The Importance of TruststeemCreated with Sketch.

in #philosophy7 years ago

Trust is a big part of life, more so than we might realize. Once we see aspects of the application of trust in our lives, we can recognize just how important it is.

From a very early age to grow up and are influenced by what others say. Parents are there to take care of us and teach us about the world, hopefully. We automatically trust our parents as children, to varying degrees with some infants being rebellious in their terrible twos or other phases of development. We generally trust our parents until a certain age when our cognition develops and our ego-personality-identity construct begins to rebel against the inherent an automatic trust placed in the parent, more so depending on past experiences of fostering trust or breaking it. But even then, trust is still a huge factor in our lives.

We still trust in what others say. Building trust is how strong relationships form. When people tell us things, we implicitly trust that they are being honest in their representation of reality that we ourselves can't always verify.

Things can happen where we need to rely on the testimony of others to understand how something happened, such as someone being responsible for doing something wrong. If there was not trust, we would not accept what others say about reality or truth.

The whole world runs on trust to a large extent. We can't directly have access to what happened everywhere at all times, so we need to rely on others to tell us about things. We're not omnipresent. In this way, trust acts as a proxy for the truth of what happened because we can't verify it ourselves.

We have trust, faith and loyalty in what others are saying, and we say that we believe what they are saying is true. We don't truth in what they are saying, we believe in what they are saying because we do not have direct access to the truth of what happened. This demonstrates an important distinction between belief and truth that we already recognize that an intuitive level through the use of language to represent our understanding of certain things.

Truth has veracity, it is veritably verifiable. Those three V words come from the same root as the Latin veritas, which is the word for truth. Belief on the other hand is not, which is why we can only believe in what others say is true. Then perhaps we can verify if what they are saying is indeed true, but sometimes we can't and we have to take people at their word. This is why truth is a proxy for trust, because we depend on the honesty of others upholding a pledge to be truthful to what they say and represent reality without willful deceptions such as lying.

Another demonstration of the importance of trust is when we are betrayed. I've use this example also demonstrate how important truth is in our lives because a betrayal is a breaking of that inherent trust in another to be honest and not go against their word or harm us. When we have trust in another, there is also an implicit trust that they will not harm us. Being betrayed breaks that belief, loyalty, trust and faith that we have in others to represent the truth to us.

Even if we are not willfully deceiving and betraying the truth -- and therefore betraying someone by lying to them -- we can also be fools and not know what we're talking about, which others can verify and it reduces their trust in our competency. Anyone can be wrong, but the more right you are about things the more competency is demonstrated and trust earned. Competency affects our confidence in others and trust as well. Trust let's us know if someone can be depended on on various ways.

Trust is so pervasive, it's in everything that we buy. We go to the grocery store, and most of us grew up trusting in the safety of what is provided for us to consume. We trust that the food we are consuming is safe. We trust that the material we by is safe and doesn't have any chemicals in it that can harm us. But then we learn about the food industry, and the chemicals in products, the toxins, waste, and pesticides. We learn about unhealthy foods that we are being sold, and they seem to be the foods that uncritically thinking children want to buy. They are sold these ideas and beliefs in what food to eat through the media and advertising.

We buy into products, and we bind into beliefs. We treat those beliefs as if they are true, yet rarely do most people verify the veritable veracity of what someone claims. Then we don't know it's true, we only believe it to be true, which doesn't make it true despite us saying it's true.

There are many truths that we don't know about, but until we do know about them and can veritably demonstrate their veracity then they can't be called a truth because we have not gone through the process of verifying the veracity that it is true. There's a reason the word truth is properly used to mean something that is verifiable for us to be able to call it truth, because truth is veritas. Truth is actual, and belief is potential. We need to verify the veritas/truth, or else we can't use the word veritas/truth about that thing.

102a-Beliefs-40.jpg

Belief is anything that we can't verify and use the word truth on. Not recognizing this difference leads many people to say they know something is true when they don't really, and then more and more people use that same model of calling things "true" when they haven't been verified by those people. It might be true, but they don't know that, they are only believing it is true. Believing something to be true is not the same as it actually being true. If we accept things from other uncritically, then we pretty much accept what they are telling us is true even if it isn't.

Sometimes we can't verify things ourselves, but other times we can. Be it an event or a scientific experiment, demonstrating truth requires a certain level of persistence and repeatability. Multiple sources can provide accurate testimony to an event, and multiple sources can repeat an experiment.

