首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
The Truth About Lying Ricky Gervais’s new film, The Invention of Lying, is about a world where lying doesn’t exist, which me
The Truth About Lying Ricky Gervais’s new film, The Invention of Lying, is about a world where lying doesn’t exist, which me
admin
2013-06-25
88
问题
The Truth About Lying
Ricky Gervais’s new film, The Invention of Lying, is about a world where lying doesn’t exist, which means that everybody tells the truth, and everybody believes everything everybody else says. "I’ve always hated you," a man tells a work colleague. "He seems nice, if a bit fat," a woman says about her date. It’s all truth, all the time, at whatever the cost. Until one day, when Mark, a down-on-his-luck loser played by Gervais, discovers a thing called "lying" and what it can get him. Within days, Mark is rich, famous, and courting the girl of his dreams. And because nobody knows what "lying" is, he goes on, happily living what has become a complete and utter farce (闹剧).
It’s meant to be funny, but it’s also a more serious commentary on us all. As Americans, we like to think we value the truth. Time and time again, public-opinion polls show that honesty is among the top five characteristics we want in a leader, friend or lover; the world is full of sad stories about the tragic consequences of betrayal. At the same time, deception is all around us. We are lied to by government officials and public figures to a disturbing degree; many of our social relationships are based on little white lies we tell each other. We deceive our children, only to be deceived by them in return. And the average person, says psychologist Robert Feldman, the author of a new book on lying, tells at least three lies in the first 10 minutes of a conversation. "There’s always been a lot of lying," says Feldman, whose new book, The Liar in Your Life, came out this month. "But I do think we’re seeing a kind of cultural shift where we’re lying more, it’s easier to lie, and in some ways it’s almost more acceptable. "
As Paul Ekman, one of Feldman’s long-time lying colleagues and the inspiration behind the Fox IV series Lie To Me defines it, a liar is a person who "intends to mislead", "deliberately", without being asked to do so by the target of the lie. Which doesn’t mean that all lies are equally toxic: some are simply habitual — "My pleasure!" — while others might be well — meaning white lies. But each, Feldman argues, is harmful, because of the standard it creates. And the more lies we tell, even if they’re little white lies, the more deceptive we and the society become.
We are a culture of liars, to put it bluntly, with deceit so deeply ingrained in our mind that we hardly even notice we’re engaging in it. Junk e-mail, deceptive advertising, the everyday pleasantries (客套话) we don’t really mean — "It’s so great to meet you!" "I love that dress" — have, as Feldman puts it, become "a white noise we’ve learned to neglect". And Feldman also argues that cheating is more common today than ever. The Josephson Institute, a nonprofit focused on youth ethics, concluded in a 2008 survey of nearly 30,000 high school students that "cheating in school continues to be rampant (猖獗) , and it’s getting worse". In that survey,64 percent of students said they’d cheated on a test during the past year, up from 60 percent in 2006. Another recent survey, by Junior Achievement, revealed that more than a third of teens believe lying, cheating or plagiarizing can be necessary to succeed, while a brand-new study, commissioned by the publishers of Feldman’s book, shows that 18 to 34-year-olds — those of us fully reared in this lying culture — deceive more frequently than the general population.
Teaching us to lie is not the purpose of Feldman’s book. His subtitle, in fact, is "the way to truthful relationships". But if his book teaches us anything, it’s that we should sharpen our skills — and use them with abandon.
Liars get what they want. They avoid punishment, and they win themselves others’ affection. Liars make themselves sound smart and intelligent, they attain power over those who believe them, and they often use their lies to rise up in the professional world. Many Liars have fun doing it. And many more take pride in getting away with it.
As Feldman notes, there is an evolutionary basis for deception: in the wild, animals use deception to "play dead" when threatened. But in the modern world, the motives of our lying are more selfish. Research has linked socially successful people to those who are good liars. Students who succeed academically get picked for the best colleges, despite the fact that, as one recent Duke University study found, as many as 90 percent of high-schoolers admit to cheating. Even lying adolescents are more popular among their peers.
And all it takes is a quick flip of the remote to see how our public figures fare when they get caught in a lie: Clinton keeps his wife and goes on to become a national hero. Fabricating author James Frey gets a million-dollar book deal. Eliot Spitzer’s wife stands by his side, while "Appalachian hiker" Mark Sanford still gets to keep his post. If everyone else is being rewarded for lying, don’t we need to lie, too, just to keep up?
