Trust

About 40 years ago I was sitting in a courtroom, complete with a real judge, real prosecuting attorneys, and real defense attorneys. But it wasn’t in a courtroom. It was a school classroom in a remote First Nation. The room had been commandeered for the day and officially transformed into a legal court of law.

The proceedings were fascinating: partly because I was not a participant in any way, and mostly for the fact that I was friends with all the individuals facing the judge. The court personnel were all Caucasians from a city. All of the various accused were local residents of the indigenous community, called in to have their day in court.

For me, there were several levels of fascination in that clash of cultures:

• All the proceedings were translated from one language to another, on the fly. As one who could understand both languages, I was deeply saddened to feel that many times the underlying meanings sailed right past either party in the process.

• Court protocol had an unnecessarily negative impact. “Get your hands out of your pockets,” yelled the judge to a frightened adolescent standing before him. The kid hadn’t the slightest idea what he was supposed to have known.

• And most importantly: Trust of individuals and proceedings was inextricably tied to one’s familiarity with people and with prior experience.

So in that courtroom, people trusted those who were most like themselves. That’s how it normally works.

Trust is such a basic and essential human reality. We can’t live in any type of healthy community apart from our impressions of the trustworthiness of others. That’s foundational community function.

But how do we determine whether or not to trust people we can’t possibly
know personally, nor will ever interact with? Is that an important part of our responsibilities? Does it accomplish something important?

I just watched two separate video interviews of the main players in a very public conflict. The two interviewees gave entirely different perspectives of the conflict. The interviewing host tried to be neutral, and ended both sessions telling the viewers, “Now you can decide which of these parties is right.”

Really? That’s impossible. And it is usually unhelpful when we try.

Rather, we can learn many crucial lessons about relationships and dignity, basic respect and truthfulness without fully knowing or judging the event. That’s our responsibility.

We first process those impressions of trust unconsciously. But we can conduct a conscious review of what inspires our own trust or distrust in distant people or parties in conflict.

My inclination to trust is not first shaped by the whole body of evidence. That is not available to me. It is first shaped by the unconscious processing (that happened in milliseconds) of the visual cues that caught my eye; and is confirmed through any sense of familiarity with the subjects, and any prior experiences with “those kinds of people.”

My determination to trust someone I don’t know, or to condemn someone I don’t know is probably not based on a rational process, but more likely on a reactive emotional response.

“The Rider and the Elephant” metaphor is a powerful reminder of how vulnerable we are. I borrowed this paragraph from a devotional by Skye Jethani:

“University of Virginia psychologist, Jonathan Haidt…offers a helpful metaphor to describe the rational-emotional dynamic. He says our emotional side is like an elephant and our rational side is like a rider straddling it. While the tiny rider may think he’s in control, ‘anytime the six-ton Elephant and the Rider disagree about which direction to go, the Rider is going to lose. He’s completely overmatched.’ In other words, our lives are directed by our hearts, our emotions, and our affections. We then use logic and reason to rationalize the decisions of our heart in order to maintain our illusion of control.”

That scares me in regard to my own instincts. We are often encouraged to assume that our instinctive response of trust, or distrust, is going to turn out to be accurate. For people and conflicts outside my experience, that can be very risky.

What triggers the movement of the “elephant” when I see something that ignites my emotions?

Would I admit that my gut-level trust and distrust are immediately affected at the sight of something familiar, like: A logo? A hat? A beard? A tie colour? A Bible version? A drum? A head covering of religious nature? An ethnic identity marker?

I admit it. The “elephant” I ride sometimes turns without my control. And I can practice getting him back on track through persistent training. I do not always succeed, but I choose to work at it.

The court of public opinion will always be in session. But you and I can determine to consciously review our unconscious reasons for withholding trust or for assuming trustworthiness that is merely based on our immediate connection with something familiar.

We only contribute to the problems by assuming it must be our responsibility to judge which group is right and which is wrong.

I think we would benefit much more by highlighting the obvious lessons illustrated by distant events and stories we can’t personally engage. There is a lot to learn, if we will focus on that.