2022: Creating a Lexicon of Future

Field Guide to Flourishing: T is for Trust

Trust is the assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something in which confidence is placed. Dependence on something future or contingent : hope. ~ Merriam-Webster dictionary

Trust is a central characteristic of an ethical life because it affects every aspect of personal, social, and particularly business relations. ~ The Importance of Trust

Trust relationships exist at many levels: between two people, among members of a team, between teams, within an organization, between workers and management and even within an entire system, like the financial system or the air traffic control system. The further removed individuals are from the locus of the relationship, it becomes more complicated to assess trustworthiness. ~ Ethical Systems: Trust

Trust is important, but it is also dangerous. It is important because it allows us to depend on others — for love, for advice, for help with our plumbing, or what have you — especially when we know that no outside force compels them to give us these things. But trust also involves the risk that people we trust will not pull through for us, for if there were some guarantee they would pull through, then we would have no need to trust them. Trust is therefore dangerous. What we risk while trusting is the loss of valuable things that we entrust to others, including our self-respect perhaps, which can be shattered by the betrayal of our trust. ~ Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy