This week, I said to someone, "Trust implies a leap of faith." They responded, "Trust is earned." It is fairly obvious that in this scenario, they held something I desired. Lost in this exchange though, is that their counter did not account for my preceding statement, which was, "I believe human relationships are built on trust." Their response indicated to me that either 1) they did not agree with this preceding statement, or 2) they (subconsciously or not) did not believe that this preceding statement applied to them; that the burden of building trust was on me. I believe this is (too) often typical of one (individual or organization) who holds all (or most) of the cards. Power often makes trust a one-way street and transforms the potential for a relationship into an impersonal transaction. In this circumstance, I was working my butt off to "earn" trust, and they were sitting back, lapping it up.
I cover these exchanges in considerable detail most significantly HERE and HERE, and also here and here.
In this previous written thought I differentiated market currencies and human currencies, which aid in identifying market transactions and human transactions, which in turn, (based on quantity and quality of transactions), will determine if a relationship is primarily a business relationship or a human relationship. In this previous written thought, trust was identified as a primary human currency. This week, (to this point), I have determined that this relationship is primarily a business relationship.
I was about halfway through the first paragraph above, when I realized that I had covered this ground before. I have now carefully reread the previous written thought noted above and I see no need to rehash it extensively; but I have included three paragraphs to further summarize, below:
"I believe that market transactions should trade in market currencies including money, power, influence, marketable goods and services transacted impersonally, policy and procedure, incentives, and consideration for the greater good."
"I believe that human transactions should trade in human currencies including consideration for the individual, productive two-way communication, emotional interaction, trust, compassion, understanding, responsibility, respect, and goodwill."
"Human transactions also trade in counterpart currencies including fear, manipulation, disrespect, distrust, cruelty, indifference, disdain, insensitivity, avoidance, scorn, rejection, and the seven (pride, anger, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, and sloth) deadly sins. There is a natural gravitational attraction between these counterpart currencies and market currencies."
I will let this week's circumstance continue to simmer, and see if any new thought bubbles up...
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In 1754, Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote,
"The first person who, having enclosed a plot of land, took it into his head to say 'this is mine' and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society. What crimes, wars, murders, what miseries and horrors would the human race have been spared, had someone pulled up the stakes or filled in the ditch and cried out to his fellow men: 'Do not listen to this impostor. You are lost if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong to all and the earth to no one!'"
In 1759, Adam Smith wrote,
"To what purpose is all the toil and bustle of the world? What is the end of avarice and ambition, of the pursuit of wealth, of power and preeminence?... To be observed, to be attended to, to be taken notice of with sympathy, complacency, and approbation, are all the advantages which we can propose to derive from it. The rich man glories in his riches because he feels that they naturally draw upon him the attention of the world. The poor man on the contrary is ashamed of his poverty. He feels that it places him out of sight of mankind. To feel that we are taken no notice of necessarily disappoints the most ardent desires of human nature. The poor man goes out and comes in unheeded, and when in the midst of a crowd is in the same obscurity as if shut up in his own hovel. The man of rank and distinction, on the contrary, is observed by all the world. Everybody is eager to look at him. His actions are the objects of public care. Scarce a word, scarce a gesture that fall from him will be neglected."
And perhaps most damningly, from the man some have dubbed as the Father of Capitalism, Adam Smith also wrote,
"The disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition is the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments."
In 1845, Henry Thoreau wrote,
"Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. Man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can do without."
In 1860, John Ruskin wrote,
"Primarily, which is very notable and curious, I observe that men of business rarely know the meaning of the word 'rich'. At least, if they know, they do not in their reasoning allow for the fact, that it is a relative word, implying its opposite 'poor' as positively as the word 'north' implies its opposite 'south'... The force of the guinea you have in your pockets depends wholly on the default of a guinea in your neighbour's pocket. If he did not want it, it would be of no use to you; the degree of power it possesses depends accurately on the need or desire he has for it,---and the art of making yourself rich, in the ordinary mercantile economist's sense, is therefore equally and necessarily the art of keeping your neighbour poor."
In 1885, in a speech in Iowa, Henry George said,
"What more unnatural than this? There is nothing in nature like this poverty which today curses us... wherever we see one kind enjoying plenty, all creatures of that kind share it. No man, I think, ever saw a herd of buffalo, of which a few were fat and the great majority lean. No man ever saw a flock of birds, of which two or three were swimming in grease and the others all skin and bone. Nor in savage life is there anything like the poverty that festers in our civilisation... And yet the peculiar characteristic of this modern poverty of ours is that it is deepest where wealth most abounds."
In 1899, Thorstein Veblen wrote,
"Wealth has become the conventional basis of esteem. Its possession has become necessary in order to have any reputable standing in the community. It has become indispensable to acquire property in order to retain one's good name... Those members of the community who fall short of a relatively high standard of wealth will suffer in the esteem of their fellow men; and consequently they will suffer also in their own esteem."
In 1958, John Kenneth Galbraith wrote,
"People are poverty-stricken whenever their income, even if adequate for survival, falls markedly behind that of the community. Then they cannot have what the larger community regards as the minimum necessary for decency; and they cannot wholly escape, therefore, the judgment of the larger community that they are indecent."
(The quotes above were all either a) lifted from, or b) researched and found as a result of reading, the pages of the 2004 book "Status Anxiety" written by Alain de Botton.)
By today's standards, a lack of financial achievement and/or power makes one less trustworthy. By today's standards, a lack of financial achievement and/or power makes one indecent. Many relationships are layered with both market and human transactions utilizing both market and human currencies. In any relationship that is, to any degree, a business relationship, it is rare to find both parties on completely equal footing; one will almost always hold at least one or two more cards than the other. And on this uneven playing surface, there is an uphill, and there is a downhill.
In the context of this week's written thought, the definition of trust is peppered with words that imply uncertainty and the necessity of a leap; words that include belief, faith, confidence, reliance, and expectation. To say "trust is earned" implies that "trust" can be a certainty, and is most likely uttered by the party standing uphill; uttered with an expectation of uphill effort on the part of the 'looked-down-upon' party, and with an unrealistic expectation that this effort should ultimately result in acceptably less unequal footing. Additionally, what the uphill party often fails to see is the gap, (varying in width and depth according to circumstance), at their feet; and, in many cases, they fail to comprehend the additional challenge of an uphill leap after an uphill struggle. This week I have been asked to struggle uphill. I have not yet reached that divide, and I do not know if the individual looking down from on high is aware of that divide. I may yet be asked to make that uphill leap. It would be nice, instead, if at some point in my efforts I looked up to see my inquisitor standing next to me on my side of the gap with a trusting smile and a warm embrace. Failing that, at the very least, when I reach the gap, I may need a friendly hand reaching out to help me across.
Based on the business relationship to this point, I am not optimistic; yet I still struggle, uphill...
4/19 POSTSCRIPT: Yesterday, in the midst of my uphill struggle, I looked up to see her standing next to me with (what appeared to be) a trusting smile. I expressed appreciation, looked away for a moment, and today when I turned back, she had easily leapt back across to her side of the gap and, with folded arms and a smug shrug, she waited to see if I would follow. I guess her short visit reinforced her sense of power and soothed her conscience.
I turned, and walked back downhill.
"Bye Felicia."
