I’ve been thinking a lot about trust lately, particularly the issue of knowing who to trust when it comes to information. So much of what I believed growing up has turned out to either be false or at least outdated. I often wonder how much of the information floating around as well as the information I now believe is similarly incorrect. Let’s explore this, shall we?
How can anyone know whether or not someone who claims to be an expert in a given field is speaking the truth unless one is also an expert? In some cases, there is the possibility of testing that person’s claims. Anything that one can try out in one’s own life can be tested to see if what is being said holds any water. When that’s not possible, the only options I see are to either believe the person or disregard what they’re saying.
Blindly believing anyone is incredibly risky. There are legions of skilled persuaders and manipulators in almost every large organization who routinely distort the truth for their own benefits. It’s hard to trust what someone says when they’re getting paid to promote it. When someone isn’t getting paid or rewarded in another way for promoting something, then it’s easier to believe they’re telling the truth. It’s even easier to believe they’re telling the truth if they’re risking their jobs, their friendships, and even their lives to put this information out there. It takes no effort to go along with what is popularly believed, so someone who deliberately swims against the tide of popular opinion demonstrates that their commitment to the truth is larger than their fear of nonconformity.
Further, among the many logical fallacies, there is one called “appeal to authority”. This involves believing that what someone says must be correct solely because of that person’s position or status. The reason appeal to authority fails is because everybody is incorrect at least some of the time and nobody has a monopoly on truth. If something is correct, then it doesn’t matter who says it. If something is incorrect, then it doesn’t matter who says it. The accuracy or lack thereof of the information is all that matters, not the source of that information.
Honest mistakes are another problem. When someone makes a mistake and it’s brought to their attention, watch how they proceed. If they apologize, own up to it, correct it as best as they can, and strive to avoid making mistakes in the future, all is well. Although there may still be harm from their mistake, their response shows that it was unintentional and that they are committed to doing better moving forward. However, if they react defensively, deny that they made a mistake, attempt to justify it, or attack whoever points out the mistake, that shows that they are untrustworthy due to being more committed to protecting their egos than getting things right.
Anyone who’s done a deep dive into multiple subjects knows how easy it is to find conflicting information on any issue. This can also easily be seen in any online fight in which participants share links that support their own points and oppose each other’s. Someone who is dedicated can find a way to make any viewpoint appear correct. This can even happen subconsciously since everyone tends to gravitate towards information that supports their predetermined conclusions and ignore information that contradicts their beliefs. How do you objectively decide which information is trustworthy and which is not, especially when you can’t see behind the scenes to verify everything you’re being told?
I love things that anyone can verify through their own experience. When I did a PowerPoint Night presentation earlier this year on the present moment, I led a short guided meditation toward the end. Those who followed along felt calmer afterward. That did more to show them the value of meditation, mindfulness, and being in the present moment than any book, article, video, or other resource for them to analyze ever could. I’m sure that it was also more effective than the presentation itself, which, while brief, was much longer than the meditation. By seeing firsthand that this works, they don’t need to take anyone’s word for it, including my own.
For another example of experiential verification, I’ve heard repeatedly that static stretching (putting a muscle into a stretched position and holding it still for a certain length of time) does nothing beneficial. Yet my own experience with stretching my lower body this way is that it reduces pain in my lower back, makes it easier for me to stand up straight, increases my comfortable range of motion, and makes me feel calmer in general life. Stretching my wrists has also been crucial both to prevent overuse injuries in juggling and to recover when I’ve overdone it. Every time I’ve gone without stretching for months on end, all of those benefits go away; they come back a while after I’ve resumed a good stretching routine. Since static stretching has been so beneficial to me, I’ll continue doing it regardless of what anyone else thinks about its effectiveness.
Even my dog Sawyer verified things by personal experience. If we were hanging out by ourselves and he thought someone else had come home, he’d bark and run over to the door to the garage. Only after I showed him that nobody was in the garage did he know it was just us at home and settle down. I figure doing that for him improved my ability to do similarly with humans. That sums up my current thinking on this subject: verifying things for myself where I can and not fully taking anyone’s word on anything I can’t independently verify. It’s taken me a long time to get to this point and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. I’m ok with that since learning to trust myself has been an important part of my healing journey, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.