulsive liars but at the same time, lies are important,…
Where did lying come from? If this action is regarded as such a negative, dishonest act then why do people lie in the first place? How and why do people initially learn how to…
In "The Ways We Lie," by Stephanie Ericsson, the author depicts the many ways humans lie and justifies the reasons for doing so. There is the white lie, which is basically telling a harmless untruth instead of a harmful truth. Facades are basically changing your personality while ignoring the plain facts, as the title implies, is a false action done with the intent to deceive. Deflecting is not answering the question at all; it is being up-front about comfortable issues and not revealing the couple of very important issues that changes everything.…
It is curious to know that every day without thinking everyone tells lies “The Ways we lie” by Stephanie Ericcson is a realistic text that demonstrates what a lie is, why lies are told, how lies are justified, and consequences. According to this essay “We lie. We all do. We exaggerate, we minimize, we avoid confrontation, we spare people's feelings, we conveniently forget, we keep secrets, we justify lying to the big-guy institutions.” (Page 408 of The Bedford Reader). Ericsson analyze the different ways we use lies to help and hurt our self in our everyday lives, and how this effects American culture.The purpose of this essay is not to make people feel bad about themselves or to censure anybody, but to make people think before they lie.…
First and foremost, lying effects you extremely. If you tell a little white lie such as, "Does this dress make me look fat?" "No!", then you may have some guilt riding on your shoulders. If you tell a huge, important lie, then the guilt will be riding on your shoulders like a one thousand pound weight. For instance, what the president did. After a pointless lie, the whole nation is totally poor and most likely starved because of the lack of money for food and water. 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 boyfriends or girlfriends 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! Eventually there will be no point…
Lying destroys trust amongst people and results in lost prestige. When trust is lost, it is difficult to earn it back because we tend to assume that a person who has lied once will lie to us again. We then start to put our defences up against that person in order not to be deceived once again. Not only that, sometimes, we also tend to bear a grudge for long periods of time and it takes a while before the person who lied is forgiven, that is, if we ever choose to forgive and forget. The…
In “The Ways We Lie” by Stephanie Ericsson, she talks about the many different types of lies. She says that we all lie, and we all lie in most of the ways she mentions. In my opinion, I agree with most of what she says. It is true that we all lie in some way, but we might not all lie in the same way. Some people like to use the “lie of omission” while others might to tend towards the “white lie.” While these lies, in my opinion, tend to be the most common, some of her other example of lying are also used widely. “Ignoring the plain facts” is used all over the news and media, and her example of the Church in the 1960s is one of the most famous. This is also an example of irony, because the Church itself was the one “ignoring the plain…
When a person tells a lie, they steal someone else’s right to the truth. Stephanie Ericsson in “The Ways We Lie” explains ten specific lies that she believes are prevalent in today’s society. The reading begins by the “The White Lie” being the most harmless lie. Then she describes “Out-and-Out Lies” being the worst lie because it ignores the truth to escape responsibility. Ericsson attempted to go an entire week without telling a lie to analyze how conversation would be if it were all honest. Surprisingly, she believes it is nearly impossible. From personal experiences “The White Lie” is seen as the least harmful and almost a natural part of everyday conversation, then ranging to the most harmful being “Delusions” which is seen as lying…
According to the author of Why We Lie , David Smith we are not aware of the lies we tell. That we as social beings are so good at deception we have fooled ourselves. In society, those who are too honest or blunt are antisocial or even pathological. People want to hear what they want to hear, it doesn’t matter if it's true or not. Which in way lying gives us social interaction benefits, but what are the cons? According to researchers Anita Kelly and LiJuan Wang of Notre Dame,lying can cause stress. Which is bad for your health . Also if we were to think what makes someone a criminal or a model citizen. Is lying to protect others versus lying to benefit yourself. So if lying did deteriorate, our society’s crime rate would too. Its correlated with cheating and…
Lying also can be very hurtful to yourself if you get caught. If you’re not honest with the people you enjoy, then you will end up separated. Lying can result in being imprisoned for being obstructive. Lying can get your job taken away or even something as simple as losing respect from someone.…
Lying is unacceptable as it is morally wrong. For example, Truthfulness are statements which cannot be avoided is the duty of a duty of a person to everyone, however bad the disadvantage.(Kant, 4) The people have a duty to not lie no matter the reason, like to protect people from emotional pain. Kant believes that there are no excuses for lying, except I believe lying is ok to protect someone from death. In addition, “a lie, even if it does not wrong any individual, always harms mankind individually.”(Bok,4) Lying hurts the morality of mankind because it makes…