On Trust
On Trust
In the field of systems change, the importance of building trust is popping up all the time. Everybody is in the business of building trust among actors in a system - as if trust can be something that can be built through interventions carefully designed by an outside actor. I’m very sceptical about the notion of building trust.
How do we get trust then? Often there seems to be the sentiment that “trust needs to be earned” – whatever that means. In contrast, I have a friend who always says that he trusts somebody until he doesn’t. How do we earn trust? How do we loose it? Is it true that trust is built up slowly but lost quickly?
In my view, trust is a transcontextual pattern of relationing. It has to do with context, culture, history, experience, and to a certain extend habituation of behaviour. When I reflect on whom I trust, it seems that I trust certain people without having ever met them while I distrust people I know quite well. But sometimes I don’t trust people when I first meet them (why do car sales people come to mind?). But in a way that is all based on my previous experience (I don’t have good experiences with buying cars), societal norms (I trust that the contract between me and my insurance company will be upheld even though I don’t know the person who sold me the insurance), gut feeling (I’m not a hitchhiker but I assume when hitchhiking you do need gut feeling to judge whether you want to jump into somebody’s car), etc.
Trust is a complex issue. And as with all complex issues, it is not amenable to direct correctives, to directly intervening with a solution. There is no recipe on how to build trust. It seems to make sense to probe with small safe-to-fail activities to see whether things move and whether the current relational patterns can be broken up.
What is your experience? Have you successfully built trust? Care to share your story or your thoughts? Just reply to this message.
The Paper Museum
This week again a text in German, from the Swiss Newspaper ‘Die Republik.’ Translation below.
Tatsächlich scheint in den letzten Jahren der Kampf um das gute Gewissen der Schauplatz der politischen Auseinandersetzung geworden zu sein. Die schleichende Moralisierung des Politischen bedeutet allerdings nicht, dass die Politik moralischer geworden wäre, sondern lediglich, dass Macht vermehrt über den Zugriff auf das Gewissen ausgeübt wird.
[…]
[…] heute geht es mehr um die geistigen als die materiellen Bedürfnisse: nicht mehr um Nylonstrümpfe, sondern um eine Beruhigung des schlechten Gewissens. Heute kauft man mit dem richtigen Shampoo nicht mehr Glück, Schönheit oder Erfolg ein, sondern den ruhigen Schlaf der Gerechten.
Unter dem Motto Genuss ohne Sünde erschliesst die Durchmoralisierung des Alltags riesige neue Märkte und lenkt gleichzeitig davon ab, dass sich im Kampf gegen die Klimakatastrophe seit Jahren so gut wie nichts bewegt. Dennoch kann jeder Bürger und jede Bürgerin ruhigen Gewissens schlafen – sie haben ihren Beitrag ja geleistet.
Aber der Kampf um die Rettung des Planeten entscheidet sich nicht samstags in der Kompostgruppe, sondern auf der Strasse. Nur wenn der Druck der Strasse eine kritische Masse erreicht, lassen sich strukturelle politische Veränderungen durchsetzen, die vielleicht die Katastrophe im letzten Moment noch abwenden können.
Das bedeutet keineswegs, dass man auf Mülltrennung, Biofleisch oder Elektroautos verzichten sollte. Aber man soll sich doch bitte nicht vormachen, damit einen wichtigen Beitrag zum Umweltschutz zu leisten.
Oder wie es Erich Kästner einst formulierte:
Nie dürft ihr so tief sinken,
von dem Kakao, durch den man euch zieht,
auch noch zu trinken.
Translation
In fact, in recent years, the struggle for a good conscience seems to have become the arena of political contestation. The creeping moralization of politics does not mean, however, that politics has become more moral, but merely that power is increasingly exercised through access to the conscience.
[…]
[…] today it is more about the spiritual than the material needs: no longer about nylon stockings, but about a soothing of the bad conscience. Today, the right shampoo no longer buys happiness, beauty or success, but the peaceful sleep of the righteous.
Under the motto Pleasure without sin the moralization of everyday life opens up huge new markets and at the same time distracts from the fact that virtually nothing has been happening in the fight against climate catastrophe for years. Nevertheless, every citizen can sleep with a clear conscience - after all, they have made their contribution.
But the fight to save the planet is not decided on Saturdays in the composting group, but in the streets. Only if the pressure of the street reaches a critical mass, structural political changes can be enforced, which may still avert the catastrophe at the last moment.
This does not mean at all that one should renounce garbage separation, organic meat or electric cars. But please do not delude yourself into thinking that you are making an important contribution to environmental protection.
Or, as Erich Kästner once put it:
You must never sink so low,
as to drink as well
from the cocoa, through which you are being pulled.
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator
Reference: Strassberg, Daniel. 2021. “Nachhaltig in Die Katastrophe.”Die Republik, August 3, 2021.https://www.republik.ch/2021/08/03/nachhaltig-in-die-katastrophe-die-macht-greift-uebers-gewissen-zu-das-weissgewaschene-gewissen-die-durchmoralisierung-des-alltags.
Why have I added this to my paper museum? What Strassberg describes resonates with my own experience of recent years. For example the big hype about plastic packaging. Of course is plastic waste a big problem, but it felt that all of a sudden one could solve all of the world’s problems if one was just to stop using plastic. I realise now that it was a move to silence one’s own conscience – “at least I am doing somthing.” The same people would however still buy diesel-fuelled SUVs justifying that with all kinds of good reasons (and even buying electric SUVs is more about having a good conscience than about actually doing something for the environment).