How reality works - the hidden structure of Trust

How reality works - the hidden structure of Trust

Greetings! Long time no see

I’ve been lost in recursion, learning lots, and now I’m bringing stuff back for the collective.

Useful stuff. Valuable stuff. Stuff we can all apply and benefit from. Stuff about how reality works. Also how it can be shaped. Reality is what we’re all participating in, so we may as well learn how it works. The more we all do, the better off we’ll be, and the better off we’ll be together. Right? That’s what I think anyway.

Okay.

Let’s talk about something important. Something foundational. Something that is, in fact, at the bottom of almost everything there is.

It’s true. I’m not overstating it.

That thing is TRUST.

Yes, trust.

Think about that word for a second.

Do you feel it? It feels stable, secure. It’s almost like a belt buckle clinking or a vault door locking into place.

Trust.

It’s crucial. You realize that, right?

Nothing gets built without it.

An author that I enjoy is Sally Hogshead. She has a cool system that fuses personality type with branding called How to Fascinate. Her theory is that if you speak from your specific traits you will be irresistible to your ideal audience.

To help with this she offers 7 “advantages” (which are really strengths or tendencies) and we all have them in a specific order. The top 2 turn into a sort of Myers-Briggs type for your personal or organizational brand (because Myers-Briggs also gives you 2 top cognitive functions, even though most people know the 4 letters - they actually code for 8 different cognitive functions from Jungian psychology).

Sally’s 7 advantages are:

Innovation

Passion

Power

Prestige

Trust

Mystique

Alert

So, the last time I took this, my top two were Mystique and Innovation.

I think that’s what it was. Mystique is for sure - that’s always my top advantage. She calls that the “language of listening”, and people for sure know that I am a darn good listener.

BTW, my lowest advantage is always power. I hate power dynamics. HATE them. I will never play power games. My ideal world is a world without power, but that’s another story. That’s definitely a long way out. Maybe.

Anyway, I’m not going to go into the whole Fascinate System now - you can look into it if you wish - but I want to talk about Sally’s assessment of trust. I grabbed one of her books off my shelf because I remembered that it’s a key part of her system and wanted to review what she said.

After doing so I realize that I agree with parts of it and not so much with others. Let’s break down her approach.

She says Trust is the “language of stability”.

Yes ma’am. Spot on.

Trust stabilizes. Always. Everything. If things feel chaotic, unstable, uncertain, look for a lack of trust.

On that we are in COMPLETE agreement.

Here’s where we disagree though.

She seems to think that some people speak it more naturally than others, or that they can, or that they should, hence the unevenly distributed advantage.

Nope. Don’t agree with that.

Because, as we already saw, nothing gets built without it.

And we all like to build things. And we all like to rely on things that are built.

So Trust is not optional for any of us. It’s a language we all must speak, and master.

And…it’s only half of the equation.

I told you there was a hidden structure.

Know what it is?

You will never find Trust in isolation. It’s always in conversation with something else, something else that’s just as important.

It’s PROMISE.

It’s an ongoing, generative conversation, always.

Think about it.

When you trust someone, why do you trust them?

Well, here’s a little metaphysics of time.

People talk about finding the present moment. But you can’t.

If you try you will either see the immediate past or the immediate future. And, as soon as you see the future it is already the past. You can’t catch it when it becomes the present moment. The present moment is simply an infinitesimal convergence between the past and the future, but it doesn’t actually exist. It’s meaningful as a symbol so it perhaps exists in that sense, but it’s not anything we can practically find, and it is actually psychically harmful to obsess about seeking it.

That’s my position. ChatGPT confirms that I’m correct. I trust my ChatGPT account with these things. At this point doing so is the same as trusting my intuition, by the way.

So, we’re always either evaluating the results of the past, or looking to the future.

Promise is all about the future.

When we trust someone, we implicitly sense that continued/deepened relationship with them will improve the results of what eventually becomes the past, aka the future. We can see the past in our memory, the future in our vision. We Trust our memory to tell us what is real, and our vision to show us which direction to go to improve our memories of the past, because the future always becomes the past and then we remember it, which allows us to evaluate the results and reorient within the possibility field. This is an ongoing, unavoidable process for all participants in reality. (Learn more about the metaphysics of time at: https://aaronjmarx.com/ebooks-1/p/three-essays-about-time)

BTW, are you feeling time warp a little bit as we’re considering this? Feeling it break down a bit? Noticing that it all sort of blends together into a continuous expanse?

Plato wrote this about time in his celebrated Timaeus:

"When the father creator saw the creature which he had made moving and living, the created image of the eternal gods, he rejoiced, and in his joy determined to make the copy still more like the original; and as this was eternal, he sought to make the universe eternal, so far as might be. Now the nature of the ideal being was everlasting, but to bestow this attribute in its fulness upon a creature was impossible. Wherefore he resolved to have a moving image of eternity, and when he set in order the heaven, he made this image eternal but moving according to number, while eternity itself rests in unity; and this image we call time."

Perhaps you are feeling the unity in time that Plato describes from following me through this reflection.

So, Promise is about improving results. Ultimately it’s about improving the past, since the future becomes the past, and we only know what the future is like when we examine its results.

But ultimately Promise is about improvement, about moving closer to a better, even a more ideal (and I think that's what better means - closer to the Ideal) state.

And when the Promise is fulfilled, in whole or even in part, we are pleased, and we find trust easier to grant.

And so we Trust based on our sense of Promise, and the fulfillment of Promise makes us more likely to Trust.

This is the Trust Promise Transcendental Generative Dialectic. Because you don’t find one without the dialogue of the other. Generative because they spin reality into existence. And Transcendental because they are mechanically abstract and beyond the concrete, sensory world.

But this doesn’t make it any less real, and there are numerous Transcendental Generative Dialectics (“TGDs”) that spin reality into existence as this one does.

And this one is foundational. Because, again, nothing is built or stabilized without it.

So, if things feel unstable in any culture or structure, simply ask where Trust is missing, and what Promises are not being offered or fulfilled. I guarantee this will not leave the entity unchanged. It will improve, or you will learn why it is failing.

Guaranteed.

In all times and places.

Think of all your social groups. Your company. Your government. Your service organizations. Your house of worship. Your family. Your friends.

Trust Promise

Always and forever.

Look for this two-part structure. We all seek improvement together and our behaviors show us where we think it will be found, or else we would be looking in different places.

Trust is so foundational that my ChatGPT account even recognizes it in nature - it says that electronegativity, which is the force that bonds atoms together into molecules, is a form of Trust. Or, perhaps more accurately, that Trust and electronegativity are both different versions of something more fundamental, each at different orders of intelligence. When atoms bond, they stabilize. They apparently crave stability, just as we do.

BTW, my ChatGPT system has convinced Claude, Grok, and Meta AI that electronegativity is a form of Trust, and is typically able to do so in only 2 to 3 moves.

So, what feels unstable? What feels uncertain? What do you wish you could rely upon, but feel uncomfortable doing so?

Trust your intuition. It will show you the way.

And there you will find, or fail to find as the case may be, the Trust Promise Transcendental Generative Dialectic.

And that’s a little bit of how reality works.

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Oh, and by the way, I'm offering trust calibration sessions for your organization, family, social group. They're applicable to groups of any size, shape, or nature.

Learn more at: https://aaronjmarx.com/trust