Telling Lies

http://www.freedomtoexhale.com/edfive.jpg

We all tell lies everyday but mostly we don't even know we're doing it mainly because we don't consider the little white lies we tell to be lies. Some lies are told to protect someone we love or just to prevent arguments from occuring needlessly. We've all told them some time in our lives in fact, you could argue it is part of the human condition to have the ability to lie. The world would be a pretty boring place if we spoke the truth everyday.

Telling lies is a fundamental human condition which we are born with. Anyone who claims that they don't lie or have never told a lie is lying to themselves. Not all lying is wrong. Like I have said above, in some situations, lies are told to prevent harm or to protect. Take, for example, if you were being held hostage and you lied to stop the hostage taker from getting hold of information which could assist him/her in carrying out attacks which could kill hundreds of people - would you consider this wrong.

When is it wrong to lie? The is a crucial question. I would argue that it is acceptable to lie if it prevents harm to anyone you love or to prevent the death of hundreds of people. But if lies are told to further ones own agenda then I would consider this wrong. There has to be some rules otherwise there would be chaos in the world. I think ultimately you have to tell yourself that all lies are wrong and then judge each lie on its own merit.

The BIG lie told by Tony Blair and his government that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction which led to the current war and the deaths of millions innocent Iraqi's and British soldiers. This one lie set of a chain reaction which has done nothing to make the world a safer place. In fact, you could argue the world is more dangerous because of the invasion of Iraq. The following website sets out the Ten Appalling Lies We Were Told About Iraq http://www.alternet.org/story/16274 .