S2 W2 - Truth and Lies

Hello!
Wow wow each comment is so interesting!
I will try to answer to your questions John!

First, obviously it's not okay to lie in any case. The lies are different if you lie to a stranger or to your brother! But in some cases it's better to don't tell the truth, for example to not hurt a person who cares.
In my opinion, the truth can be different because it depends on one's point of view (if you are the "victim" or the "liar" or a stranger). I think there are several truth because each part of the "story" have story details and have an experience.

Moreover, yes I think that there are big and small lies! Clearly, if you lie to your boyfriend or girlfriend because you cheated on him/her it's not the same that if you lie to your boss and telling him that he is super smart!

Necessarily, telling the truth is an important moral concept because if you try to say the truth, people know that they can trust you all the time. But sometimes people can not react well so it depends of the person who is in front of you.
Like someone says before, lie doesn't make you a bad person because you can lie for good reasons (to not hurt a person who cares about). We not leave in a world where there are the good person on the one hand and the bad person on the other hand, everyone has a different lived experience so I can't judged a liar without knowing his history.

I don't think that lieing is a necessary skill because if you lie very well, you can lie all the time to everybody and at some stage you can believe in your own lies, it's very dangerous. Personally, I know someone who lies everytime for everything and nothing, it's incredible! I'm sure, she doesn't know if she lie or if she tell the truth because she lies everytime even to his parents, to his friends!
I really believe that she is mentally ill but I'm not an psychology expert so :/

Obviously our parents and our teachers lie to us, I hope that it's for small things haha! The politicians ? of course they lie to us because they believe that if they don't lie to us we don't vote for us (it's not true in my opinion...). The politicians are so disconnected of the reality it scare me.. anywhere!

To conclude, I think that we should have to lie at one time in our life whether for don't hurt someone or whether for to hurt intentionally someone (I think it's often not the case).

See you

Admin wrote:

Le Foll Camille wrote:

carolinemaggi wrote: I have a question for Camille, why would he be the man who lied first ?

You're right. Of course, it could have been a woman.
It also raises the question, who lies best and most often between man and woman?

haha

Being a man I'd have to say that women lie the best nd definitely the most often.

Men are lying less often because they're less delicate and graceful with the use of words and handling...

Sorry for my mistakes , I did not correct myself because I have to rewrite because of the website wich erased my comment

Emeline Texier wrote:

I don't think that lieing is a necessary skill because if you lie very well, you can lie all the time to everybody and at some stage you can believe in your own lies, it's very dangerous. Personally, I know someone who lies everytime for everything and nothing, it's incredible! I'm sure, she doesn't know if she lie or if she tell the truth because she lies everytime even to his parents, to his friends!
I really believe that she is mentally ill but I'm not an psychology expert so :/

Emeline, if I can enlighten your questioning, it turns out that lying excessively isn't considered yet or truly as a mental illness. I think, and I'll wait Adelaïde and Zaineb's opinions about that (because they probably saw it during their psychology studies), that lying is more a problem about self-confidence, and sometimes jealousy about the others. By lying, people create a fake self, called the "faux-self" in french. It's also called "persona" in latin, the person you show to the outside world, who may be different from who you really are. They choose their reality, and work hard to make their family/friends believe them. It’s probably a very profound discomfort, which then becomes unhealthy when the lies touch all the subjects, for sure.

Thanks Emma for your intervention, you're so smart
In this case, I really think that she is ill because she lies everytime for nothing ! She creates herself a bad identity, what is the advantage ? I don't know....

Emma Vancostenoble wrote:

Admin wrote:

Le Foll Camille wrote:

carolinemaggi wrote: I have a question for Camille, why would he be the man who lied first ?

You're right. Of course, it could have been a woman.
It also raises the question, who lies best and most often between man and woman?

haha

Being a man I'd have to say that women lie the best nd definitely the most often.

Men are lying less often because they're less delicate and graceful with the use of words and handling...

I'm not convinced that men lie less often than women. But I do agree with Emma that they're less subtle. Their lies are less believable or too big to be taken as the truth.

Then I would say in general terms that lies are used by everyone in different ways depending on the context and their inventiveness.

hey there,

Telling the truth and being frank is not the same thing yeah, but sometimes being frank is better than being a hypocrite, if my friend asks me about the new dress I'm bound to tell her that it doesn't suit on her rather than saying "oh yeah it's so cute" and saying in my mind "ugh, she is so ugly wearing this dress"...So yes it's good, to be frank, but in a good way, it's my opinion ^^

See you

Lauralee Spadat wrote:

carolinemaggi wrote:This subject reminds me a report I saw. It was about lie detector. A man, who was really lying, was not detected as a liar because he convinced himself of his own lies. Our brain can be surprising sometimes...

