The Truth About Lies

In the documentary (Did) Honesty- The Truth about Lies, the professor Dan Ariely showed to his audience about the results of the experiments about how we lie to others, but particularly to ourselves. The Professor pictures his findings about the human nature and the rationalization about how everyone is dishonest to a lesser or great extent.
This documentary makes any one to questioning about the explanations that we give ourselves about how the lie is justifiable and permissible. His assumptions about rationality are pictured in the film with sense a great sense of humor. However, ironically, his experiments involve deceiving the subjects. Mr. Ariely portray the fact that people tend to exaggerate qualities and abilities with the sentiment of wanting be better and this changes the ability to be dishonest trying to rationally it. Mr. Ariely says that we convince ourselves of things that are not true, we see things with exaggerated optimism, and
that is when we rationalize and justify our actions. This process of deceiving us is very strong. The excuses that the brain does are “Everybody do it”, I am not hurting anyone”, lying for others, lack of supervision, etc. all the rationalization lead to lie or cheat in a major grade. Moreover, the professor explains that in society exist two types of cheaters, he called them great cheaters and small cheaters. There are just a few great cheaters that lie in great scale one example is Bernard Madoff, and many little cheaters that at the end are the ones that hurt more the economy and the society. “The Truth About Lies” not only present people that lie and cheat in small or greater degree and some have to face consequences at the same degree of their deceiving.
Some lies are not bad or we called “white lies ” or silly like the existence of Santa Clause or the Tooth fairy. others lies are to comfort and help others like the man that helped a woman in distress when a storm make her fear for her live in airplane. Or the lies that doctors and nurses said to Dan Areily as teenager to ease the pain, there were kind lies, is it a dishonesty of who take care him?, but who can face such pain knowing the truth? Some others are realistic and understandable like Kelley Williams Bolar, a mother from Ohio, who her justification for lie was to enroll her daughters in a better school district. Who do not want better education for their kids? Probably the majority of people find this lies justifies and even think that is necessary. People tend to justify lies for a good cause with not conflict at all, because is society
acceptable.
On the other hand, the documentary presents the cases of people that lie to obtain selfish benefits. Those lies contain greed that growth like a snowball, hurting others and staining the lives of the cheaters. The author of the experiment present brave confessions of people like a Florida housewife, Marilee Jones, Joe Papp, Garrett Bauer, Matthew Kluger and some others that faced severe consequences and damaged their credibility. These examples show us what corruption started and how it infiltrates into a system. Whatever is small or great cheater affects the society and the economy of any country.
The good news is that is easy to fix the conflict of interest that lead to lie or cheat. The author said that the best deterrent against corruption is obtain by merely reminding us of our moral fiber, and that can keep ourselves incorruptible.
I believe that this class will help us to be conscious about what ethics mean and applied in our lives.