Last week, the CEO of the online auction site eBay boasted that his company had taught 13 million people to trust each other – almost all of them total strangers! Contrary to any conclusion that ‘pure reason’ may take us to, most of us would trust a stranger with our money – given the right conditions and circumstances - even though we have little or no clue about their identity. It is tempting to reason that people trust eBay and therefore anybody who is selling something on eBay would ‘inherit’ part of that trust, but that may not be the ‘whole truth’.
The fact is we are far more willing than we can even imagine; to trust anyone who is in a position to give us something we want or need at a reasonable ‘price’. What is meant by ‘price’ may not necessarily be a monetary figure, but anything we deem valuable such as social acceptance or even love and reputation, because that is the force that has propelled ‘social networking websites’ into one of the most active realms of the Internet. While a considerable number of members on social networking sites seem to shun interacting with strangers, even most of them are likely to initiate interactions with a stranger who may have common interests or a ‘profile’ that seems very interesting or attractive in some level.
So is the Internet telling us that trust is not something that always needs to be ‘earned the hard way’? What would the word ‘trust’ mean if it is something we would trade willingly to buy the desires of out hearts and minds?
2 comments:
very interesting thoughts... i'm also rather skeptical about the internet being held responsible for the IMPROVEMENT of mutual trust. if anything, it' given people a whole new forest to play hide-and-seek in.
perhaps the answer is that absolute trust is a practical impossibility. all of us deny things; not only to the minds that are nearest to ours, but to our own minds as well. and the amount we keep from ourselves and other people also varies, day by day, year by year.
so all we can have is a layercake; an onion, where people just have to peel away one layer and feel comfortable that there's less that's hidden from view. and maybe what the internet's done is to add a whole new set of layers, that keep the peelers happy?
jokerman: welcome!
I think it was Plato... (errr.. or was it Shrek) who made a simmilar reference to the 'tearful' philosophical analogy to onion layers... an yes... i also think that all human relationships progress as we peel off the layers - sometimes tearfully.
i was also thinking about the "triping point" or the "critical mass" that is necessary for the ignition of a relationship. i have a number of friends who are weary of strangers messaging them and sending them friend-requests on Hi5, but they themselves admit that there are times when they send messages to strangers.
they know the risks involved and they are fully aware of the hipocracy behind it. that's why i felt that this sort of "trust" is not something that is 'earned' but something that is 'spent' - out of desire, need, or just curiosity...
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