Prompt: Is deception ever justified?

When it comes to deception, the overwhelming majority of people hold a prejudice that lies are
always lack of justification; nonetheless, like the coins have two sides, deception cannot be
simply defined as justifiable or unjustifiable, it is constringent on the situation where people use
it.
Nothing I have come across is more of a controversial concept than deception is. While
Benjamin Franklin says Tricks and treachery are the practice of fools, that don't have brains
enough to be honest, Sophocles insists Profit is sweet, even if it comes from deception. As far
as I am concerned, although it would be slightly arbitrary to assert that deception is never
justified, it is fair to say that in general, deception does more harm than good to the human
society.
First of all, deception can be used as a means to maintain a totalitarian or dictatorial regime, both
of which are devastating. By hiding the truth, the government is able to keep their subjects
obedient citizens. This is certainly preferred by the rulers, but obviously disastrous for the ruled.
In his famous political charged novel 1984, Gorge Orwell presented us an envisioned world of
political terror. The protagonist, Winston Smith, lives in a nation called Oceania, where the
ruling party rigidly controls peoples thoughts and behaviors through telescreens and thought
police. Winston is a periphery member of the party who works for a state organ called the Truth
department. His daily work is to revise historical records in favor of the party so that people
never know for sure that something has happened and believe only what the party wants them to
believe. So eventually, people lose their ability to tell the truths from lies, and the nation in
which they live becomes a world of lies, disguise and violence. The world Orwell described is
fictional of course, but it incisively points out the devastating effects of deception.
The world Orwell described is fictional, whereas the story of the movie The Cove is of reality.
This movie was filmed by a team led by Ric O Barry, a former dolphin trainer and won the 2010
Academy Award for the best-featured. It showed us that deception indulges wrongful deeds; only
speaking the truth promotes social progress. The movie exposes the slaughter of more than
20000 dolphins and porpoises off the coast of Japan every year and how their meat, containing
toxic level of mercury, is being sold in food markets all across Asia. Almost all the officials of
the Japanese government knew about this slaughter but they deliberately hide it from the public
view. It was Ric O Barry who took painstaking efforts to get the secret spread out. Not
surprisingly, the movie called great attention from audience all around the globe. As a result of
public outcry, the Japanese government commanded a temporary ban on bottlenose dolphins
killing. Moreover, other countries started to pay more attention to the living conditions of wild
animals and established relevant institutions to protect them. With what confidence should we
look upon wild animals living conditions, given the record of the Japanese officials deception?
One may argue that it is not deception itself but the purpose of it that determines whether it is
justifiable, and it is as impossible to live in a world free of deception as to meet a person without
flaws. I insist, nevertheless, just like war, deception is not justifiable even as a way to achieve an
end.