This title is a bit misleading so I had better explain myself quickly.
I am writing a new book. It’s a study of how poor people handle money.
One of the money issues dealt with in the book has to do with confidence and trust, and how that impacts the exchange of goods and services and cash.
Trust is a truly beautiful thing. Society cannot function without it. Money and credit and checks cannot work without it.
Unfortunately, our sense of collective trust is eroding. On NPR tonight, the city of Muncie Indiana– pretty little Muncie Indiana– has announced that it no longer trusts anyone. It’s a barometer of our national feeling. We have come to not trust the government, the banks, the media, no one.
I think trust between human beings is a beautiful thing. We cannot function without it. And yet there are people– I shall label them “trust pornographers”– who constantly portray trust as an evil thing. They tell us we have been screwed by trusting this politician or that . . . The nightly news is a cavalcade of showing trusted institutions caught betraying that trust. It is very much like those twisted teenage computer wonks who endlessly send out porno spam. They are venting their own fear, making sex (something that is a beautiful part of nature) into something ugly, dirty, shameful, and painful.
So the next time you see a negative campaign ad, or an exposé on the network news, remind yourself, this is “trust pornography.” It is obscene, it is the twisting of something personal and beautiful into something painful and ugly. It is a lie meant to frighten and oppress, expressed by frightened people who have lost touch with their own beauty of mutual trust. They seek power instead of intimacy and connection.
There, I have defined it, and I also know it when I see it.
© Justin Locke
