Weigh in Critical Analysis, Essay Example

The use of the critical analysis tool is essential in evaluating situations in the work place or life. The analysis breaks down each part and explains it to try to solve the issue, while to criticize giving an opinion of something and supporting your opinion by evidence. The main purpose of critically analyzing one’s work is to evaluate the work to help the readers understand. In analyzing, humans develop a habit of lying to ensure they give their feedback and opinions. This paper shall tackle two crucial issues on lying. These include; the types of lying and the benefits accrued from lying. Judith Viorst, a poet, and Author, has written a book called Redbook, which was published in 1981 and tackle the delicate topic of lies. The subject of lying is challenging to tackle, and more questions arise from it. After a critical analysis of the subject, Judith Viorst, the author of Redbook, concludes that she cannot use her findings to evaluate people since many will disagree with her. Is lying part of the moral behavior of humans?

Lies in this era are accepted in everyone’s social space (Viorst 1981). When a survey is conducted among random people, most of them find social lying acceptable and necessary since it is part of our lives. People believe that lying is a civilized way of behaving, and without it, people’s relationships will be full of disagreements and fights. Being courageous to always tell people the truth despite the situation, will cause pain or embarrassment. In this case, pain can be brought when you give a person a truthful answer, such as a person believes that he/she is beautiful and in real case, they are not. While some the people tolerate lying, others do not believe that lies strengthen the relationship between people. Some people believe in their moral value of always telling the truth and accepting reality. White lies prove to strengthen the relationship like encouraging a child; he is good at playing piano to bring the best out of him. White lies are used for growth, motivation, protection, and interaction. Some of the lies are selfish in nature, and they mostly destroy relationships. Selfish lies are experienced when one intentionally lies to hurt another person or protecting yourself through another person.

People lie to emotionally or physically protect other people (Viorst 1981). Protective lies are believed to contain the damage that may be caused by truth-telling. Lying to protect others is easy since people trust it is a good value to help others get into unnecessary trouble. People often lie to their loved ones to ensure that the trust between them is stronger. Even though there are good intentions of maintaining trust with loved ones, lies can cause the relationship to break up when the other person comes to know the truth later. Some of the deceits, such as parents lying to their children, especially the young ones, about financial issues, is understandable and can be tolerated. Lying to your partner or friend who can understand the situation is not acceptable, and once a person starts lying, it is never known when it will stop and the effects that might be brought afterward.

Then there are the peace keeping lies, which are meant to avoid arguments or irritation. The main purpose of this lie is to avoid trouble and maintain peace from the parties involved. Even though peacekeeping lie is designed to benefit both people, lying to the person affects one’s conscience. This lie makes a person feel irresponsible by trying to prove that if it were not for the other situation, the task would have been handled swiftly. An example of a search scenario is when a person forgets to call their friend, they blame the telephone line and claim it was busy throughout. Peacekeeping lie is seen creeping into marriages to avoid unnecessary confrontation of certain situations. The lie proves to be vital in marriages because sometimes it prevents the couple from going into a divorce. When arguing with a person, it is easier to lie to them that they have won. You fully support their ideas to avoid the argument from turning into a fight, especially when dealing with people who are emotionally and trouble makers.

With the above reasons raised by Judith Viorst, it is easier to understand why people prefer lying than telling the truth. Furthermore, Richard Gunderman, critically analyzes that lying is bad for us.

According to Gunderman’s analysis, an average American citizen usually lies and lies more than once in a single day. Gunderman examines lies as behavior that affects social interaction and physical health. When lying, we deceive others and also ourselves (Gunderman 2013). According to an estimation, the average American tells lies 11 times per week. If there was no way of detecting or judging a person who has lied, would people still tell the truth. If there are no consequences or benefits of lying, will people adopt the norm of speaking truthfully and shun away lies. These are some of the circumstances that raise questions on how the situation will be if the reasons and effects of lying are not followed. On his philosophy best seller, Harry Frankfurt, On bullshit, differentiates between lying and what he perceives s “bullshit.”  The liars always care about the truth even if they do not tell it, while the bullshitters do not care about the truth. Their main purpose is to impress (Gunderman 2013). Instead of accepting the truth by claiming “I don’t know,” most people fable up things to prove that they know something.

In the current culture, it is normal for people to lie since there is no problem brought by doing so. People often lie to bend their truth to their own advantage without thinking since it is a norm in todays life. In one of Gunderman’s book, Heads in Beds, a former hospitality industry employee encourages the hotel guests to lie so that they can benefit. This proves that lying is so common in such a way that you can involve other people that you do not know and accept to play by your rules as long as there is no truthfulness. People in the world believe that honesty is for the unsophisticated (Gunderman 2013). A study proves people who lie have health issues, where else those who are always truthful have lesser health issues. A research was conducted by the University of Notre Dame, where 110 people were surveyed for two weeks. Half of the people were told to stop lying while the others were to continue as normal. After two weeks, health research was conducted and proved that people who did not lie are healthier than the liars. This shows that lying requires a lot of energy, and it is stressful since you should come up with another lie faster to cover the other lie.

In conclusion, we verify that critical analysis is an essential tool for understanding a case being reviewed. The tool raises a different question and helps to tackle a single question at a time. In Viorst’s book, we see that people have different reasons for lying. People lie to protect, peace keep and others have adopted lying as their social behavior. It is clear that lying is a common thing to do and it can help in building a relationship depending on if it’s a white-lie or a selfish-lie. On an average analysis on the Americans, average people lie more than once in a single day. When lying, we not only deceive others but also ourselves. Though lying is seen not fit for the unsophisticated, it is proven that lying affects people’s health in a negative manner. With critical analysis, questions have been raised appropriately and each question supported with a fact. This enables the reader to clearly apprehend a sophisticated topic without struggling.

Work cited

Viorst, J., 1981. Redbook. 1st ed. pp.541-543.

Gunderman, R., 2013. Is Lying Bad For Us?. Atlantic, pp.558-559.

The Conversation. 2019. White Lies Make Social Networks Stronger, But Selfish Lies Tear Them Apart. [online] Available at: <https://theconversation.com/white-lies-make-social-networks-stronger-but-selfish-lies-tear-them-apart-29634> [Accessed 1 December 2020].