During the Vietnam War, a band called Buffalo Springfield produced an eerie song called ‘For What It’s Worth.’ The lines “There’s somethin’ happenin’ here, what it is ain’t exactly clear” stimulated a great sense of unease bordering on paranoia. Decades later, it seems very apt. Whom can you trust these days?
There’s a clear difference between prudence and paranoia. The latter is a manifestation of mental instability characterized by anxiety and confusion, and leads to a paralysis of confidence and reflexive hostility. By contrast, prudence is a careful observation and analysis of risk, and the implementation of strategies to prevent damage.
Society depends upon institutions to limit risk. The law discourages malfeasance, misdemeanours, torts, and crime. Insurance compensates for defined losses. Elected, representative government obstructs tyranny. Even religion functions as a sort of ‘eternal life’ insurance.
These protections generate confidence among the citizenry. Unfortunately, their failures erode trust, and depending on the magnitude of the failures’ resultant damage, can destabilize both our personal and our social lives.
In our personal lives, we react to others with varying degrees of trust and skepticism. The better we become acquainted with others, the more we understand their personal motives and proclivities, and our experience of them becomes the basis for varying levels of trust from, “I’d trust him with my life” to, “I wouldn’t trust him to breathe if it wasn’t involuntary.”
In business, we often prefer nurturing personal relationships to dealing with anonymous authorities. Most of us drive vehicles, but when they break down, we don’t contact the chairman of General Motors or Toyota, but talk to our local mechanic or dealer, someone we may know in more than one context, such as neighbourhood meetings like clubs, schools or other organizations.
As populations have grown, we have become increasingly reliant upon symbols to direct our loyalties. Flags and anthems supposedly inspire. Slogans attempt to mold our opinions and comfort us with familiar aphorisms that demonstrate our belonging.
As government power over our lives becomes increasingly distant (city hall, Victoria, Ottawa), it can feel increasingly unresponsive. Our elected representatives are preoccupied with a thousand and one competing priorities, yet most genuinely try to make themselves available to constituent citizens. Skeena has over 60,000 voters. Imagine trying to meet and connect personally with each of them!
We phone our ISP or bank and get to talk to someone in Mumbai or Manila. Not inspiring. We sign on-line use-of-service agreements with barely a second look, hopefully imagining that our data is ‘secure.’ Small print in insurance policies is often jargon-laden or otherwise incomprehensible.
Still, we grudgingly accept these inconveniences with a conventional trust that is nearly breathtaking in its ubiquity. And generally speaking, that trust is warranted, because most of the time it works, and the alternative of trying to live without trust creates more problems than it’s worth.
There’s little doubt that many among the recent political protesters were expressing honestly held objections to what they perceived as betrayals of their trust. Discovery that their newfound blockade allegiances were sometimes also betrayals (e.g. plans for shootouts with the police) cannot have been reassuring.
Confucius taught that “it is more shameful to mistrust one’s friends than to be deceived by them.” Still, the poker aphorism to “trust everyone, but always cut the cards” remains good advice.