What to (un)trust?
On a sunny afternoon, middle of nowhere; a man decided to climb up a mountain; once he is on a high rock; he started calling people according to custom of time to make them aware of a grave danger that is about to befall them.
All the people gathered anxiously waiting what this news is about. Then the messenger of Allah said.
“If I were to tell you that there was an enemy ready to attack you (on another side of mountain), would you believe me?”
They said, “Yes. We never experienced except truthfulness from you.”
He said, “I am a warn-er to you of a very severe torture (if you do not hold the proper belief).”
The message of one God is a very inflammatory for a society where idol worship is the norm; yet nobody in the crowd, confronted him asking for proof, evidences or labeled him for speaking falsehood, spreading hatred in the society.
Everybody deep down knows the character of a person; they might not agree to the content, but they cannot question the integrity and honesty of the man standing in front of them.
Remember this is an uncivilized society, not enlightened by the progress of our time; people still used to worship the sun and the moon and believed the earth to be flat and believed it to be the center of the universe.
Yet an unlettered person is being held in high esteem; such that his enemies have their belonging’s with him for safekeeping.
Now fast forward to this age of progress and exploration; when humans are planning to make colonies on mars and start mining the moon to extract precious metals; there is something which has been lost in the realm of time which we call “trust”.
We are the most informed individuals that the earth has ever witness; there are millions of articles and blog post each day — with colorful stats and graphs; lots of data and facts but deep down there is this feeling among us, “Can I trust this?” what is the authenticity of these stats; what is the source; is it being published by a left leaning outlet or more conservative. Is there a nationalistic propaganda at play here or a fake news seeking our attention?
With all of the knowledge and facts at our finger tips; we as humans beings should be united against each cause; since now we have all the data to evaluate against and base our judgment on. Yet we are in a point of history where every thing is convoluted and diluted; and as humans we are the most divided we might have ever been.
Why is data not helping us arrive at the same conclusions? Because it is humans who are gathering the data, organizing it and reporting it; and our personal prejudices also creep into what work we do.
Now with so much distortion, the amount of information and noise, humans have lost their ability to think and reflect; they cannot process so much opinionated data and make sense of this world, differentiate right from wrong and the outcome is that we are divided into small groups who do not want to listen and accept the other groups and each of them has a narrative which they believe is the only truth.
We have lost the ability to trust anybody; even our closed relationships, loved ones and sometimes even our basic instincts.
It is not that trust has evaporated altogether, humans still trust that earth will keep rotating around its axis; the sun will continue to give heat; rain will continue to water the plants; trees will continue to bear fruit; bees will keep gathering honey; money will be able to meet my desires, medicine will be able to treat any problems; the food I ate will be able to keep me healthy and experts and scientist will be able to increase the life span of humans.
Do you know why this trust has not vanished? Because in a progressive world we accept these as constants on an autopilot mode or because we think these phenomenon have happened for centuries and so would continue to happen. Is that so simple?
Science has become a new yardstick of measuring trust. We rely on testing and theories which can be observed and repeated, anything unseen or unheard should be discarded and rejected because it cannot be measured and experimented with.
Only new set of findings based on scientific method can replace the old set of models; because now we can observe more and with new observation, we have new a finding which is contradicts the old model.
The problem is not with science; it is with our idea of science. Science’s purpose was not to reach absolute truth it is to serve as a model for truth in a speck of space and time; but that model is true only till a newer model replaces it because time is not constant and as we progress we have new data and observations to test against, which will destroy old truth and create new ones.
Now we, the most evolved animals of earth, are trying to put trust on certain truths which just have recently been arrived at; it is like trying to stand on clay or sand which does not has a firm footing of it own; as it is bound to be changed by the reason of time. The result is we keep falling.
It is not wrong to made a decision based of scientific method but it’s scary to only use this method to reach a conclusion. We have been given two sources of knowledge: one is using our senses of observation to determine a phenomenon and other is to use religious text to determine a pathway. It is necessary that we use two eyes to make a judgement instead of being blind with one eye.
Another pitfall humans has fallen into is the conundrum of progress; we have a contracted definition of progress and have limited it to only the materialistic world. What about ethics, morality, unity of family or a nation, their shared goals, aspirations, the relationship between an employee and employer or an individual and a society; we have stoped reflecting on those and measuring how we as a society improving on those. These topics are mostly left to be discussed in philosophy classes and have stopped being part of daily conversations.
It is the reason most of western countries that are far ahead in term of technology or economics; but fail poorly on the measurement of happiness and satisfaction and hence have high tendencies of suicide, drug use, sex addiction and high numbers of babies outside of wedlock. This is mainly due to a skewed definition of progress and trying to craft a concept of God through science.
Can we in this age of living, find some entity that we can trust, whose integrity and honesty is not on corruptible and who does not bow down in the face of power and influence? Is there a group of people, a government or at-least an individual which we can rely on to stand by the truth. Most definitely a big no.
We have lots of billionaires, powerful people, intelligent people, entrepreneurs, scientists, experts in each field. But not a single one we can put our trust on.
How can we solve this crises of skepticism?
The only way out in this uneasy water we find ourselves in, is to swim in a direction of absolute truth; you might not reach the end; or find it hard to swim against the ocean current and when you look around, maybe you are the only lone warrior; but you have to understand, that is your only way out.
