My Philosophy: Don't Trust Anyone Unless You Personally Know Them

Discussion in 'Free Thoughts' started by Charles_Wong, Dec 29, 2006.

  1. c7ityi_ Registered Senior Member

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    My philosophy: don't trust yourself because you don't know yourself.

    My philosophy 2: trust everything because nothing matters anyway
     
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  3. shakushinnen Registered Senior Member

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    Hi Oniw17,
    "Not a good policy. Do you get robbed a lot?"
    I suppose that this is a retorical question, but just in case......
    No, I've never been robbed. I try not to get myself into the situation where I can be robbed; and if I get ripped off occasionally, I guess that's the price I have to pay for being open.
    John
     
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  5. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    My trust is not forced. I know what you mean about the calculated decision to eat the hamburger hoping the chef is having a good day, and that's not what I'm talking about. I've known one friend for fifty years, a couple of others for forty, and one for ten. I'm quite satisfied that I know them well enough to trust them, even if not as intimately as a hunter-gatherer knows the packmates he makes camp with every night. Only one has let me down, once, in all that time, and from his point of view I was not at my most honorable in that complicated situation either.

    I've known a number of other people just for the few years I've been working on the East Coast, and I've had no trouble choosing the handful to trust. Occasionally we have a flap, one blabbed something I said to someone who shouldn't have heard it, one was too drunk to leave home one night and left me alone in a club full of strangers forty miles from home, and... well that's about it and those are hardly hanging offenses. Otherwise they've been unfailingly loyal and we've bailed each other out of jams at considerable inconvenience and/or expense.

    Most relationships get into trouble over money, and a wise person learns that this is a pressure civilization puts on friendship. We'll probably solve this problem in a future generation as we have most of our earlier problems, but for now life is better if you avoid doing business with friends or family. If your talents are a match made in heaven with a fortune to be made then you simply have go for it and be conscious of the risk. Otherwise don't ever hand a friend an amount of money or other asset so great that if it is never returned, you will not be content to consider it a gift.
    Fortunately we manage to keep it going without the support of the various one-percenters, including those who feel as you do.
    It's been said that New York attracts the one-percenters in whom that pack-social instinct is the weakest. Just in time, because the "frontier" where they used to be able to go to escape companionship has just about vanished. Unfortunately it is also home to millions of others who don't appreciate estrangement.

    However, megalopolises can be seen as artifacts of the Industrial Revolution. It was much easier to live in a town or a village, or even on an isolated farm, before industrialization. The computer revolution is hailed for its potential to reverse this. Real-time broadband video communication and telecommuting will make it unnecessary for people to cram into cities and suburbs--which will incidentally cause a quantum decrease in pollution and some of the other evils you criticize civilization for.
    So what's stopping any of you from also having flesh-and-blood relationships? I'm about as pathetic an e-bracero as you'll find, 3,000 miles from my wife, and I spend more time online than most people of my generation, yet even I have friends that I meet in person at adequately regular intervals, not to mention my co-workers, many of whom are quite enjoyable to spend quantity-time with.

    Yeah, I know a guy whose RPG persona is a voluptuous woman sixty years younger than he, so he doesn't really want to meet any of his fellow gamers in person, but I'd call him a genuine one-percenter and he's fortunate to have the internet considering the redneck burg he's stuck in in real life. The rest of us actually make plans to meet our more copasetic online friends. I looked up a go player when I was in Indiana and I know one happily married couple who met in a poetry chat room. Some of the people on SciForums scare me but I wouldn't mind meeting you and a number of others. And if you're nothing like your screen persona, well we all have complicated personalities made up of many competing spirits.
    Your criticisms are thoughtful and accurate. But don't you think it's incredible progress for a species that is hard-wired for "cohesion and intimacy" with only a few dozen packmates to now be able to feel it with a "pack" more than two orders of magnitude larger? Can you imagine cramming ten thousand Mesolithic hunter-gatherers together? Why can't you give us credit for making an adaptation that is entirely the result of our ability to override our primitive instincts with reason and learning--the essence of our humanity? It took twelve thousand years for us to span those two and a half orders of magnitude, so what's to stop us from doing the same thing again, so that when the Anno Domini is up into five digits people won't feel estranged in a city the size of New York? Especially since the Post-Industrial Era may bring the demise of the megalopolis and we won't even need the adaptation!

    As for "moving too often," that is another attribute of the waning years of the Industrial Era. When Industry was King and labor unions were strong and people with fifth-grade skills could make a middle-class income pushing a button on a machine until the day they retired, they did not move around the way they do now. Just as people will soon not have to "go to work" in order to do their jobs, they will also not have to "relocate" to change their jobs.

    Of course what may "stop us" is the Holy War that some of our less advanced Stone Age comrades are brewing. I suspect that those are the people who need to be culled from the gene pool. It's a cold thing to say, but it sure as hell is what we've done with dogs. One of the principal differences between Canis lupus lupus (wolf) and Canis lupus familiaris (dog) is that wolves generally form packs with fewer than twenty members whereas dogs are quite at ease in throngs that contain not only a huge number of dogs, but also humans, cats, and several other species. That didn't happen by accident. We neutered or ate the dogs who didn't adapt or simply let them wander back into the wilderness to try their luck with a wolf pack.

    Perhaps war is the same "unnatural selection" process in humans. The communities that are most gregarious live in peace with each other and the ones who have too much Neanderthal in them kill each other off. Unfortunately the Neanderthals keep inventing more powerful weapons so they can take us with them.
     
