Lying: Lie and Kara Butler Eng-1104

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ENG-1104 - SUMMER 2010
MAY 27TH, 2010
How is Lying Beneficial?

Lying is a crucial component of everyday life. Like it or not, lying is always going to be a part of life. The definition of lying is a known untruth expressed as a truth. A lie is a type of deception in the form of an untruthful statement, especially with the intention to deceive others, often with the further intention to maintain a secret or reputation, protect someone's feelings or to avoid a punishment or repercussion for one's actions. Lying can remove unwanted attention, can get you out of a bad predicament, make people feel better about themselves, and can help people even though it might cause you a little harm. Few people care to consider the positive impacts lying has on our lives, as a result, lying has a negative image. This essay is to show how lying can sometimes be useful, beneficial, and acceptable.

Most people look at lying in a negative perspective and do not realize the good in it. According to Julian Keenan, there are some good reasons that allegedly go back five million years. He asserted: Lying has played a key role in our evolution, in making humans, human. It’s one of the most amazing, sophisticated, advanced cognitive abilities we have. All evidence indicates that we are genetically programmed to lie. The liar has such an advantage over you. So the gene is passed on (2004).

Keenan said that lying is to be genetically programmed into our minds and it is not able to be helped. Lying is a lesson learned early, nearly 95% of children lie and they start the practice at the early age of two. According to Keenan, lying is a beneficial product of evolution—it helps give humans more control.

Lying can be a big help in removing unwanted attention. For instance, say someone was giving a speech in an enormous room crowded with hundreds of people and they accidentally got their words mixed up. If someone would scream as loud as the...
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