In whom we trust

Trust is such an old-fashioned word, almost archaic. Those long ago bloody, life at risks days when trust was forged, days of kinsmen and even clans are long gone. Our society has grown ever more complex and sophisticated. Yet it is still predicated on that same old fashioned word, trust. Trust that has expanded out of the known limits of kinsmen into the known community that you live and grow up in and where you relate tangibly to those around you. You are known to them and they are not unknown to you, you and they can be placed, somewhere. 

So trust, every time to enter into a closed bus or train and share it with others you do it in trust that the others will not run amok, spit at you, shout obscenities in your face, steal from you, block your passage, push you off the seat so they can sit. You have cause to trust them. When you hand over your credit card at the garage you do so in trust that you will be charged only for that fuel you purchased and the litres shown actually is the same as went into your tank, they will not swipe your card and steal access to your assets and no one will record your private pin numbers you have to enter into their machine under the CCTV camera. You trust the shop assistant that the goods sold to you are fit for purpose, are new not some ones cast off rejects, will give good service relative to their cost and the change you are given is correct and in legal coinage. All done on trust, yes of course there are last resort safeguards., but for all those everyday transaction, you have almost implicit trust in those around. Not just transactions but every single day by day action that is interfaced by another person is founded on trust. When we shake hands, in that ritualised friendship offering, we trust the other person to respond in kind and keep within the parameters of our previous social encounters. Not to invade our personal space, not seek private information, to speak a language we can understand and respond to and not to freeload on the goodwill offered.

All our society connections then are rooted in a trust. Which, as an aside, promoted my concerns about, to burka or not, an abuse of our society by women wanting the freedoms offered but hiding behind their own societies relegation of women as male chattels. A trust derived from a known community and expanded our to our wider towns and cities where there still lingers on, some sense of community, belonging and accountability. You had to answer for your actions within the local community that sustained you. Until, that is this century as we enter into the Matrix Society where accountability and identity shows every sign of breaking down. We are now move anonymous in a multiracial, rootless, shifting population with no obligations of  loyalty to your kith and kin.

Further, this trust implicit in the society supporting us gets transferred onto the all those myriad machines and systems we have come to rely on. We have an expectation that they will do what they seem to offer to do, our usual critical faculties are put on hold and we take them at face value, as if there was a sentient being behind the interface. So in this new wireless always connected world what can you still trust and where should trust be permanently suspended, as if that was an human option? The online store looks the business yet is just a loner working out of a garage. The avatar makes all the right responses but who or what lies behind it? All those myriad facebook friends, how real, how connected are you or is Facebook.com just exploiting your vulnerability? 

We are now in a new age where the one thing we can no longer rely on is our instinct to trust. What lie before us is a desperately urgent need to re-examine how we relate and work with each other. For me the answer is clear, we have to rethink our sense of community and belonging, from the core up. A rethinking that I explore is so many of these posts. For you, what is your answer?