When you think about it, trust is one of the most important characteristics of society, and without it, no society can function. Trust is something that, once broken, can be difficult to fix. That’s just how fragile it is. But then, the entire human civilization is based on it. We have to place our trust in total strangers because, without this, the world as we know it would slowly sink into chaos.
However, you look at it, without trust, nothing works. You don’t live with people you can’t trust. If you can’t trust a person, the things you’d do with them are limited. Businesses are run on the basis of trust, and risks are taken based solely on trust. And that’s why once something happens that places that trust at risk, they all go to great lengths to redeem themselves.
What exactly am I trying to say here? Every day, we leave our homes to go out. We come across dozens or even hundreds of total strangers. We know we’d meet them, but we don’t know anything about them; we don’t know if they’re psychotic maniacs or if they’ll go on murderous rampages. The same with getting on the bus or on the plane. You don’t know what your driver is going through at home, you don’t know if the pilot is feeling suicidal.
Yet, you trust that everyone will have to be like you, a law-abiding citizen. You trust that if you mind your business and go about your day, everyone else will mind their business and go about their day. It’s that simple, right? When you get on the bus, you’re placing your trust in the driver to get you to your destination. You don’t even consider the fact that he could be a terrible driver, or that he could be a huge fan of street races. You just hope and trust him to get you to your destination.
What about pilots? You trust them to do their jobs even though you literally meet them for the first time on the day of the flight. This trust is important because without it, how will society function? If you don’t trust the driver, how will you get about? Sure, you could drive yourself, but what if you can’t afford a car? How will you travel if you don’t trust pilots?
So you see? Trust cuts across all spheres of life, especially the hospitality department. From restaurants to hotels, and even Airbnb. These companies pay a whole lot to secure your trust in them, and we also have to trust them because, without that trust, nothing at all will get done. If not, how will you trust a group of strangers to take care of your kids for long hours of the day? How will you trust the waiters and chef at the restaurant not to poison you?
Yeah… we know that institutions take great measures to prevent these things from happening because they’d kill their businesses overnight. But can you really know that for sure? Can you really be sure that one person won’t suddenly decide to get mad one day and unleash it on unsuspecting citizens? Here in my country, I’m sure you all know how often I’ve complained about the police force and their constant harassment. Yet, if any issue should happen, I’d still have to involve them. I’d still have to trust them to do their jobs, even though that trust has been broken a dozen times already in the past.
In other countries, we see school shootings, mass shootings, mass murderers… yet, people still go to school, and we still mingle with crowds. These days, marriages are ending in divorce, people are getting their hearts broken left and right… still, we’re still falling in love, we’re still getting married. This shows that we can’t do without trust. Trust is the engine that keeps society running.
You know yourself, you know what you’re capable of, so you have to trust the other person to do the right thing. And so, every criminal, evil maniac, or straight-up bad person out there, everything they did was just breaking the trust that people and society had placed in them. And that’s why once that happens, it’s always hard for society to forgive and forget.
Because truly, trust is a gift that once taken away, you can’t ever get it back in its original form.
