In my life, I frequently have to wrestle with problems of mistrust and skepticism and their consequences, in both my own personal life and in the larger theater of society. Everywhere I look, whether it is within me or around me, there is a great deal of skepticism about what others do and say, and even a fair degree of paranoia. To give but one example, this morning when I woke up and checked my e-mail I saw a couple of news reports claiming that a particularly favorable job report was largely due to some incomplete numbers, and that became part of a massive scandal where some people claim that others are “cooking the books” to show favorable unemployment numbers for a vulnerable incumbent president. I myself don’t tend to believe in many conspiracy theories because of the difficulties in getting people to cooperate together in these times [1] [2], but I understand why many people do given the prevailing and pervasive climate of mistrust in our society and many others around the world.

In light of this pervasive skepticism, I am not surprised when others find it difficult to trust me. But I am disappointed [3] when people who should know better fail to trust on even a basic level. I know I am certainly not a perfect person, but I am generally open, painfully honest, and as long as one has a high tolerance for verbal conflict I am willing to thrash out any kind of disagreement with someone to come to what is really at stake. I remember in one particular lengthy argument, I was surprised and pleased at the end of much discussion to find that the other person and I were fairly close, and the other person was a bit upset and disappointed that we were not identical. Much depends on expectations. I do not expect others to think or feel the exact same way that I do, and so I am pleased when we are close enough that we can understand where the other person is coming from. Others seem to expect unanimity, which is a much more elusive goal.

We have to recognize that our mistrust of others comes from two sources–one is the behavior of others and the other is our own baggage and preconceptions that we bring to the table. Someone may behave awkwardly and imperfectly but honorably (I generally consider myself inhabiting that general sort of territory), but if we do not understand or accept the reality of that conduct, we may often judge others by our own past. This is often bad, as many of us (myself included) carry a lot of baggage from the past with us when it comes to judging how other people behave. To be certain, if someone betrays our trust through active malice, we clearly have grounds to show skepticism towards them when they inevitably say that they have changed and become better people, especially when we have heard the same song and dance over and over and over again. On the other hand, we may often view people in negative ways without them ever having done anything worthy of being thought in that fashion, and where our own hangups prevent anyone ever leaving that state to somewhere more comfortable.

As might be supposed, my own views on trust and confidence are rather nuanced and somewhat complicated. Having a fair amount of both positive and negative experience, I neither assume that everyone is trustworthy or untrustworthy, but rather that there is a wide variety of trustworthiness in others, and that most people are more trustworthy in certain matters than in others. So I tend to give “provisional” trust fairly easily that includes those things that I am not embarrassed about should that trust be broken (and being a fairly open person, this trust is reasonably broad). To gain my full trust requires a lot of work, but I am willing to trust those I do not know well enough to allow them to demonstrate their friendliness and goodwill just as I would wish to show my own. In acting this way I take some risks, but I also feel that living a life of happiness requires relationships, and that requires that others feel welcomed, which would be impossible if I judged that everyone behaved in the patterns I became familiar with from small childhood. I bear that risk so that I may receive the reward of the friendship of others whose life histories are not nearly so tragic as mine, and who might not be able to understand my own proclivities towards hypervigilance.

What I have seen in my interactions with others is that many people, almost everyone in fact, are walking wounded, with varying (but often high) degrees of wounds in their own lives from their families, from their feelings of betrayal by others (loved ones, employers, religious institutions, the media, government), and from their internalization of feelings that the world is simply a hostile place governed by conspiratorial politics where the other side simply cannot be trusted. Those that can be trusted must believe or behave in a nearly identical way (there is seldom a tolerance for wide differences of perspective and opinion), while the threatening others also share this near unanimity of believe and practice. I have found this paranoid view of life, which is widespread and nonpartisan in nature, to be very untrue. For the most part, we are all people who seek safe places from the storms and pressures of life with like-minded people who respect us and understand us and like us. Our behavior to find this safety and security and belongingness and respect lead us to group with others in ways that tends to trigger the insecurity of those who feel differently, inducing them to do the same. And because of the pervasive mistrust and skepticism, honest and open communication across those dividing lines is elusive.

In order to have open and honest communication with others we must feel safe. The minute we feel attacked or threatened we will respond by defending ourselves, and anything someone else says (no matter how true or necessary) will simply not be heard or accepted. Given the lives we have lived, and given the way that others treat us (and the ways that we often treat others), such safety is rare and elusive. Some people automatically feel threatened when their views are criticized, or when there is any kind of conflict and argument. This means that some of us (myself included) must find less confrontational ways of dealing with disagreement that are less forceful and more open-ended in order to avoid causing unnecessary offense with those who are not only enemies but are potential friends and allies, with their own insecurities and fears. This requires great wisdom and understanding of where others are coming from, requiring information to be gathered before coming to conclusions about them.

When we look at those around us and see them as mostly wounded and insecure people looking for healing and wholeness and happiness rather than mostly wicked people actively seeking our harm, we are able to think and feel better of others, and eventually act in less hostile ways towards others who are not so different from ourselves. When we can create families, institutions, communities, and eventually societies where others feel safe and free from abuse and where others feel free to pursue their God-given talents while receiving the love and respect and earning an honorable living while doing so, then the current skepticism can become a relic of the past in the ash heap and dustbin of history. In order to do that, though, we must grow to love and respect and appreciate others, including those who think and feel differently from ourselves because of their different background and their different fears and insecurities. God knows we all have enough troubles in our minds–why not seek to overcome our own demons before we do battle with others who might be inclined to love us if they only knew who we really were. And they will never find out who we really are so long as we spend all of our time walling ourselves off from others, or cursing at the walls that others have built against us in their weakness and fear.

[1] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2012/01/09/why-i-am-not-a-conspiracy-theorist/

[2] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2011/11/06/two-people-can-keep-a-secret-if-both-of-them-are-dead/

[3] http://youtu.be/_O1hM-k3aUY