Something I read asked about trusting other people. Our brothers and sisters... and as I thought about it, about whether I trust people, I find myself thinking the answer is -
No.
That's overly simplistic, of course. I don't think that people are inherently dishonest or untrustworthy, actually. So this post is about feeling out my thoughts on the matter in order to clarify that.
What I trust is that people will be... people. That they will be true to themselves, really.
But what does that even mean?
It's like... people often follow patterns without thinking. Almost robotic, as though they were a program. If you know their history, nature and nurture, what the inputs are, they will generally respond in predictable ways.
That is not always the case. I do believe in free will, and that people can change or rise above their pasts. I just don't think many people exercise that free will.
To give an example - when confronted by something that feels like an attack (criticism, failure, or something just not going 'right' the way they expect) most people will get defensive. And perhaps even lash back.
If you put it in a martial arts context - if someone throws a punch, most people will punch back.
There's a whole lot of other options, of course. Turning the incoming punch into a judo throw by stepping in and aiding and directing the momentum. Stepping aside so it misses. Blocking. And so on and so forth...
But most people don't really learn how to control their responses and deliberately choose one. They perceive an attack, they punch back.
Of course, not all of those 'attacks' are true attacks. Sometimes it's just feedback they don't want to hear. And I like to think it's better, if you have the time, to perhaps sit with it. Just think of what happened, how you feel about it, and what your options are... and then choose the one that best gets you where you want to be.
Most people don't really bother, imho.
So you see something like Facebook, right? And they get criticism, and it feels like an attack, so they get defensive and want to punch back.
Something similar happens (or is perhaps exacerbated) when you feel your livelihood is threatened. Your status, your income... of course people who benefit from something like oil will get defensive when told that their entire livelihood puts the world at risk.
In an ideal world, of course, they might initial believe such claims are false and dismiss them... but as the evidence mounts, and especially when a scientific consensus forms, they would reevaluate that and act accordingly.
But we all know that that hasn't happened. For the most part, at least. Even if (if they had accepted it and acted accordingly) they might have managed to shift everything so that they no longer depended on oil for their status and livelihood, or even worked to ensure a smooth transition.
No, it's more natural to double down and work to block anything that threatens that.
Same with control... anything that appears to threaten their ability to control something comes across as an attack, and a threat. Even though things would be better (and not just for the ones they are trying to control!) if they learned to monitor that sort of instinctive response and choose better responses.
After all, while you may not have direct control if you come across as supporting people in their own goals you can often have more influence than if you're perceived as a threat right back.
Learning to listen and enable other people in the pursuit of their goals is better, imho, then having control and using it to steamroll over what they want.
I don't like to pick a political party because most of the time the extreme partisans appear as little more than programmed robots. You say your party supports or opposes something, and the partisans follow along like lemmings without really giving it any thought.
And you lose all that complexity, all the grey areas, all the potential for alternatives. It all becomes black and white, your side is good and the other side is evil, and in the process you demonize the other side and justify whatever your side does.
Reflexively
Without really even thinking about it.
And if you aren't careful, you learn to dismiss any argument that doesn't support what your side is pushing. Ignore any criticism. And then you start forming a bubble, where all you hear and see are the things that reinforce what your side wants.
I don't generally think either side is evil or bad (except for the cynical manipulators who know they're lying for political purposes. It's one thing to honestly believe the science was bad, and another to know and accept they're telling the truth and still propose policies and push influence campaigns to block any potential solution. Especially when it's coupled with callousness and an 'I got mine, how you do?' attitude. Though evil sometimes sounds overly harsh and judgmental, even if the end results sure seem evil.)
So in that sense - I don't trust people to evaluate a situation with an open-mind and make wise choices. I don't trust them to get past what appears to benefit themselves the most, especially when fear or hope are affecting their thought processes.
And I don't trust that they will hear criticism and use that to improve something.
Which does make it really, really, really hard to fix anything.
Take all the talk about 'woke' politics and DEI and all the crap the Trump administration is doing.
They are trying to cover up the bad things in our history, and act as though even mentioning them is an attack.
Except - those things did actually happen. The Tulsa race massacre happened. Sundown towns were a real thing.
Our history is incomplete when we pretend otherwise, in ways that have a real and horrible impact on people who are still not treated like real Americans today.
Saying so feels like an attack to certain people, though. So rather than sitting with it, thinking about it, and learning how to handle it in ways that will let us do better... we get Trump targeting Smithsonian programs to block any sort of discussion on those topics, and claim that the Smithsonian is the one that is divisive and rewriting history.
They remove pictures of American service members who earned medals, simply because they are black.
It's things like this that lead to discussion on 'white fragility' and 'toxic masculinity'... because how can we ever address racism or live up to the ideals mentioned in our founding documents if we can't even discuss our failures without leading to bs like that???
So do I think people are generally bad, or liars, or anything like that? No.
But I don't trust them to act logically, or respond to criticism well, or to know how to get past their own programming.
Well, that's not quite true.
People can 'get past their own programming' if they have certain types of life experiences. I mean, obviously people do. Sometimes.
It's just that there's no fast and hard rule about when and how it happens, and some of those experiences are arguably just replacing their programming with something else rather than helping them learn to consciously choose their own.
After all, to people who want a specific result and have the power to force the outcome, conscious choice appears to threaten that outcome too. If people are consciously choosing, you can't manipulate them and force them to choose what you want. You have to offer your arguments and hope they're persuasive enough on their own.
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