Yes Caroline, I also have seen a report on this kind of practice. it's a subject that interests me a lot and on which I had to deepen my knowledge when I was doing research on serial killers for my studies last year.
Indeed, some person who are guilty, and therefore who lie, manage to make believe the opposite even by using a lie detector. In fact, the lie detector just analyzes the physiological sequences of the person. Normally, lying leads to the anxiety of the person who uses it. And this is detectable because fear causes the secretions of the adrenaline hormone. Thus, the heart is supposed to accelerate and breathing intensifies, which is precisely what the detector must detect or not. However, people who manage to do work on their psyche do manage to convince themselves that they are not lying, or that what they are doing is good, so the machine can't detect sweat or abnormal heartbeats.

I also fin this topic interesting. Do you have any documentary or report you could recommend to me?
Thanks for these informations!

Hi ! Indeed, after all those thoughtful commentaries, I feel like I miss the action too !

So I'm going to try to build my commentary.

First of all ; i think the myth of Santa Claus isn't a bad thing. It allows children to dream, and well, we all agree that christmas is much less entertaining when you know the truth.. (no, not because it's your turn to give presents...)

It's bad to lie ; that's what our parents and society always told us. But when something bad happens, you can't know how you're going to react. Not long ago, a couple of friends broke up. In fact, he cheated on her a few month ago. When he did it, he was at a stag party so all his friends knew it. After a while, even if he asked everybody to not tell the truth, everybody knew about the story. Everybody but his girlfriend... I think it's the worst situation you could be in because if you say something to her, it will hurt her, but if you don't tell anything, it's bad too ! But, like we say : everything always comes out in the end... And it even more horrible for her because she found out that everyone was informed exept her.

This sentence is one of the reasons why I think, even if it hurts, we have to tell the truth. It could be hard sometimes but, if it doesn't hurt today, it will some day, maybe even more. Plus, lies end up to secrets and secrets usually hurt...

Hello John!

I think telling the truth is very important. I have a lot of faults, but lying isn't one of them. I'm a very bad liar...when I lie to a person, either I'm laughing or I'm found out within seconds. I've already tried to lie to my mother, unfortunately my eyes are like an open book.

That's why I never lie and I am sometimes too frank and clumsy too. I think it is necessary to tell the truth even if it can hurt the person in front of me, but only if it is a necessity. Sometimes it is necessary to know how to lie in order not to hurt others unnecessarily when it is about trivial things. Lying can become a vicious circle... that's the risk... one lie leads to an accumulation of other lies. The main risk in lying is that you lose the trust of the people around you and end up alone. On the contrary, when we tell the truth we are freed from a weight, we do not live in fear that the truth will be discovered, as when we lie, because the truth always comes out in the end.

There are times when lying to a person, even if it is not to hurt them, does not do them any favours. If someone you love takes the wrong road, you have to tell them. Whether from a private or professional point of view. Criticism from others helps us move forward in life, I think criticism is much more constructive than compliments.

As for the lie in itself I'm completely against it. Personally I don't like people who lie... especially those who lie to make up lives for themselves. That's why I'm not present on some social networks like Instagram. On these sites some people post their lives in a very theatrical way, to show the beautiful and extraordinary, which does not correspond to reality... I find this very false

Hello John;

Well, I must admit that I wasn't really inspired at first by the subject, but when I thought more about it, it seemed to be a rather interesting one. I asked myself "Sould we always say the truth and nothing but the truth no matter what ?" When we are hiding an information or a fact is it lying or not ?

Well, in my point of view, lying is bad unless it is for a good reason !!! I am not saying that to convince people to lie, but sometimes we lie to protect people, we lie to avoid conflicts or we just lie because the truth is just too hard.

Actually, if we pay attention to social relationships between young children, we will surely see that they lie sometimes almost naturally for spontanious reasons such as wanting to make friends by inventing little fantasy stories about their lives. Should we then really call them liars ?

So, telling the truth or lying depends really of the context.

What about you John, do you agree ?

Zaineb Hemandi wrote:

So, telling the truth or lying depends really of the context.

What about you John, do you agree ?

I'm not sure that 'the truth' exists.

Did I forget to do my daily exercise?
Of course not John, it's never too late to give my opinion on a subject chosen in classroom.

So I totally agree with Lauralee's opinion. In fact, I think there are different conditions. One can lie when it comes to protecting someone, to keep a magical childhood for the children by letting them believe in Santa Claus or the tooth fairy etc. I think this is totally understandable and one shouldn't always tell the truth in order not to hurt people's feelings. Then I think that kindness should not be confused with honesty. Indeed, you can tell a person that the dress made him look good even if it's not really true so as not to make him sad, but you can't tell someone who sings badly that he sings (except for laughing, of course), because if he believes it and launches his career it won't be beneficial for him because it will be based on a lie. That's one example that comes to mind but there must be others obviously.

However, there is one thing I don't agree with, and that is lying in a relationship. One must not lie about one's relationships, one's outings, one's life in general, otherwise the trust of the other will disappear and lies are often the basis of deception or other lies in a couple.

So to conclude I think that there are different ways of looking at things, but lying is not good in all cases we should always tell the truth to encourage honesty!

I would have liked to give more of my opinion but I wouldn't want to arrive late to your class. I would like to point out that I always arrive right on time (10:00 am) and that it's not my fault if all my classmates camp and sleep at the CEPE in order to be early to your class ^^.

See you in 30 minutes John!