Monday, October 02, 2006
Little White Lies
Today's class discussion focused around whether or not lying was right or wrong, or if white lies were permissible to tell. Last night while flipping though the channels I stopped at "Everybody Loves Raymond". Raymond’s wife was about to throw away a baseball his father had given to him as a kid which was signed by Mickey Mantel. However, it turns out that when Raymond showed his father the baseball, he told Raymond that it really wasn't signed by Mantel. His father only told him that because he knew of Raymond’s love for the baseball player and did not want to disappoint him. I found it ironic that TV show plots are even based around little white lies that are told everyday. In Raymond’s case, he went on to become a successful sports writer in response to receiving the baseball from his dad and his admiration of Mantel.
As a believer in Kant’s theory over Consequentialism, I can not agree with him on the position he takes that lying is always forbidden. There are certain situations where telling a white lie in which would benefit someone else, is in my case permissible. As a parent, it is understood that there are certain things that children are to young to understand. In Raymond’s case his father’s white lie played a role in his later success. When my dog died I was only 4 years old and my parents told me Ebony was on vacation, it wasn’t until my grandfather died a few years later that I began to understand the concept of death. In my opinion it is up to the parent to decide what is acceptable to tell a white lie about and what isn’t. I don’t think that by parents simply holding back information from their children until they are older is by any way going to hurt their development as adults. We all grew up believing in Santa Clause or the tooth fairy, and for better or worse those tiny white lies have not harmed us.
