Essay On Why We Lie

English

People live in a continuous struggle between lie and truth knowing from the early childhood that truth is good and lie is bad. Though lie is a phenomenon difficult for understanding. It is considered to be a vice. Living in lies is even worse, it destroys human sole, leads to tragedy. But lie is needed by people otherwise it would be gone long time ago.
Stephanie Ericsson in “The Ways We Lie” explains that life without lies is paralyzing. She tells that “I discovered that telling the truth all the time is nearly impossible” (49). This happens mostly because we are governed by the desire not to offend somebody's feelings or just to make things simpler. At the same time we always blame those whose lie becomes obvious to us believing that “when someone lies, someone loses” (Ericsson 49).
This expression is indeed true because telling lies you are as if stealing something precious from your interlocutor. You distort the whole picture that is being imagined by him or her and when the truth is revealed, it turns out you have hurt his or her feelings.
Having so much practice behind, people have learned to lie as Masters. There are so many ways of lie that it is difficult even to mention all of them. The delusion, deflecting, dismissal, facades, groupthink, ignoring the plain facts, omission, out-and-out lies, the white lie, stereotypes and cliches are those we encounter in our lives more often. Having such arsenal it is easy sometimes even to believe in your lie.

Works Cited

Ericsson, S. The Ways We Lie. The Utne Reader. New York: Dunham Literary, Inc, 1992. Print.