The Irrationality Of Trust

Pined for by slaves to assumptions and those too weak to cling to truth, trust is always irrational.  What different people mean by the word is not always the same.  Some mean literal trust, as in an assumption that something unknown or unknowable is true, like that God wants to materially bless people or that one's spouse loves oneself.  Some mean commitment based on evidence--the real Biblical meaning of words like faith in and faithfulness to God.  On the latter concept, no one is irrational for expecting for or acting as if a chair will support one's weight when one sits; this can be done without assumptions or disregarding either logical necessities or sensory evidences.

To literally trust that the chair one is sitting on exists, however, is a leap in the dark.  It is to believe in something that does not follow from the mere perception.  As foundational as the metaphysics of the external world and the epistemology of the senses really is, it is nothing compared to issues of truth and knowledge dealing with God, morality, and even other people.  Yes, without the external world, other people could not have the physical forms they appear to have, yet it is relationships where trust is more apparently useless or irrelevant to even non-rationalists.  All someone has to do is remain quiet and a great deal about them will stay locked away from other people.  All someone has to do is lie or speak out of assumptions and no one else could know in many cases.

One does not have to trust that one is feeling a certain way, holding to a specific belief, or planning on a given behavior.  A person's own mind is directly accessible to them, as are the inherent truths of reason, and as long as they make no assumptions, all of their mental states are knowable as they are through reason and introspection.   Not a single other mind is knowable.  The very existence of them is totally up in the air on the level of proof, of anything beyond what appears to be the case.  In very limited situations, some people think this even if they have made assumptions in order to do so, but at least they are not actively fleeing from the truth.

What kind of person would actually trust another human?  Only a fool.  Someone must avoid discovering these truths out of superficiality or intentionally ignore them in order to look the other way.  Trust is contrary to belief in the only truths that could not have been any other way (self-verifying logical axioms and all that follows from them by necessity), plainly, and it is only apathy, hostility, or fear towards the truth that would ever deter someone from recognizing that which is so deep and yet ultimately so obvious.  Still, it also in reality erodes relationships by basing them on illusions or uncertainties instead of reason.

Yes, trust is lethal for relationships because at most it establishes or preserves them on things that might be mere illusions.  In other minds, it is entirely possible for the illusion of rationality, of love, and of commitment to be all that one is met with.  People could withhold or try to deceive about things for supposed self-preservation, for egoistic manipulation, or out of an emotionalistic longing for acceptance, but in each and every case they have either deceived themselves or fled from the only things that are true in themselves and that all else thus intrinsically hinges on: the absolute certainties of logic.  Rationalistic relationships are possible.  Relationships of trust and failure are always far likely to be found in this world.