Fragments of conversations about dis/trust

# Fragments of conversations about dis/trust.
Since we rarely have the luxury of thorough discussions with many people gathered with a common purpose, we also have to tackle the distrust story piecemeal, in a lot of very short conversations with lots of different people. I’ve heard that various therapies use trust-building exercises to help individuals get happier or more competent, but I don’t know what political applications those might have.

As with any fundamental political attitude, a few slogans won’t change a person’s flight into an all-embracing distrust. But again, we can bring light and nutrients to the seeds of any alternative stories we may harbor. At the same time, we need to shoulder aside the lies about supposedly innate human treachery and stupidity, so that the scaredest people don’t spread their infection.

First, rather than indulge our stories of disappointment and betrayal, let’s just take that as a given. What’s the word the courtroom dramas use? Stipulate. Let’s stipulate that we’ve all been hurt by friends, lovers, kids, colleagues, pillars of the community. All of these may predispose our politics. But let’s focus on our community and workplace experience. Sometimes the betrayal story will burst through en rojo vivo, as they say. A woman in my GED class wrote about her job at Bike Athletic, how nice it was for a time, with everyone friendly and making money. But then a lot of personal conflicts started up, and this woman had to leave. When I asked about the conflicts, she corrected herself: That’s not really true, she said. She got fired because she clocked in another woman, who came two minutes late and had her arms full and had carpal tunnel syndrome besides. The floor supervisor had been wanting to get rid of the injured woman, and used this incident to fire them both, with testimony from a third, stool pigeon line worker. I feel like a failure, my student told me. She’d revised her own story of helping a friend to read as betrayal and personal failure. She hadn’t yet generalized it to a massive statement about the unworthiness of human beans in general.

The fact is, even the most cynical among us trust other people on a daily basis to meet crucial needs. In the U.S., for example, we have pretty reliable supplies of food and water. Most of us expect help in medical emergencies. And we frequently buy, sell or exchange lots of goods and services, mostly to our satisfaction when the terms are well understood on both sides.

I might also ask folks, Can I trust you? Can your family trust you? While acknowledging our common experience of distrust, we can dismiss right off the bat any claim that “You can’t trust anybody.”

The real questions are, Who do you trust for what, under what circumstances? I might ask someone with a car, Do you have a mechanic? Why would you turn your expensive machine over to this person? Why would she help you? Why might she fail sometimes? Would you ask her to babysit your kids or represent you in court?

Taking a different perspective, I might also ask, Is there anyone you trust unconditionally? And if the answer is yes, I’d follow up with, What if you saw an unexpected condom this trusted person left lying around, or a hypodermic needle, or a roll of thousand-dollar bills? Wouldn’t you ask some questions?

The point is, truly unconditional trust is a rare bird, and one we don’t really need for political work. We have all sorts of successful transactions with folks whom we trust on a limited basis, because there are incentives and ways to hold them accountable. Metzgar and others also describe working class traditions of interdependency, in which folks rely on each other precisely because everyone has weaknesses and cannot stand alone. So the next questions become, what kinds of rewards and accountability can we build into political work, so we know what to expect from our partners?

Here’s where we can talk about what’s the greatest danger for our community, and how our neighbors and partners could hurt us most. What are the actions we are most concerned about, and how can we discourage them? We can go in the opposite direction, too, to talk about the kinds of people we’d trust, under what circumstances. Take Herman. Would you be willing to make housecalls with him? Hold a press conference? What process would you want to have in place before you let him collect money for the group? Are you ready to go to jail with him?-- and so forth.

Doesn’t hurt to remind ourselves now and then how much our suspicions of each other are direct products of corporate strategy. As selfish consumer, feeble sinner, or rugged individualist, we are supposed to cooperate only under orders from Higher Powers, or in order to retaliate against the threat of women, atheists, Ay-rabs, and other blood-curdling hordes of Those People. We can relate in detail the divide-and-rule tactics employed every time the conflict bursts into the open. We can expose the false model of trust that is on the one hand, unconditional, and on the other, uncommitted-- setting us up for certain disappointment. “I’ll be there for you no matter what.” Have you ever heard that? What can it mean? Will you go to court with me? Will you raise my kids while I’m in jail? Will you take a collect call? It’s no wonder and no accident that we distrust one another. But we can’t give in to those who prosper from our misery.

We can also say from the git-go that sometimes we use the distrust story as an excuse for not taking risks and helping other people. When that’s the case, arguing about who we can trust is beside the point. At that point our real problem is that we think we’re better off as servants.

Finally, we can tap into the common experience that we’ve given someone else one more chance. Let’s put aside for a moment the fact that sometimes it doesn’t work. Did you ever give someone a second chance? Did you ever stick with a romance or a business partnership even through great disappointments? Why did you keep trying? What was so important that you took those risks? And what do you look for that tells you that other person or project might be worth the risk?

What about yourself? Do you give yourself a second chance? Some folks lead miserable lives because they have entirely false expectations of themselves as well as others, and they’ll be nothing but cannon fodder until they learn who they are.

Taking risks with other people is really not so different than other ways we bet on hopeful outcomes. What are the best things in your life? How did these come to pass? Was it all smooth sailing, free of setbacks? Were you always sure of the outcome? We can ask for examples. What does it take to raise kids to become responsible adults? Are your kids better prepared because you learned from your mistakes? How did hospitals come to be, or hip replacements, or the Constitution? How is that we learn to do or build anything complex? Our lives are full of disappointments in part because we’re always reaching for what’s just out of reach. But in doing so we stretch farther, and grow bigger. Any big project will involve a lot of mistakes and blind alleys, and justice is the biggest project of all.


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Here's what I think: We have many different interests. We can choose to pursue the ones that will help ourselves and our communities at the same time. We have to talk about how to do that.