I was talking earlier about making a topic about trust. I'm not going to make this topic too long. I feel like writing something because I think the amount of topics created is going down pretty steadily.
I've been wrestling with the question of trust. On this forum nobody really trusts each other because they're too afraid of being backstabbed. As a result, I've noticed that when I am being honest or kind to people I immediately get placed under suspicion. It's more of an observation than a complaint really. However the troublesome part about it is that nobody who isn't rotten to the core will get a say in anything. Kindness is interpreted as stupidity, weakness or deceit.
This brings up the question of why trusting someone is so hard. I suppose it's more about taking a leap of faith and being vulnerable. I wonder why it makes one vulnerable, though. I honestly don't know how to approach the subject. The story usually goes something like this: you confide in someone and the person passes whatever you said on to everyone else. The outcome is often screams of "BUT I TRUSTED YOU". Whatever the case, feelings have been hurt. In this particular example I wonder if the feeling of hurt would be as great if whoever goes around passing confidental information had just heard it in the passing.
There are other examples of breaking someone's trust which might vary from breaking a promise to pretending to be something you're not. The feeling of betrayal is still present regardless of how the trust was broken. I'm just mostly interested in the why. Trust itself is a difficult concept for me to get a clear grip on. For me it means that I can talk about myself honestly and I can count on someone. So as a result of losing that trust I suppose I have one less person I can be honest with or count on. I wonder if that means that trust by itself is self-serving. Then again by having a mutual trust you're also helping someone else, so I guess not.
That brings me back to my previous point about betrayal. I'm not sure what part of me is hurt if I am betrayed. Maybe it's the ego. I don't see why, though. I believe trust has a lot to do with feeling helpless. By trusting someone one surrenders themselves without having guarantees of how that particular person is going to act. In that case if one gets betrayed I wonder if it's the feeling of helplessness that bothers them.
I'm a bit too tired to write more right now. Thanks for reading through it.