> Chris could have crushed me, and yet he didn’t. In fact, he did the exact opposite and taught me an incredibly valuable lesson. Amidst the bickering on one phone call, he asked his colleagues to stop this behavior and to assume positive intent instead.
I think we've all had this feeling - this reassurance - from time to time. It feels great and it's important to internalize. However, with today's economy existing against the backdrop of the seemingly unstable sociopolitical dynamics of the USA, it's a little hard to know when it's truly OK to operate with this as a key assumption.
> 1) It’s 100% reasonable to have a high degree of skepticism within a low-trust environment. For example, I would never assume positive intent and allow my daughter to be alone with a registered sex offender just because the person claimed they had changed. I would also never trust an alcoholic with a house full of liquor.
This is arguably an exception large enough to swallow the rule in some very important and timely circumstances.
The state is as likely to be violent as a registered sex offender, and as likely to pillage as a drunk at a liquor cabinet. In our current situation in the USA, with the state taking on a character of such ubiquity, aren't we always in a "low-trust environment?"
On the other hand, I do always assume (and in fact, almost always find) good intentions from the humans around me. But we are faced with a real need to come together and address what increasingly seems like bad intent on the part of the state, even though its actors are all humans.
I think we've all had this feeling - this reassurance - from time to time. It feels great and it's important to internalize. However, with today's economy existing against the backdrop of the seemingly unstable sociopolitical dynamics of the USA, it's a little hard to know when it's truly OK to operate with this as a key assumption.
> 1) It’s 100% reasonable to have a high degree of skepticism within a low-trust environment. For example, I would never assume positive intent and allow my daughter to be alone with a registered sex offender just because the person claimed they had changed. I would also never trust an alcoholic with a house full of liquor.
This is arguably an exception large enough to swallow the rule in some very important and timely circumstances.
The state is as likely to be violent as a registered sex offender, and as likely to pillage as a drunk at a liquor cabinet. In our current situation in the USA, with the state taking on a character of such ubiquity, aren't we always in a "low-trust environment?"
On the other hand, I do always assume (and in fact, almost always find) good intentions from the humans around me. But we are faced with a real need to come together and address what increasingly seems like bad intent on the part of the state, even though its actors are all humans.
How then do we move forward?