2018 – 3rd Grade National 3rd Place Winner

Lily Fischbeck, New Jersey.

Truth or Deceit: Which Has a Greater Impact on Society?

I think deceit has a greater impact on society because if you lie about one thing you have to lie about it again in some way. You get tangled in a web of lies. Whereas if you tell the truth, it’s like you’re cutting the web. You don’t have to lie at all.

Let’s say you have six siblings and you broke your mother’s vase. Not only is she mad at you, she is also mad at your siblings which makes them mad at you. Then you’ve got a bigger problem. But it gets worse.
She’ll probably ask, “Who did it?”
You lie and say, “I didn’t do it.”
Then she’ll say, “Then why is it shattered?”
You’ll probably say something unconvincing like, “It was a squirrel.”
“How did it get in?”
“I left the door open.”
“How did you get it out?”
See, it just goes on and on. But that is a small example. Here is a bigger one:

Imagine you are the president. You are about to sign a peace treaty with another country. But you are suspicious because last time you tried signing the treaty they were hiding weapons. You don’t trust them anymore, so you send in spies. The spies live among the other country for weeks. They find thousands of weapons. You call off the peace treaty because you don’t have any trust in the othr country anymore. If they had told the truth that they were hiding weapons, you could have tried to convince them not to use the weapons against you and your country. Then you might not have gone into war. The other country had a choice: deceit and war or truth and peace. They chose war and deceit. That is way bigger than truth because it affects two countries and the population goes down because in war people die. In war, people’s lives are in danger. In peace, no one has to go to war to defend their country. That is why I think deceit has a greater impact on society.

 

 

 

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