"The Ways We Lie"

"Four lies in the course of a day, none of which I felt the least bit guilty about… I once tried going a whole week without telling a lie, and it was paralyzing,” thought Stephanie Ericsson in her essay entitled, “The Ways We Lie.” In this short essay it goes over roughly 10 different types of lying and some examples of how they are used in everyday life. Some of the lies that I thought were more relevant and used almost every day are stereotypes, and groupthink. In the essay when Ericsson goes over stereotyping she uses an example of when she admitted to a group of people that she had “a mouth like a truck driver,” and in this group a truck driver immediately stood up and said, “I am a truck driver, and I never cuss.” In our everyday lives people gossip and could stereotype about basically anything. Sometimes they might not even realize that they’re doing it. The other method of lying that stood out to me was groupthink. In this section of the essay, Ericsson displays actualities that, “It requires a combination of other forms of lying- ignoring facts, selective memory, omission, and denial, to name a few.” An example was used that racist people against the Japanese said that they weren’t nearly smart enough to invent a torpedo effective in less than 60 feet of water before the attacks on Pearl Harbor. This stood out to me because people in a group think they come up with conclusions when really it is all in their heads. I see this happen all the time in everyday life.