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
2011-04-04
46
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 (喜剧).
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 longtime 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 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 (抄袭) 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 others’ affection. Liars make themselves sound smart and intelligent, they attain power over those of us 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 modem 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 (测谎器) machines are unreliable. And according to one study, by researcher Bella DePaulo, we’re only 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.
When people manage to get away with lying, many of them ______.
选项
A、are proud of themselves
B、will make lying a habit
C、feel ashamed and guilty
D、are held in great affection
答案
A
解析
该句提到,但更多的人对自己能成功地逃脱因说谎而受到的惩罚而感到自豪。题干中的manage to get away with lying对应该句中的getting away with it,A are proud of themselves对应take pride in,故[A]为答案。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/b0o7777K
0
大学英语六级
相关试题推荐
Wemustturntosomerecenthumaninventions______(为了完全理解这意味着什么).
Manycountriesexistinthisworld.Howtodealwiththeproblemsamongthem?Socomeswiththeinternationalcommunities.Amaj
High-speedtrainsareoftenthefastestwaytotravelbetweencitycentersinEurope,beatingshort-haulflightsforjourneysof
A、Foodisnolongerabasicneedforus,whileitwasforprimitivepeople.B、Weeatawidevarietyoffood.C、Wenolongereat
A、WinterinAlaska.B、ThebraveAlaskanpeople.C、Alaskantransportationtoday.D、Adogsledrace.D主旨题。结合文章第三句及其后面的内容可知,文章主要讲述了
"Whatadifferenceawordmakes?"Theissueofsemantics(语义学)hasbeenanongoingcomplaintagainstthemedia,whichhasbeenc
A、Thepolice.B、Abee-keeper.C、Abeeper.D、Thepoormotorist.B信息明示题。由文中第三段划线部分可知,一个养蜂人将蜂后找出并带走了蜂群,解决了困扰这个司机的问题,所以B正确。
Onlywithcombinedefforts,______(我们才能期望我们的国家有新的面貌).
A、Shehadthreebrothers.B、Shewasthefirstleaderofthewomen’sliberationmovementinAmerica.C、Shedidalotofwritingi
NASAInventionsYouMightUseEveryDayIn1958,PresidentEisenhowersignedtheSpaceAct,officiallycreatingtheNationa
随机试题
单关节
普通话的四种声调,在一定条件下,都可以失去原来的声调,变读为轻声。()
下列治疗病毒性心肌炎的药物中,通过免疫调节作用减轻心肌细胞损害的是
大补阴丸中既能填精补阴以生津液,又能制约黄柏苦燥的药物是()
治疗脾虚便溏尤应慎用的药物是()
矩阵组织结构适应的企业类型是()。
遵守《中华人民共和国教师法》的主体只是教师群体。
以下关于国务院行政机构的表述,哪一项是错误的?()
毛泽东在分析近代中国社会和中国革命问题时曾指出,认清和解决中国一切革命问题的最基本的根据是
A、MississippiRiveris6,040kilometers.B、YukonRiveris3,186kilometers.C、AlaskaRiveris3,168kilometers.D、ColoradoRiver
最新回复
(
0
)