The Ways We Lie by Stephanie Ericsson - Coursework Example

?Critique-“The Ways We Lie” In the article “The Ways We Lie” Stephanie Ericsson explores the benefits and harms of lie that people tell in daily routine using different ways. According to her people tell a lie to maintain their or others reputation, or to keep themselves or others from being hurt. To convey her conception about the possible positivity and negativity of the lies thoroughly to the readers, she presents ten kinds of lies which include: The White Lie, Facades, Ignoring the Plain Facts, Deflecting, Omission, Stereotype and Cliches, Groupthink, Out-and-Out Lies, Dismissal and Delusion. Ericsson creates a very good impression of the article from the very start by giving an account of her own lies she told to avoid hurting people or to save herself from some loss which encourages the readers to move forward and analyse his own. Her verification of the impossibility of spending the whole day without a lie makes her sound natural. Her deep inspections of the reasons behind the small lies which are spoken by people justify them for being spoken with good intensions. At the same time her example of those lies which, though spoken to save people from being hurt, but affecting them for longer period of times as the truth make them cherish hopes and take wrong decisions confirms her consciousness about the sensitivity of the subject she is handling. She has also informed the readers about her own confusion about deciding between telling a lie or speaking the truth makes the readers take the matter seriously while keeping in mind the consequences of both options. The format that she has chosen to express her observation and analysis makes her sound precise and focussed avoiding unnecessary details as she has divided the subject matter into types and further elaboration is given in points. Ericsson’s attempt to include different types of people telling different types of lies in variety of situations demonstrates her vivacious effort to make the article comprehensive. To gain this effect she even touches the sublime issues and illustrates the universal existence of lie. But the fine analysis of the article finds many loopholes in this piece of work. The main loophole that dissatisfy the reader is its lack of proper presentation of the subject matter even its being organized as it gives so many examples under the heading f different types of lies but there is lack of reason that why people do not find enough courage to speak the truth and rely on lies. She finds that lying finally puts one at losing end but she does not provide the readers with the solution of avoiding it or the way that makes the listener less offended and accept the truth. At some points readers get confused at the repetition of the ideas and remain unable to distinguish one type of lie from the other. Though the examples about the lies are interesting but the reader still finds boredom as they keep on going without any diversity in the idea and thus the format has failed to enhance the understanding of the reader. Lies however destructive may be but there is no denying the fact that they are inevitable in daily life and are often told with good intentions so as to save close friends or relatives to from being hurt. People tell lies to avoid problems and gain material benefits without putting any other person in loss. Some people do so as do not have the courage to speak truth and escape the reality by telling a lie to not only others but also to themselves. There come many situations in life when people find refuge in the domain of lie and save themselves from harm and do not feel guilty as they do reasoning within themselves and find their lie a justified act. The White Lie is the most common type of lie that people usually speak to maintain good relationships and build their own good reputation and the consequences of these lie do not bring any harm to any of the persons. For example, a person arranges a party at his home and invites some of his close friends to spend some quality time with him. Now, another close friend of him, whom he missed or did not want to invite him in that particular party, visits him coincidently at the time of get-together and finds all their common friends enjoying in each others’ company. At this point, many hurting thoughts come to his mind; he feels bad for not being honoured as a close friend and gets embarrassed for his uninformed visit. The host himself feels uneasy at this situation and thinks about saving his reputation and keeping that visitor from being hurt and embarrassed. Here, lie may come to save both people and the host comes forward with pretentious courtesy, tells him that he was missing this friend of him very badly and was about to ring him to know the reason of his delay. Now the person, who had felt hurt and embarrassed, regains his confidence and tells in a friendly tone that he did not receive the text message or missed the invitation for some reason and he luckily joined the party. So, this little lie did not bring any harm and there was an air of relief for the host and his lie would be justified for keeping peace among his friends. But lie does not always come to save people of both sides. There are many examples that the writer discusses in which lies are told with good intentions and the lies are justified in the eyes of the liar but they bring harm to the other person whom the lie is told affects his whole life. For example, If a person dies in a war and his family is not informed to save them from severe shock and they do not move and keep cherishing the hope of his return, is a kind of lie that snatched away a beautiful life that was waiting ahead. Hiding the truth is another kind of lie that brings devastation but hiding some of the important truth and revealing the rest is also harmful as it create misunderstandings. So lies must be avoided even if the intentions are good as one cannot always judge the situation of the other person aptly and may fails to do good from his end rather be the cause of destruction that could be avoided by speaking the truth. To put in a nutshell, this article gives us a detailed account of the possible lies which save people in disastrous situations and bring peace and material benefits to people. On the contrary, there are also situations where speaking truth is a better option than telling a lie even if it brings momentary sorrow but it helps people to analyse their situations in a better way and avoid mistakes in future. But, a lie is always a lie and it cannot match the beauty of truth and one should try to avoid it as much as possible. So, one must be careful in deciding which way he is going to respond in order to have best consequences. Read More