Lockdown is an all around lamentable situation. After a while the uncertainty mixed with the isolation can cause a lockdown meltdown. The degree of melting is largely dependent on the pre-lockdown mentality of the afflicted. I think the introverts are probably doing O.K. The extrovert socialites, not so much. Retiree’s are likely faring better than the unfortunate essential workers, and the kids vacillate back and forth between pleased to not be in school, to stir crazy, missing their friends, wishing they were in school.
My biggest problem seems to be lethargy. I started out fine. I had a couple of projects and I was exercising regularly, but I seem to have lost interest and I’m finding that I’ve grown accustomed to not being able to really do anything or see anyone. When the restrictions are lifted I’m going to resemble one of those wildlife rehabilitated chimps, and just sit there in the cage, confused that the door is opened.
Anyway.
I was wasting some time in the afternoon watching a movie. There was a British character in the film and he kept using the word trust in his dialogue. Like, I trust your accommodations were to your liking, or, I trust that you’ve considered your options carefully. After the fourth or fifth time trust was used in this manner, I kind of lost the storyline and started thinking about the syntax of his use of the word trust.
It seemed to me that the speaker didn’t entirely trust that the accommodations were adequate, or the options carefully considered. He had made a judgement based on an assumption, and was looking for confirmation that his assumption was correct. I felt that if he truly trusted, then there would be no need to ask the questions at all.
And so, I abandoned the movie and started to think about the concept of trust. I began by considering if you can or should really trust anyone. I decided that the answer is probably not, but the reasons for my lack of faith in trust are complicated.
For starters, having trust is a judgement call and it can be both negative and positive. You can trust that a person will perform well, just as easily as you can trust another person to behave poorly. It’s still trust but it’s based on a determination you’ve made specific to the individual in question. The process for deciding who to trust is a challenge every person faces daily and for the entirety of their existence. In fact, the evaluation process is convoluted enough that you can trust and not trust the same person on the same day, but in different circumstances.
For example, I trust that my wife will manage our banking and not decide one day to empty our accounts and fuck off to post covid Corpus Christi. But I don’t trust her to tell me how far away an object is or how fast it’s moving. She could have just completed my tax returns and I wouldn’t ask her any questions. But, if we went to drop that return off at the accountants office, I’d ask her to move back in her seat so I could see out the passenger window before I made a left hand turn into traffic
Her spatial abilities suck and so I don’t trust her judgement. Her math skills do not suck and so I trust her judgement. In both cases with my wife, I have reasons for making the judgements I’ve made. As I mentioned, her math skills are good and she worked in banking for years. Also she has friends and family here and seems reasonably content, and so I’d be surprised if she bolted for Texas. On the other hand, she has repeatedly told me that we’re not good to make that turn into traffic because a car is coming. Someone’s coming is a true statement, but that someone is usually three blocks away doing 30 kilometers in a fifty zone.
So, most of the time we make trust decisions based on our personal observations and experiences, and then blame the other person with violating our trust when it was our judgement that was flawed. Sometimes though, we abandon the scientific method of determining trustworthiness in its entirety, and decide to go with a gut feeling. This behavior is insane by the way. It’s like looking at a series of numbers stacked on top of one another and guessing their added sum without doing the math. Every now and then you’re going to get lucky and get the number right, but it’s in your best interest to keep in mind the quantity of times you got the number wrong. If your gut feelings turn out to be a punch in the gut feeling, then a rethink of your trust methodology is likely in order.
I don’t trust anyone unconditionally. This lack of absolute faith in people is a product of experience, and my dubiety serves me well in minimizing my disappointment levels. I expect people to behave poorly and I further expect good and decent people to also behave poorly from time to time.
People aren’t always predictable, and I’ve concluded that it’s madness to think otherwise. So it seems logical that you’d be wise enough to calculate a margin of error into each trust evaluation you make. Having that margin of error built in can save a relationship because you calibrated your expectation meters appropriately. Because trust is nothing more than an expectation.
I think that my wife kind of has this reasonable expectation thing sorted out. I say this because on a number of occasions when I’ve fucked up she invariably expels an audible sigh, and then tells me, no, I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed. I interpret that line to mean that she was hopeful I’d behave in a manner she found reasonable, but she’s enough of a realist to understand we have different notions of reasonable.
Also, I didn’t kill anyone, rob a bank or bang one of the neighbors. So, there’s that.
It’s those damn circumstances that make predictions complicated. Those circumstances give rise to phrases like, sudden impulse, one night stand and spur of the moment decision. All of those phrases describe an unpredictable behavior in an otherwise predictable person. I’m not saying that boffing your workout coach is an acceptable way to conduct yourself if you have a commitment in place. But I am saying that an impulse can override sensibility, and you would be well served to trust that people are destined to fuck up on occasion.
In fact each and every person spends their entire lives trying to control their impulses. The level of control maintained then determines how trustworthy these people are. When you’re evaluating whether or not to trust a person, it’s incumbent on you to identify which impulses that person has difficulty keeping in check. Then you need to decide if mismanagement of that impulse is a deal breaker as far as trust is concerned. One method for determining a person’s desire to control their impulses is to make note of how often they put themselves in situations where the impulse is given opportunity. If you have a gambling problem and routinely spend evenings at a casino then you’re not trying very hard to manage that urge, and so people’s trust in you declines.
I do think though that people with honor can generally be trusted to behave with decency, even at a cost to themselves. People without any sense of honor can be trusted to act with indecency and will serve themselves in every instance, regardless of the cost to others.
So, the decisions we make regarding who to to trust and how much to trust them is focused on the amount of probity you adjudge a person to possess. Once you’ve made that determination, the next step is to decide if their rectitude remains intact when tested.
Some people appear trustworthy and honorable on the surface, but immediately abandon those attributes as soon as they feel any measure of threat to, or opportunity for themselves.
So, I think that if you want to make an accurate assessment of a persons trustworthiness then it’s a requirement that you see that person under duress.
There’s nothing like a panic at the shitshow, or an opportunity for unearned benefit to reveal true colors and who can really be trusted.
You just have to be paying attention.