According to Robert Braul “Every lie is two lies, the lie we tell others and the lie we tell ourselves to justify it. ” So, is it okay to tell white lies? Do you tell white lies for your own sake? Why do you lie even though you know that no matter how big or small your lie is, it is still considered as immoral? Well, according to an article entitled “Tell White Lies (Occasionally)” there are 3 possible reasons why people lie and I agree with the author.
I agree with Donald W. McCullough that it is okay to tell white lies when we know that it isn’t the right time, place, and way to tell the truth that sometimes we lie to protect ourselves and not to protect other people, and that we should be careful with the words we say. I agree that it is okay to tell white lies when we know that it is not the right time, place, and way to tell the truth. First, we need to consider other person’s feelings. An example is they might be feeling down and in a bad mood the moment we decided to tell them the truth. As a result, we usually tell white lies to turn their frowns into smiles.
Second, we need to consider the person’s situation. An example is they might have a family and relationship problem which hinders us from telling them the truth. Third, we need to consider the person’s self-esteem. Another example is they want other people to like them and most of the people are too insecure. Because of this, we lie to protect their feelings and to avoid confrontations which will result to a huge argument. I agree that sometimes we tell lies to protect ourselves and not to protect other people. First, we do not want to get humiliated.
We prevent ourselves from an argument which can lead us into losing. Furthermore, most of us are afraid to tell the truth when we know that this might affect our status in the society. Because of this, we tell white lies to protect our reputation. Second, we only think of ourselves. Admit it that sometimes we lie to prevent ourselves from being punished. In addition, we also lie to protect ourselves from our insecurities. We usually lie because we are afraid that this might change the way people look at us. Finally, we lie because we do not want to get hurt.
An example is we protect our own feelings. They say that honesty is the best policy but this does not work all the time, we lie because the truth hurts. Another example is we protect our pride. Most of us do not want to tell the truth because we do not want to admit that we are wrong. I also agree that we should think before we act. First, we tell lies to avoid hurting the feelings of someone. Words are very powerful so when we are friends with someone and we know that they are hurting we usually tell white lies to make them feel better.
In addition, we tell lies to protect their own feelings. If we know that a lie can make a person happy then go for it even though it is bad because we love them and we will do everything for them. Second, we tell lies to avoid getting into trouble. An example is we prevent physical and mental harm. A situation that is proper to this is when we are in danger; obviously we need to tell numerous lies to protect ourselves from getting hurt. Third, we tell lies to avoid losing someone.
We tend to lie because the truth might ruin our relationship with the person even though we know that when we lie to someone, we already ruin the relationship we have with them. Moreover, gaining the trust of a person is very hard; we tend to push them away because some of us have trust issues, so when we finally gained that trust we are afraid to lose it. As a result, we lie to prevent losing their trust. Knowing the right time, place, way, protecting ourselves, and other people are the reasons why we lie. A lot of people will usually say that the truth will always prevail no matter what.
Still, people are lying because in our society now people are judgmental, if we tell the truth to them their perspective will change and if not their perspective towards us will still change. There is no right or wrong in our society now, we just follow the trend and that definitely needs to change. There may be suitable reasons for a person to tell white lies, it is still not a reason for people to do it frequently. As stated in the previous paragraph, the truth shall and will prevail eventually. Telling white lies must not be a person’s habit.
