What does trust mean to you? What does it mean to us as a society? How important is it? How much does it cost us when it is not there?
We often don’t like to “have to” think about trust. We often prefer to be in the situation where trust is so completely interwoven into our lives that it is utterly intrinsic.
And when trust is not certain, anxiety starts to increase. There is tension. We act differently and take longer, more expensive, pathways—in thought and in action—to mitigate against an environment where trust is fragile or nonexistent.
When trust is certain, absolute and unconditional, it becomes a conduit for our positive energies to be directed with power, speed and efficiency. It creates a world in which we can collectively thrive.
In recent times, trust is fraying and being torn in multiple directions and vectors. We are being asked to trust in certain areas, but not in others. Trust these people, but not those. This political party, this influencer, but not the other ones. In this narrative, but not those “pack of lies”.
And if we pull back for a moment and look at the resulting dynamics, it almost hardly matters about the particular actors and narratives at play.
Fundamentally, what matters is that trust is being eroded, and that trust is being shattered into countless fragments. The result ends up being the same in all projected scenarios—a world torn apart. A world where anxiety is high, tension is constant, positive endeavours are de-powered, and energy is lost to inefficiencies. Is this what we want?
Or do we want a society where the ultimate aim is to bring about a respectful, loving, trusting society that supports, nurtures and inspires each of us to thrive? A society where we can be unhindered in our positive and respectful expressions and to become gifts to ourselves — and therefore gifts to us all.
That may be possible if we nurture trust, enable trust, build systems of trust, strengthen exisiting trust, aim towards higher levels of unconditional trust. Then we might have trust so completely interwoven into our lives that it becomes a foundation for us to soar.
This requires conscious action, and conscious realisation. To realise how valuable trust is and to see all of life through that lens, and then to take conscious action to build, nurture and strengthen trust wherever we can.
How? There are many ways and some will be obvious upon introspection, other ways will require insight and collaboration to reveal.
We, at FreeDAO, look to at the ways secure and distributed blockchain networks can create a secure foundation that builds yet greater systems of trust. We believe that this technology coupled with such ideals has the ability to create strong value that can be shared far and wide—value created from the scaffolding of trust. But this is our journey—our expression—and it only a part of the potential landscape.
For others, their journey might be elsewhere, bringing trust to family dynamics, to our institutions, to our journalistic integrity, to our medical system, to our stories we tell of what a world of trust might look like. There are many paths to build an invaluable world of trust. Sometimes simply just empowering those that are authentically attempting to build better systems of trust.
Stewarding trust is far different than simply pointing out the thousands of ways to trust—and to discredit others as untrustworthy.
And if stewarding trust is our aim—our lens—and we all work towards our selves and our society with this in mind then one day we might look up and see a world that is beyond what we had hoped. Instead of a world that is beyond what we have feared.
The value of trust is simply invaluable. And it is the bedrock of who we truly want to be.
