Deception as a Normal Part of Human Life

Deception

It is nothing new in any time of our lives to deal with deception. From the time we are born lies are everywhere around us. From talk about Santa Claus to white lies when we meet strangers we are all liars in this society and that can not be denied. Obviously when the question arises “When is deception okay?” we want to snap and scream never, but when you think about a completely honest world with no lies, there would be a lot of hurt feelings, scared civilians and a lot of justice to be served. Deception is an act in trying to make someone believe in something untrue. Therefore, deception is not morally right but if we lived in a society where there was complete and total honesty, it would be chaotic.

To begin with, deception has become a cultural social norm in most of the world. If someone asks you how your day was, regardless of how it actually was we are all programed to blurt out that we are good and follow with asking how their day is and they will reply with how they’re doing good as well. When we sit back and analyze this we realize how many times we have probably lied about telling someone that we are having a good day! If we were honest about how our days were going when people asked it would more than likely make others feel awkward and catch them off guard if we were to complain rather than tell that little white lie.

White lies are also extremely important in relationships, in a Ted Talks episode with lie detection expert Pamela Meyer covering “how to spot a liar”, she points out how in marriages, in at least one out of every ten interactions a white lie is told. When a lie is told this frequently to someone you are in a life-long relationship with, this says a lot about deception in our society and how common and accepted it has become.

A lot of times deception is also used in life or death and self defence situations. In martial arts, deception is a big part of the game. In boxing for instance, it is important to keep head movement and to prevent having a rhythmic pattern to your foot work or else your opponent will catch on and know where to land their punches. As well as in jiu-jitsu, sometimes you need to act like you are going for something specific and when your opponent defends it opens up what you are really going for. This is the art of deception.

Deception is also very popular with our government. Anytime something drastic happens there are always holes which creates conspiracy theories which always end up having loads of facts. Just take a look at all the whistleblowers that have fled the country to expose our government’s wrongdoings, such as Edward Snowden. Snowden worked IT for the NSA and decided he could not support the extreme deception of America towards their people, so in May 2013 he fled the country with top secret information on our government and up until this day is releasing classified information about the wrongdoings of America’s government such as illegal spying on other countries and America’s people.

All in all, it is easy to claim that you hate deception and that we should all be honest, but it has easily been proven that that is not the true case. Deception has become the norm and unfortunately will continue to be. It is not morally the right thing, but without deception, the world would be chaotic, relationships wouldn’t exist and our governments would scare us a lot more. People can not handle the truth and if you say you can, you are lying to yourself.

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