But what’s funny is that even as we admit to being liars, study after study shows that most of us believe we can tell when others are lying to us. And while lying may be easy, spotting a liar is far from it. A nervous sweat or shifty eyes can certainly mean a person’s uncomfortable, but it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re lying. Gaze aversion, meanwhile, has more to do with shyness than actual deception. Even polygraph (测谎仪) machines are unreliable. And according to one study, by researcher Bella DePaulo, we’re able to differentiate a lie from truth only 47 percent of the time, less than if we guessed randomly. "Basically everything we’ve heard about catching a liar is wrong", says Feldman, who heads the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Ekman, meanwhile, has spent decades studying micro-facial expressions of liars: the split-second eyebrow arch that shows surprise when a spouse asks who was on the phone; the furrowed (皱起的) nose that gives away a hint of disgust when a person says "I love you". He’s trained everyone from the Secret Service to the TSA, and believes that with close study, it’s possible to identify those tiny emotions. The hard part, of course, is proving them. "A lot of times, it’s easier to believe," says Feldman. "It takes a lot of cognitive effort to think about whether someone is lying to us." Which means that more often than not, we’re like the poor dumb souls of The Invention of Lying, hanging on a liar’s every word, no matter how untruthful they may be.
Judging from Duke University’s recent study, even students recruited by top colleges seem to have______before.
选项
答案
cheated
解析
根据题目的要求,空白处应填写动词的过去分词。本句话的意思是说,Duke University的研究结果显示,事实上有90%的高中生承认作过弊,但是在学业上成功的学生可以被顶尖大学录取,可以得知即便是顶尖学校的学生也有作弊的经历,因此答案是cheated。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/QRn7777K
0
大学英语六级
相关试题推荐
A、Chinese.B、English.C、French.D、Italian.AWhatlanguageisnotusedforleansincollegesaccordingtotheconversation?
Whatthewisemansaidsuggeststhat______.Comparedwiththoseinsmalltowns,peopleinlargecitieshave______.
Americansthisyearwillswallow15,000tonsofaspirin(阿司匹林),oneofsafestandmosteffectivedrugsinventedbyman.Themost
Americansthisyearwillswallow15,000tonsofaspirin(阿司匹林),oneofsafestandmosteffectivedrugsinventedbyman.Themost
A、Suegotpromoted.B、Johnhadtoquithisjob.C、BothJohnandSuegotaraise.D、Suefailedtocompleteherproject.A录音结尾提到,
Ascientistoncesaidthatstudyingthestarsfromtheearthis【C1】______lookingupattheskyfromthebottomofaswitchingp
Formorethan10yearstherehasbeenabiggerriseincarcrimethaninmostothertypesofcrime.Anaverageofmorethantwo
A、Warsornaturaldisastersmakethemlosetheirfamilies.B、Theywanttohelptheirfamiliesearnenough,mooneytosurvive.C、T
HowtoSurviveaLayoffYou’velostyourjob,butit’snottheendofyourcareer.Getthehelpyouneedtosetyoubackon
Sportisnotonlyphysicallychallenging,butitcanalsobementallychallenging.Criticismfromcoaches,parents,andotherte
随机试题
A.动作电位去极相有超射现象B.复极时间长于去极时间C.有复极2期平台期D.有明显的4期自动去极化窦房结细胞动作电位的主要特点是
所谓开门电平是指保证输出为额定低电平时的________。
用0.1焦点放大摄影,最大放大率是
治疗息风止痉,热极生风尤为适宜的药物是()。
主要根据临时的政治的或经济的需要发放的进口许可证是()。
税务机关调查税务违法案件时,对与案件有关的情况和资料,可以记录、录音、录像、照相和复制。()
行政管理活动的主体是()。
依次填入下面一段文字中的正确标点符号:恩格斯说过:“言简意赅的句子,一经了解,就能牢牢记住,变成口号;而这是冗长的论述绝对做不到的()毛泽东同志也强调过,讲话、写文章“都应当简明扼要()我国历代作家常以“意则期多,字则唯少()
下面描述中不属于数据库系统特点的是
学生的记录由学号和成绩组成,N名学生的数据已放入主函数中的结构体数组S中。请编写函数fun,其功能是:把指定分数范围内的学生数据放在b所指的数组中,分数范围内的学生人数由函数值返回。例如,输入的分数是60、69,则应当把分数在60一69的学
最新回复
(
0
)