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  7. Baron Max Registered Senior Member

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    "...to now be able to feel it..."??? Surely you jest?! The average New Yorker, or any other major metro citizen, does NOT feel any cohesion and intimacy ...even in the midst of millions! In fact, it's actually the opposite ...most feel no intimacy at all, and worse, they feel fear of their fellows.

    The average New Yorker knows, as a friend, only about five-to-eight people. And when they marry and settle down, that number dwindles to only about three! ...out of all those millions!! Why doesn't that tell you anything?

    That's only four people, Fraggle. And I'll bet you live in a city of millions. Think about it, ...four people that you know, respect, trust, and are friends with in a city of millions. And that doesn't tell you anything?

    And yet, for all of that, you still type up glowing, optimistic posts about the glories of humans and their accomplishments as if you know and trust each and every one of them. Now to me, that's optimism if there ever was any such thing!

    Don't forget now, the next time you order a meal at a restaurant, try to remember that many, many disgruntled employees spit on the food out of anger and frustrations, not at you, but at the world in which they live and work. Yet you're the one who gets the food that's been spit on ....because he, and millions like him, don't give one, single, solitary shit about you. ....and yet you revel in how well we've done as a specie.

    Are you sure you want to remain so optimistic? ...even in the face of the rising crime rates and the horrors that man heap onto his fellows daily? ..even as you're drinking your New Years toast, that some employee spit or pissed into because he was angry at his boss?

    Baron Max

    Boy, Fraggle, you sure type a lot, don't you? Are you actually typing up all that bullshit to try to convince me, ...or to convince yourself???

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  8. Bells Staff Member

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    You still haven't given me a reason to trust you.

    -----------------------------------------------------------

    Trust is earned. I have family members I once trusted, through the dogma of the automatic trusting of family, etc. Now I would not even allow them to enter my home after not only severe breaches of trust, but after being hurt and deceived in ways that still make me catch my breath.

    I trust my parents, because as I had to earn their trust while growing up, I came to trust them as well. The same with my husband. I will admit I don't trust my 15 month old as any parent would not trust a 15 month old.. lol.. I have a few friends who I have known since pretty much childhood and again, the trust was earned on both sides. Same with a minute amount family members. Otherwise, no, I don't trust easily.

    It is sad in a way, but it's just how it is. I guess it is my way of self-preservation emotionally. Hard to explain it really.
     
  9. Baron Max Registered Senior Member

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    It's not sad at all, Bells.

    What's sad is that, somehow, we've bought into the social ideal that we should trust people without even knowing them! It's a sign of the ideal of political correctness gone crazy and wild, yet society still clings to it as some kind of standard for "getting along" with others.

    Trust is something that should be earned over time, not something that's just arbitrarily given out like candy at Halloween!

    Baron Max
     
  10. shakushinnen Registered Senior Member

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    Hi Bells,
    "You still haven't given me a reason to trust you."
    Generally I take the other approach, you have to give me a reason 'not' to trust you. Of course, in serious situations I'm not so trusting.
    John
     
  11. Baron Max Registered Senior Member

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    You have much to learn about people, my son. But don't worry, they'll teach you soon enough ...enjoy trusting the greedy, selfish bastards as long as you can!

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    Baron Max
     
  12. Lord Hillyer Banned Banned

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    I like the old expression: 'a true friend is someone who stabs you in the front'.
     
  13. shakushinnen Registered Senior Member

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    Hi Baron,
    "You have much to learn about people, my son. But don't worry, they'll teach you soon enough ...enjoy trusting the greedy, selfish bastards as long as you can!"
    If I haven't learned by now, it's probably too late for me. I guess I'm just too old and stupid.
    John
     
  14. Baron Max Registered Senior Member

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    In many areas of the world, people like that are usually called "victims".

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    Baron Max
     
  15. s0meguy Worship me or suffer eternally Valued Senior Member

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    People you 'know' personally can still backstab you.
     
  16. Charles_Wong Registered Senior Member

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    197
    I agree: sometimes one can be irrational, biased, etc. without being aware of it: it's good to ask other people if they can detect something that he/she cannot see in himself.

    I always welcome criticism: I've made much improvements to my thinking patterns based on what others have seen in me that I myself was blind to.
     
  17. Charles_Wong Registered Senior Member

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    197
    I concurr: I believe a socially adequate society is one in which everyone endeavors to point out fallacies in other people with the goal of improving everyone as a whole.
     
  18. frattman Registered Member

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    25
    personally i think it's more gratifying to trust first and run the risk of being screwed over than to always be cynical and suspicious. What comes around goes around, and when people see honesty and sincerity in you they will be more likely to treat you likewise.
    As a person living in a 'marginal' neighborhood, i've never once locked my house or my car. While driving cross country I picked up a half dozen hitch-hikers and was delighted with all of thier company. I don't know, maybe I'm just lucky . . . most people I know think I'm crazy, but then again they're all unhappy cynics

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  19. Baron Max Registered Senior Member

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    Don't worry, you'll learn better as you grow older.

    You'll also learn quickly as you begin to run out of money in the form of loans that are never repaid!

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    Baron Max
     
  20. shakushinnen Registered Senior Member

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    Hi Baron,
    I have lent money and not had it returned. Fortunately I could afford the loss, otherwise I wouldn't have lent it. I guess being open is like playing roulette. You always take a gamble. Most of the time you lose, but the occasional time that you win makes the losses worthwhile.
    I know I'm not going to convince you. Your experiences have taught you to be wary all the time. If I had had them, I might feel the same way.
    John
     

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