Trust: Who or What Might Support Us?

3. Trust in the Society

49 t h r e e Trust in the Society Before and immediately after our birth we are not yet able willfully to trust or distrust anyone or anything, because both attitudes presuppose a minimum of liberty. However, if we can say of some dogs, rabbits , birds, horses, cows, and camels that they trust their masters, we may use the words trust and distrust also in some prevoluntary sense of babies. In any case, the early education we underwent without choosing it taught us whom to trust and whom not to trust. Over the years, we discovered that no human individual can survive without relations to trustworthy persons and institutions and how dangerous it is to be surrounded by individuals who deserve more distrust than trust. Discernment of trustworthiness is indeed one of the most important social skills for being successful in living a human life—almost as important as being perceived and approached as trustworthy and trustinspiring oneself. Both must therefore be learned in order to become a well-functioning member of the society to which one belongs. 50 What and Whom Can We Trust? whom can i trust? Since we are not just members of humanity, but also members of a particular family, inhabitants of a particular village or town, a nation with a specific culture, a particular language group, and, perhaps, a church or religion, our socialization implies diversification. This presupposes that each individual identifies with a particular language, particular customs and affinities, and a particular style of life. The particularity of the group to which we belong, our fitting within the limits of a specific community,1 allows for a certain degree of mutual trust within that community, but it also creates a certain distance— which may cause distrust—with regard to those who are perceived as dissimilar to our own type of life. Within our own family, tribe, or class, trusting others is much easier, but even there, each one’s singular individuality may cause tension and distrust or a delay of trust. While growing up, we spontaneously trusted our parents and early educators, who constantly showed their care for our survival and development , but we also were frightened when terrifying events elicited anxiety or suspicion. Further acculturation has set our personal patterns and standards for trustworthiness and its contrary. We have learned to look at the eyes of interlocutors and to listen to the intonation of their voices in order to wager on their sincerity and benevolence or to detect their lies and hypocrisy. Does this person indeed perform what he seems to promise? Is she really interested in me and my interests? And so on. Because we owe our first humanization to those who were close to us, trust in others will normally have made a stronger impact on us than occasions that inspired distrust. Further experiences have con- firmed our impression that, in general, the advantages of association with others justify a basic sort of cautious trust, although one cannot disregard its interruption by nasty events that trigger distrust. Consequently , an individual’s socialization includes the emergence of a personal balance of trust and distrust. This balance is a feature of each individual’s character, but it may change over time because of the turns and twists that shake our existential adventures. Some indi- Trust in the Society 51 viduals will turn out to be rather naïve in trusting too quickly or too much, whereas others, more anxious, indulge in exaggerated forms of suspicion. It seems impossible to draw a picture of the ideal balance of trust and distrust, because much depends on the persons one meets and the circumstances in which these encounters take place. The quality of the existing order or disorder that determines the climate of a common space plays an especially weighty role. We cannot talk about trust in abstraction from the trustworthiness of the society in which the involved parties meet. The question of individual trust is linked to the other individuals’ trustworthiness and this question implies the question of our society’s mendacity or sincerity. For, it is indeed impossible to separate completely my trusting or distrusting you from the general degree of trustworthiness that characterizes our community, business, friendship, or collegiality. At the same time, however, we must distinguish the two questions because one may be trustworthy despite the generally accepted mendacity of a certain milieu. can...