WIll my melon spill its cereal?

So after the crazy weekend involving panes of glass, getting kicked out of I another establishment and spending a full early morning in the emregency room, I have to admit that there was very little running through the mind the past couple days. What there was, was drama. Viscous theater major drama, the type of stuff that is best used to lube reality TV shows and Desperate Housewives, not the kind of drama that we have all come to love & expect. After the initial shock of all that has come to be just another weekend out (I will not kiss & tell on any drama, keep your rumor mill spinning with some slander or something more creative than the truth), I realized that this drama all boiled down to the problem of trust. When I really though about it, the act of trust is much different than trusting somebody, than trusting something will happen and that this is a fairly crucial distinction that many people miss. What they also miss is the problem of not having the right kind of trust for the right situation: without this awareness, betrayal is almost certain, for how can one provide the right action for the right trust if the situation does not entail it?

So that was a really convoluted way of saying that the right trust in the right situation will help maintain balance will still providing for the real world social 'smarts' that will keep us from becoming, dum da dum, the sucker. I actually looked into the academic study of trust, and found some very interesting works, especially one by Lane and Bachmann 1998, who separate the various kinds of trust and note the fact that each type has its own formula for attribution & maintenence. One of the major flaws of the study however, is their correlation between trust and control. Said otherwise, the various types of trust tie closely with behavior control: thus to trust someone is to trust that they will behave a certain way given a particular set of circumstances. Now this may be true, but the definition removes the human element from the equation. Now I know this isn't good philosophy, but I reject that definition solely based on the fact that it is almost dehumanizing. I don't want to think that the people I trust and the people who trust me put faith in behavior control: I would rather put the ball in the court of the trusted to behave according to certain standards. This hopefully will allow for some latitude in behavior will also allowing for some of the grey area in trust: like the parent who watches their child with a hangover: the elder may trust that the child is still making reasonable decisions while still allowing that the whole truth was not put forth when the progeny claims 'just a few friends, hanging out, not doing much.' And so on.

Anyway, let us first think about the early childhood trust. This is the most all encomapassing trust that I can think of. While it seems to be unconcious, it seems that the child trusts with every fiber of their being that their parent(s) will provide the adaquate skills & training to them so that they may behave as other humans do. This trust is so pronounced that the terrible stories of abused children have a fascinating dark underbelly: many abused and isolated children are not aware that what is being done to them is anything worng; they will just naturally assume that this is part of the growing process. It is only after socialization that they realize what has happened. In this type of love there is the implicit assumption of preservation of well-being. I think that this is basis of all trust, that to trust someone is to say that you have faith that they will keep your best interest in mind while performing activities that affect you.

In the social forms of trust I believe that the notion of well being is preserved. To say that you trust somone 'to have your back' would be to say that you hope that they will keep you best interest in mind even when you have decided that your best interest is to throw a chair at the bartender that cut you off. To trust someone in a relationship is to say that you expect the other to keep your feelings as well as the institution of your relationship ahead of their own.

This form of trust reveals another interesting facet of trust, and that is the idea of intervention in interest. Often tied to love, this is notion that when faced with various outcomes, one agent will place the goals of another over their own when an option satisfactory to both isn't available. I tried to keep that jargon free, but if not it's basically putting others before yourself when you both can't win. To apply this notion to the proper aspect of trust is difficult, but in the interests of getting to work on time: example & run. If some extremely attractive nyphette appears on my doorstep and offers to pay the entire house's rent, plus some 'extras' in return for my room: I would trust that I would not find my bags out on the front porch when I got home. I know that in actual practice with 20 something males & a female this would get a little murky with hormones, and who's gotten what lately: I would still trust that I would at least get the option of splitting the romm with her, or something - the moral of the story is still the same.

This analysis actually leaves further questions, such as the connection between trust and love, the potential role of goodwill in trust, and the problem that 'can trust be commodified?'. This little post quickly got out of hand for what I had intended to do (as many philosophical ventures do). Feel free to keep the comments coming: perhaps we can turn this little cauldron of ideas into a useful poition that others may swallow to get a little closer to truth (although don't even get me started on an analysis of truth...In distraction "Look at the monkey! Look at the silly monkey!)

P.S. My post title concerned the ceral that I was eating out of half a cataloupe this morning, just to see if it will work. Turns out it does...for awhile.