In my early high school years, I’d go to my best friend’s house every Friday after school. Occasionally my mom would drive me there but usually I’d just go to the bus stop at 3:10, wait for the bus for about 10 minutes or so and then in less than 30 minutes, I’d be having fun, playing video games, and chatting. But one day, as I was getting ready to leave my house, a question popped up in my head, so I went and asked my mother: “Mom, how do you know that after I leave the door, I’m actually going to his house and I’m not somewhere else smoking or drinking? You never check with his mom. You just ask me where I’m going and that’s it?” to which she replied “Well yes, because I trust you.” To which I replied… But why?
And to this day I sustain that question. Why do people trust each other? What even are the standards of trust? If you trust me with a task and I don’t deliver, you won’t necessarily stop trusting me at once, but if I keep failing, you probably will stop trusting me. This means that
trust, at least in human society, is not binary, and it functions in a spectrum for both the level of trust I have in you, and the kinds of trust I have with you. Say, you are an architect and your boss assigns a project of a fancy new building. He’s trusting you with the design, and with it, the lives of many people, which is a huge deal, but he’s not likely to go and talk to you about his life issues, unless you are actually friends, which would unlock a different kind of trust.
If you stop and think about it for a second, trust is really everywhere. You trust the food companies enough to buy their products, you also trust the people who made the device you’re listening to my voice in, and this trust, this special bond with a brand is sometimes the key feature that makes you pick a $2.5 over a $1.5 milk carton, and you trust your boss will pay you by the end of the month so you show up to do your work every day. We don’t usually fathom how much our society functions based solely on trust. A nice example of this can be found in Sapiens: A Brief History Of Humankind, by Yuval Harari, where he wrote:
Why are you willing to flip hamburgers, sell health insurance or
babysit three obnoxious brats when all you get for your exertions is a few pieces of coloured paper?
People are willing to do such things when they trust the figments of
their collective imagination.
But still, the anthropocene isn’t the only society to be fueled primarily by trust. A lot of animals such as meerkats rely on a few lookouts for when the rest of the pack is eating. The black spider monkeys hunt in pairs for the same reason, while one of the primates eats in the floors of the jungle, the other one remains highly aware of any possible predators that could catch them. The wolf cubs won't play with a cub if he plays too rough or against their basic rules. In other words, if a cub betrays his equals, they'll socially isolate him.
One of the explanations evolutionary biologists have offered about why we trust each other is that it was advantageous for a species to work together, for it made them stronger as a group by exploding everyone’s ability while supporting each other’s weaknesses. And how did nature make sure we’d follow this guideline? By making a species highly dependent upon each other and increase the benefits of cooperating versus non cooperating animals. As Lucy Conklin explained in an article by “The Scientist”:
“For cooperation between species to withstand the inherently selfish nature of evolution, individuals that fail to cooperate must have fewer descendants than cooperators, on average. “
Philosophy has given a lot of thought to this as well, trying to explain the nature of trust, the value of it, when should we trust, and might even explain that we only trust each other when the circumstances demand it. It takes into account the vulnerability element of this act and how according to the Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy:
“What we risk while trusting is the loss of the things that we entrust to others, including our self-respect, perhaps, which can be shattered by the betrayal of our trust”.
This trust network is quite fragile and it is a marvelous wonder of the world. Even though biologists say the interdependence created by evolution supports trust, it still implies a huge risk. Just as the philosophers state, trust means opening up and exposing ourselves to a complete stranger. Entrusting him with your true self, your greatest fears and your worst version can lead you to a massive realm of darkness. Whenever you trust somebody, you’re in danger of being disappointed, which, if you’ve ever been in this situation, you know it can be devastating. But it can also lead you to a healthy beautiful relationship, it can come as a friend, as a lover or even as a pet.
It’s almost like a leap of faith.
But when you talk about trust in terms of faith, the term “belief” and the act of “believing” come into play.. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, trust is defined as an “assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something”. Meanwhile, the term belief is defined as something that is : “considered to be true or honest” or as the firm or wholehearted religious conviction and the act of regarding the existence of God as a fact.
Of course, if you take the last definition, it fits perfectly, it even has the name of God in it, but if you ask me, human’s relation with God seems more like trust than belief. Why? Believing is a one way action. We believe and nothing really happens, but trusting… It's more dynamic. I talk with God, He replies, He sees us struggling, He tries to help and to me, that’s really what happens. But it’s up to you really, Do you believe, to trust, or do you trust, to believe?
However, you could also not believe and not trust.
It’s marvelous. To me, that’s the beauty of it. The fact that we can choose not to trust but we choose to do it anyway.
Back in Anno Domini 28, the apostles chose to believe in God through Jesus. How did He gain their trust? That’s a topic for another episode, but for today,
I give trust, 5 stars.
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