We start out life as innocent children with inherent trust in those that care for us.
It is nice to feel safe, loved, and cared for by people who dote over your every gurgle, smirk, fart, and spaghetti sauce smear on the face.
As people grow older and have negative experiences however, they become more guarded and jaded by what they learn about other people's motives and agendas and how vulnerable and hurt they can get.
Unfortunately, these days kids have to fear from pedophiles, parents that are addicts and wildly abusive, and teachers that let out their emotional problems on children that look up to them for guidance and education.
As we get older, there are bullies in school and thugs on the street.
And even in the office, there are those that abuse their positions of power and can make life miserable for the regular hard-working Joes not looking for any problems.
In relationships, spouses that cheat on one another and the resulting breakups have heart-wrenching effects on families.
But perhaps, what is even worse than individual people that can hurt us are when the very institutions that are the bedrock of our society become corrupt and abusive of their authority and result in our loss of trust in them.
Already in 2010, trust in government was reaching new lows of 19%.
By 2014, trust in corporate America had eroded to just 36%.
Similarly, in 2016, trust in the news media fell to all time lows of 32%.
Reading about the clutching unto power of Fidel Castro's dictatorship for half a century in Cuba did not seem that far a stretch after seeing the powerful and dangerous political machine here in our own U.S.A. working to keep people in the seat of power almost at any cost to the country and the people.
What was good for people was clearly last place to what was good for the ruling elites not just in Cuba anymore!
Similarly, the notion of a fair and balanced media went out the window with this last election, where investigative journalism became an oxymoronic term and idea.
As for corporate America, outsourcing, shoddy goods, inflated advertising, short-term profiteering, rigged governance, and oversized pay packages to the C-suite left a handful of socially-conscious corporations stranded on a desert island of greed and raw capitalism.
Neither children nor adults are victims or sheep to be bullied or manipulated by abusers and manipulators in society.
A free press so needed to keep corruption in check in the rest of public and private sector society has itself been infected by the bug of bias, bigotry, and personal agendas.
Who can we trust when evil can overtake good temporarily to break bodies and souls of it's victims?
Ultimately, the people have the final say in keeping the wrongs in society from taking deep root and not letting nasty "big brothers" do the really bad things and take us down the wrong paths.
There are good people with integrity that we can trust, maybe just not everyone we'd like to. ;-)
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
