For any civic society to survive and thrive, all parties must believe in the virtue of trusting one another and, in turn, deal fairly with one another. This is something that those in the most powerful positions, whether that be political, corporate, or governance, need to make sure that they adhere to, because whenever the perception by the people is that their society is really structured between those that have all the advantages and thereby utilize those advantages for their personal aggrandizement at the expense of the people, then we find that trust is eroded, because society devolves into a construct in which each party is trying to “get over” on the other, which is quite obviously not beneficial for trust and cooperation.
So too, when it comes to our family structure, as much as our parents might seem to believe that their children aren’t smart enough or savvy enough to see the contradictions between what they tell us to do and what they themselves do, whenever their actions are not in conformance with honest and good manners, this creates the problem of children losing trust in their parents, and basically having a strong tendency of losing trust in authority figures, in general, because they hear the talk, but see that the talk does not always match the corresponding actions.
All of us has a responsibility to one another, for we live not upon individual islands, and if more people took to heart, that we should treat others with the same respect and decency that we would want them to treat us, this would make for more civic trust and for a better society, because the fact of the matter is that whenever we don’t trust the other, we therefore have to put into place all sorts of additional constraints, surveillances, and doublechecking to make sure that whatever that it is that is supposed to happen as per promises made, actually does happen. On the other hand, where there is trust, there is the presumption that a person’s word is their bond, and that, once agreed upon, will thus be enacted, without us having to verify everything.
When we think about the whole security apparatus, we need to comprehend better that as much as we might be able to secure ourselves and our possessions in a lot of cases, we can’t secure it all, even when we have taken the most careful consideration and planning to do so, because in the end, those that are motivated to get what we have and are intensely focused upon it, will probably find a way, which is why those that decry that we need more law and order, need to comprehend that we wouldn’t need even more, if we had firstly more civic trust, and that the beginning of making a society better and more wholesome, necessitates trust and fair dealings with one another, and whenever this occurs, there begets a more civil society.
So then, each of us needs to do our fair part to be considerate of the other, by making the conscious choice that cooperation, consideration, and concern for one another make for a better and more desirable society.