Dale Wyngarden: Trust is vital, but should never be blind
We’ve got a lot on our plate these days. Inflation, erratic climate behavior, still working through COVID-19 recovery, a regional war with global consequences, pockets of hunger both global and domestic, and desperate refugees risking their lives simply hoping to survive are merely top of the list. Perhaps the saddest and most insidious disruptor, though, is the rampant erosion of trust.
Surely the most heartbreaking revelations have been that places we’ve entrusted our children believing they would be safe, sheltered and nurtured have too often put them in the hands of pedophiles and perverts instead. Churches, camps, scouting, schools, athletic programs, and child care have not only attracted people that prey upon children, but have often put survival of the institution above the welfare of victims.
In reality, the overwhelming majority of those called to minister, teach, coach, guide and counsel young people are both competent and trustworthy. It is human nature, though, that competence and trustworthiness aren’t newsworthy. Failure and corruption are. So the disclosure barrage of personal and institutional child abuse in recent years has cast a faint shadow of suspicion on professions and institutions. We will never again trust beyond a shadow of doubt.
While abuse and exploitation of our youth by those we believed would nurture and protect them is the most egregious betrayal of trust, it isn’t by any means the only one. Anyone using the internet knows the endless stream of scam attempts to entice us to divulge our passwords, personal information, bank accounts or credit card numbers. A charity that pleads for contributions to rescue abused or abandoned puppies gets a C- rating from Charity Watch. The CEO’s compensation is nearly $1 million — double that of our nation’s president — and $.49 of every dollar given serves the critters and beasties, while the other $.51 goes to fundraising and administration. Who do you trust with your personal information and your charitable giving?
Lifesaving drugs like insulin and Epi-pens, the medical counter to life-threatening allergic reactions, have run multiple times the cost in America compared to other countries, partly under the government’s shelter of patents and protection from foreign competition. Many of us are alive by the grace of our pharmaceutical industries. But our gratitude is tempered by seeing the massive infusion of pharmaceutical money pouring into our political process, and a suspicion something is expected in return. And we suspect our elected officials deliver.
Recently a Supreme Court justice drew attention for real estate deals, gifts of pricey tuition assistance and luxurious vacations given by a real estate developer. A former presidential candidate paid his wife over $100,000 from campaign contributions for consulting services picking out china and floral arrangements for a banquet. Is all of Washington on the take, we wonder?
In fact, a distrust of government has helped fuel the current national divisiveness over political, social and economic issues. Government is the problem, proclaimed a presidential candidate some years back. It helped him get elected. Going to Washington to drain the swamp has become a hollow but popular campaign promise. It feeds the notion that government isn’t trustworthy. And it helps people get elected. So has cutting taxes, by politicians who, once elected, cut taxes but merely continue budgetary excesses by deficit spending.
Perhaps the greatest threat to trust is artificial intelligence. It has advanced far beyond computers winning chess matches against masters in years past. Today it can write credibly, mimic human voices, and manipulate visual imagery. Educators will soon wonder if term papers are written by students or an artificial intelligence service a block off campus selling them for $50. Three hundred people in a German congregation recently heard a sermon written by an AI program and delivered on screen by a computer-generated avatar. The maker of audio and video tape years back advertised, “Is it real, or is it Memorex?” We’ll soon be asking the same about what we hear, what we read, and what we see. The potential for good use of artificial intelligence is immense, but it is equaled by its potential for deception. Not just mischievous trickery, but destructive or criminal deceit.
We can’t survive as a society or species without trust. It will never disappear, but it should never again be blind. Living into a future fraught with opportunity for deception, we do well to remember the old Russian proverb: “Trust, but verify.”
— Community Columnist Dale Wyngarden is a resident of the city of Holland. He can be reached at wyngarden@ameritech.net.
This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Dale Wyngarden: Trust is vital, but should never be blind
