Trust Part 2- A subjective item
How much can you trust a person? Is there such a thing call a complete trust or distrust towards someone? In business, this is the buzz word as trust seems to be a commodity that is really lacking in this world and even more so in business where business interest always precedes personal interest.
Trust also seems to be a subjective thing that changes time to time between people. There is no one person that one can distrust completely or trust completely constantly through time as trust level changes according to situation. From my personal experience, I think there is no one person in this world that you can trust completely with all your thoughts. One fine example is the sharing of a secret. If you are prepared to tell someone then be prepared to know that this will not be a secret anymore as tongue will wag and things will spread.
So in this world filled with distrust, is there anyone you can trust your secret with? Well the answer to me is simple, you can also trust everyone with your secret and interest. Does this sound awfully weird as just before this, I was saying that you cannot trust anyone and now I am saying that you can trust anyone? This may sound contradicting but allow me to explain further.
First of all, let’s understand why we are not able to trust anybody. Any person that you are in touch with has some relationship and communication with you that intercepts both your life together. Be it work, social or family life, all these people share a common set of intercepting communication circle with you that also encompass their personal interest. When personal interest is in play, trust between people will be tested and that is when all trust will be broken and to me at least till now, it also means all trust can be broken as conflict of interest occurs.
However that does not mean that we should despair and be sad as this is just human nature. Some times, people break the trust thinking it is in your interest that they do so and you cannot possibly blame them. It is just a part of life that you have to live with and learn to accept, learning from the experience and playing the game well so that you don’t hurt yourself or others.
Hence, we have established that whenever there is a conflict of interest, betrayal of trust will happen. With this understanding, now we can explain why we can still trust everyone we know. The key is to understand whose interest is at stake in your circle and whose interest are not in it. For those people that have interest in a common issue, trust can be broken when the situation calls for it. And for those that have no interest in the issue, most likely there is no point in them for breaking the trust as it does not benefit them to do so. Hence it is quite unlikely that trust will be broken to these people. So in this case, everyone can be trusted. It is just simple segmentation of your social circle that will simply separate people who you can trust and who you cannot trust based on whether personal interest is at stake.
We are not going to go too in depth in this discussion, like talking about common interest and short term trust as all these have to look into human behavior and is too complex for simple discussion. The point of this blog is just to bring across the simple fact that all humans are selfish to a certain extent when their personal interest is at stake. Secondly, don’t be disappointed when trust is broken as you might do the same thing given the circumstance. Once you have given someone (that share common interest with you) trust, do not expect anything in return as disappointment is definitely possible depending on situation.
From my previous blogs, you would have realized that I like to distort things to make them contradict but will seek to find sense through these contradictions and in this blog I have demonstrate it again. Maybe that is because in this world, everything can be reconciled no matter how drastic they might seem, it is just whether the right time and situation is in play to sort things out. Hence in short, everything is based on conditions at a certain point of time and nothing is certain except for change =)
“Trust is subjective based on situation where personal interest is at stake”
~ James Tan~
Trust also seems to be a subjective thing that changes time to time between people. There is no one person that one can distrust completely or trust completely constantly through time as trust level changes according to situation. From my personal experience, I think there is no one person in this world that you can trust completely with all your thoughts. One fine example is the sharing of a secret. If you are prepared to tell someone then be prepared to know that this will not be a secret anymore as tongue will wag and things will spread.
So in this world filled with distrust, is there anyone you can trust your secret with? Well the answer to me is simple, you can also trust everyone with your secret and interest. Does this sound awfully weird as just before this, I was saying that you cannot trust anyone and now I am saying that you can trust anyone? This may sound contradicting but allow me to explain further.
First of all, let’s understand why we are not able to trust anybody. Any person that you are in touch with has some relationship and communication with you that intercepts both your life together. Be it work, social or family life, all these people share a common set of intercepting communication circle with you that also encompass their personal interest. When personal interest is in play, trust between people will be tested and that is when all trust will be broken and to me at least till now, it also means all trust can be broken as conflict of interest occurs.
However that does not mean that we should despair and be sad as this is just human nature. Some times, people break the trust thinking it is in your interest that they do so and you cannot possibly blame them. It is just a part of life that you have to live with and learn to accept, learning from the experience and playing the game well so that you don’t hurt yourself or others.
Hence, we have established that whenever there is a conflict of interest, betrayal of trust will happen. With this understanding, now we can explain why we can still trust everyone we know. The key is to understand whose interest is at stake in your circle and whose interest are not in it. For those people that have interest in a common issue, trust can be broken when the situation calls for it. And for those that have no interest in the issue, most likely there is no point in them for breaking the trust as it does not benefit them to do so. Hence it is quite unlikely that trust will be broken to these people. So in this case, everyone can be trusted. It is just simple segmentation of your social circle that will simply separate people who you can trust and who you cannot trust based on whether personal interest is at stake.
We are not going to go too in depth in this discussion, like talking about common interest and short term trust as all these have to look into human behavior and is too complex for simple discussion. The point of this blog is just to bring across the simple fact that all humans are selfish to a certain extent when their personal interest is at stake. Secondly, don’t be disappointed when trust is broken as you might do the same thing given the circumstance. Once you have given someone (that share common interest with you) trust, do not expect anything in return as disappointment is definitely possible depending on situation.
From my previous blogs, you would have realized that I like to distort things to make them contradict but will seek to find sense through these contradictions and in this blog I have demonstrate it again. Maybe that is because in this world, everything can be reconciled no matter how drastic they might seem, it is just whether the right time and situation is in play to sort things out. Hence in short, everything is based on conditions at a certain point of time and nothing is certain except for change =)
“Trust is subjective based on situation where personal interest is at stake”
~ James Tan~
posted by James at 7:17 PM
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