Trust: Missing in Action

People just do not trust people the way they used to trust people anymore. Can you blame them? Has the idea of trust changed, or have we become more untrustworthy?

It is said that trust is both an emotional and logical act. Emotionally, it is where you expose your vulnerabilities to others, believing they will not take advantage of your openness. Logically, it is where you have assessed the probabilities of gain and loss, and concluded that the person in question will behave in a predictable manner. In practice, trust is both emotion and logic.

Ideal trust is, in my opinion, a perfect balance of emotion and logic. Each balances the other in ways that do not allow one to dominate the other. This balance is very much managed by environment, culture and people. These three factors weigh heavily on a person's idea of trust. Young children from broken homes have trust issues because nothing in their lives - environment, culture or people - were trustworthy so the natural outcome is that these children grow to never trust anyone. The funny thing about trust is that it tends to lead to true happiness.

I do not think one can be truly happy in life if one never trusts anyone. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines trust in the following manner,

"Trust is an attitude that we have towards people whom we hope will be trustworthy, where trustworthiness is a property, not an attitude. Trust and trustworthiness are therefore distinct although, ideally, those whom we trust will be trustworthy, and those who are trustworthy will be trusted. For trust to be warranted (i.e. plausible) in a relationship, the parties to that relationship must have attitudes toward one another that permit trust. Moreover, for trust to be warranted (i.e. well-grounded), both parties must be trustworthy."

"One important criterion for trust is that the trustor can accept some level of risk or vulnerability (Becker 1996). Minimally, what this person risks, or is vulnerable to, is the failure by the trustee to do what s/he depends on that person to do. The truster might try to reduce this risk by monitoring or imposing certain constraints on the behavior of the trustee; yet after a certain threshold perhaps, the more monitoring and constraining s/he does, the less s/he trusts that person. Trust is relevant “before one can monitor the actions of … others” (Dasgupta 1988, 51) or when out of respect for others one refuses to monitor their actions. Hence, a refusal to be vulnerable tends to undermine trust or prevents it from occurring at all."

Trust requires risk, and in today's world, risk is something we have tried to eradicate in the same manner as polio. People want guarantees not risk. We want to avoid risk because risk is not fun and includes a healthy chance that failure is next. As we try to eliminate risk from our lives, we have, at the same time, begun to erase trust as well. No one realizes this because we truly believe risk is a bad thing. After all, shouldn't all people be guaranteed a home, car and a nice life? Is this not the American life? I am not sure it is.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy references the nature of trust in the following manner,

"When we trust people, we are optimistic not only that they are competent to do what we trust them to do, but also that they are committed to doing it."

I am not sure we are committed to others in the same way we are now committed to our own happiness and well being. Commitment is a part of trust and missing in today's world. Commitment can really not be defined as commitment if the action of committing is aimed at self. If there is not commitment to an other or others then trust is not and never will be developed in full. And the ironic part of all this is that we are eliminating risk in order to move closer and closer to true happiness. What we do not realize is this: our removal of risk has not moved us closer to happiness but farther away.

Trust is missing and slowing disappearing. We are skeptical of most people because of our lack of commitment to our fellow man and that lack of commitment to our fellow man is eroding away the whole idea of trust. One day we will recall, with fondness, what it was like to trust someone and to be trusted by someone. Sadly, that day is closer than you might think. Blessings!