We trust in our politicians, police and so many others people. But do they deserve our trust? Have they truly earned it?


Thank you for your time and attention. Peace.


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As always - another first class post!

As for breaking trust - for me - there is no way back. I drop the relationship like a hot potato - and disengage - break up all contact. No way back, for me anyway.

Incidentally - I live alone - no surprise - a testament to the past... However, I am not lonely - which I an grateful for - a notorious introvert - that helps.

For many others, however, breaking a relationship up after a breach of trust may be impossible, due to dependencies, family ties, etc... But have made such decision in a 10 year relationship. It was the hardest thing I ever did - but I also know it was the best decision I have made - for both our sake and sanity.

~ch

Yeah, attachment is the root of suffering ;) We often need to learn to let go. Thanks for the feedback.

Thank you - for bringing such an important topic into the spot light - and for your consistent engagement.

The root of suffering goes deeper in my view. It's the character/attitude/motive of those whom we trust. If everyone - in and ideal world - everyone would aim to add value to self and others alike - no ulterior motives - many more relationships and the people in it, would thrive, not break.

Love is not self-seeking. 😎

I concur.

Sometimes, the best thing for yourself is to free yourself of negativity. For me, the result is that I am happier and in the end a better person.

a witness I trust: krNel.med.gif

What an awesome gif! Clean, crisp, smooth... Nice!

Haha :D Neat gif! Thanks and thanks for the support :)

From the very first words on trust, I was waiting to see what you might say about trust being broken. Once that happens, I cannot trust someone anymore. Even if I don't know the truth and I cannot verify it, I'd rather trust what I think is the truth, rather than take your word for it. I was thinking about personal relationships, but I think this applies to other situations as well. One politician betrays your trust, then another one...after that you cannot really trust any of them!

I think we can only trust people in politics who are not politicians.

Power corrupts... often even those with the best intentions - initially. It takes a super strong person to withstand temptation of this magnitude - but it isn't impossible.

Indeed, it's always best to err on the side of caution and not trust a politician.

You cannot always trust people simply because they are family either. I've been robbed by my own family, and another member of my family was harming one of my children.

Very true, blood doesn't mean anything unless it's built on not harming.

I enjoyed the Latin lesson =) It is true that the world operates on trust, because we cannot possibly do and verify everything ourselves. As humans, we are wired to trust, our first impulse is to believe what we are being told. It is unfortunate that people and companies with high ambitions and low ethical standards are aware of this and use it against us.
Doubting everything is a sure way to live miserably, but trusting everything will certainly lead to bad outcomes as well.

Great piece! Everything we see around us is a result of trust in some form. Without trust we don't have anything :-)

I am very interested in experiencing how blockchain tech will change some of the required forms of trust that we now have and when we do business in the future...

Yeah, blockchain as trustless tech can change the world in many ways :)

Ah finally I was looking for some sollutions. You started with parents, their self interest or motivation is the continuation of their genes resp. of who they are I'd say but then it became a bit vague, a lot of definitions :))

What it ends up to is who you can trust and how you can measure it. Track record and stuff. Good inspiration!

Wow, well said. Thank you for taking the time to write this! I'm going to read this multiple times, and do a little extra research myself.

Thanks ;) and you're welcome, glad you enjoyed it.

@krnel great article! GREAT TOPIC!

I would like to recommend you a book about this topic - it's called "building trust - in business, politics, relationships and life" by Robert C. Solomon & Fernando Flores (Oxford Press)

I bet you would like it :-)

Cool, thanks for the recommendation and feedback ;)

You are welcome! :-)

Deep in sighted article, thank u for sharing with us, there are many people in our lives that we trust on the believing scale, concerning foods I believe it's more safety and healthy to trust it on Veritas after confirming its safety to consume. Also statements which one says that would cause u to suspect another or think badly of them, however after reading ur article I got the insight that all things we believe in that can be verified should be before we trust it :-)

Trust is the very pillar of life on which life is standing. Without it, we can survive for sure but there won't be a meaning of living a life. People who loves us and they trust us, if unfortunately that trust is gone, how could we love them again. There is an old sayin that, 'When trust break, there would be no sound happen but when it breaks, it could take away the very reason of someone's living of life''.
So, I am pretty sure, trust matters, A LOT.

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