14.05.2004 - Trust and the breakdown of trust ...

14.05.2004
I have a friend who was treated badly by someone, and my friend and me had a small mail exchange... This is a fragment of one of my mails.
[...]
But, In a way I hope you have not learnt anything at all from this!

Beacuse the right way to deal with people, is with trust. Trust is the childs spontaneous way of interacting with the world, and something we should try not to loose to much. Although we do loose a lot of trust whenever trust breaks down ("tillits-sammenbrudd") because someone disapoints us like XX has done with you. And that also normally leads to very strong reactions - which is very ok! Perhaps needed.

Its like my daughter Johanne hurling herself from the sofa, in total trust, expecting me to grab her. If I do not grab her, and she falls to the floor, she will normally cry rather loud, not because she hurts herself, but because she "cast herself into the world, and the world did not embrace her" (hun kastet seg ut i verden, og verden tok ikke i mot henne). That is, a trust or faith in someone which is disapointed in this way, will be felt really, really bad and sad - and sorrowfull, and will normally generate anger as well. Mostly because we are being deserted, stod up, abandoned, treated with total disrespect.

Thus, its not you who did something stupid, but rather XX who did something very disrespectful of you. You only trusted, thats not wrong, thats beautiful, quite simply.

More fenomenologically / existentially speaking: In all and every relation (which is not totally aggressive) one gives oneself in trust towards the other person, and expects to be treated well and with respect. In doing this we are actually disclosing our "true" self and trustfully expects to be received with respect, speaking with openness, speaking truthfully, being truthful. If we are not treated with this respect (but treated like XX did to you) - our trust breaks down. Now this can be experienced (and is, I think) as a rape of ones own "I" and "self", a rape of our deepest and most vulnerable dicentra. Such a breach of faith will normally hurt us so very, very much: Even a small, rather banal breach of trust like this can have serious consequences, because afterwards, we will have trouble meeting other people with trust and openness. And therefore its easy to start meeting people with distrust.

In other words: What XX has done, is a vandalism towards the sovereignty of your own spontaneous (ideally like a child) revelation of your own self, in all its vulnerability - and that is so very difficult to restore.

[...]
Please see if you can still continue to embrace the world with a trustfull atunement - although, perhaps, not XX!

Anders [Very much inspired by K. A. Løgstrups book "Den etiske fordring"]