Questions About Trust

This morning while checking my e-mail, I had gotten a comment on the "A Few Good Men" entry. In responsing to the comment, I suggested that although support systems were important for the young lawyer to pursue justice, that trust was the foundation of receiving the support. That got me thinking...

Trust is earned by someone's belief in what you do, or who you are. Trust cannot be manipulated, as trust is about relationship. Trust is about understanding and accountability. One does not listen to those who have abused, misused, or disregarded the relationship. Relationship has to be mutually edifying for it to be healthy.

Mutuality in relationship is about allowing differences, respecting rights, supporting opportunities, and giving hope. It is the social contract, where there is equal respect and regard for another's life and values.

In all relationships, there is a give and take, at least if there is healthy mutuality. Hierarchal forms of relationship can be healthy as long as there is also respect and encouragement from "both ends", not a demand to rights, but a trust that there will be "a right". Respect is foremost in regards to trust in relationship.

I find that when workers felt their rights were being abused that they sought recourse in just compensation for their work. One wonders now, what just compensation means, when those in other countries will do the work for less. Cultural living standards differ, and the American worker is disadvantaged by his own culture's standard, which has become his own.

While the worker had sought rights and won "justice", the executive has used his power to exploit and use his position and power to maintain even a higher standard of living. There seemed to be an attitude of entitlement on both ends, which built resentment and a lack of mutual respect and trust. Outsourcing jobs was a means to make more profit for the executive to "look good" and to exploit the system he had created, and benefit the stock holders, while the worker's right to work was devalued and undermined., creating an esculating environment between the worker and the boss.

I do not know the solution, but I do know that our globalized economy has exasperated the problems in corporate and private interests. Now, the government gets involved, which compounds the problem and creates a quadmire of beauraucracy that is hard to hold accountable. The citizen cannot be informed because it takes a legal mind to understand. And sometimes I think this is a convienient way to enlarge one's pockets of interests.

There is not to be a separation between a public servant's job and the private citizen's right to know, which is what the "tea parties" have sought to "voice". This is a "voice" for public good and social justice, but there are other "voices" that do not need respect. These are the attitudes of the Taliban or the antagonist. One can have convictions or opinions without oppressing another or demanding that the other agree and behave accordingly. Sometimes when difference is too large to bridge, it is best to allow room, so disagreement and tension is dispelled.

In international relations, negotiation and diplomacy is a tedious job. Cultural divides become widened whenever religions dominant opinions, ideas and convictions. Religion can be dangerous because the religious believe that their view hold "ultimate truth or value" and to disregard it, is to disregard God. The fundamentally inclined do not trust those who do not regard God as the foremost object of desire and focus. It is difficult to negotiate with those whose opinions are underwritten by "god himself".

I find that the religious are the hardest and the most difficult to broaden and engage in "public ways", as the walls are built too high. They feel that the very definition of themselves as religious is threatened by engaging the "secular" world. Trust in life, itself, is not a value to these religious "idealists". They find their comfort in the "next world", where they are promised justice.

Justice should be sought in the here and now, as that is all we really know and have. And American government seeks justice in the here and now in seeking to establish democracy abroad.