Lying
We discussed many reasons why people may lie. Some examples are: gain,
protect feelings, get out of trouble, compulsive, and/or ashamed of
oneself. Although all are just causes, Kant’s explanation of being
ashamed of oneself seemed to be the best cause of lying. People can be
ashamed of who they are, how they feel, or what they think so they will
lie and sometimes this is to protect others as well. Sometimes people
are ashamed of themselves so through lying, they gain a “false” sense of
self-confidence. Also people are too attached to expectations of themselves.
We discussed how most liars are filled with charm and they keep us from
distraction. Charismatic people usually use manipulation in their lying.
They are able to manipulate people and bring them into their lies. They
are able to distract us and influence our thoughts. Sometimes it seems
that lying is a social functioning. Politicians and many other people
lie to fit in to society. We then discussed whether famous people have
the right to their own private life and should they lie to keep it private?
We then discussed the difference between the unified and ununified views
of virtue:
Unified: must have all virtues. If someone lacks one virtue, they cannot
be virtuous.
Ununified: have few virtues. We discussed Mother Teresa. Is she not
virtuous because she was not witty?
We also asked the questions of can someone be kind without being brave?
Can they be honest without being brave? Can they be courageous without
being brave?
Self-Respect Notes
There are three traits that are the wrong kind of “self-respect:”
-Hubris-excessive pride
-Arrogance-overestimating your own abilities
-Vanity-focusing on the unessential, physical obsession
It seems as though our society accepts vanity because it makes people
feel better about themselves when they are absorbed with looking good on
the outside. But wasting resources on external beauty does not bring true
happiness.
There are eight ingredients of self-deception:
-Magnification- inflates the importance of ones actions
-Diminution- deflates the importance of ones actions
-Rationalization- telling yourself its okay or good when its not
-Blaming- shifts responsibility to another
-Projection- casting fault on another victim
-Comparison- justification by showing its not as bad
-Excuse- justify because one could not help it
-Conventionalization- rationalize to show it is a standard
If we did not do any of the above what would we do? Just be honest?
We questioned if charm was really a virtue because it is more or less a
form of manipulation.
Its agreed that most people want to be forgiving for personal benefit,
but sometimes it is just to make peace. Truce. Forgive not forget maybe.
