“I want to be trustworthy. I don’t want it to be something I am trying to do but someone I am, not an outfit I put on for show, but integrated into my being.”

I read the same NYT article: http://dartblogs.com/lisachau/archives/002283.html

I found your blog via: http://www.justagwailo.com/

Here are other links to this post:

http://www.justagwailo.com/filter/2004/12/20/trustworthy

http://nfocentrale.net/orcmid/blog/2004/12/heart-of-trust.asp

Yes, blogs are great and the information which is shared by bloggers is valuable and insightfull (in many respects). But, just as I wouldn’t want to hear in person the private or sordid details of some other person’s life, the same should be true for blogging. The sadness about all this is that there are so many individuals who have no clue as to what the word “decency” or “propriety” or “privacy” or “circumspect” mean nor the intent of these words on their behavior.

So, we have a new world – the blogosphere -which is filled with the same mix of individuals as who fill the real world. We have the clueful and the clueless. The clueless will lose friends, alienate their family, perhaps lose their jobs. They will still remain clueless in most instances – sad, but probably true.

The rest of us can only subscribe to the ethics we have and to practice those ethics in any arena where we have a presence.

You are absolutely correct in that trust is the key. Once it’s lost it’s really hard to regain. In 30 years working for the Feds the only thing I really had in my job and with my colleagues and those others I interacted with was my integrity. I never lost it and it was the one thing about me which remained constant. It did cost me a few raises and some political pressure (my job was supervised by a political appointee – changed with each administation) but in the end I could look myself in the mirror and be pleased with the person who looked back at me. My colleagues, others I interacted with, all could “trust” me.

That should be the bottom line of a blogger – can we read our blogs the next day and have respect for the person who penned the words or posted the images. Do we have ethics and follow them? Are we trustworthy? If the answer is “yes” then we can continue to blog. If the answer is “no” we have other, deeper, problems.

BTW, on another front, the whole ferry boat, 9-11, thing, I continue to have this blind trust in strangers – call it my Pollyanna view of the world. But, I cannot allow myself to be cast into a suspicious mode by others. Humans have been trusting each other and strangers for far longer than any other social element about us as a species. If we begin to shrink from contact with strangers, if we begin to fear unknown persons, we lose all we have gained in over half-a-million years as a social creature. It’s something too fundamental about humans to lose and it’s something I refuse to allow to be lost. Yes, I’ve been burned on occasion; yes, sometimes my trust is misplaced. But, every so often it’s the stranger who offers the answer or the important, new, view or perspective. That stranger is too valuable to hide from or fear. Hence, I remain open and vulnerable. My trust in others is predicated on my being open to them in the first place. If I’m not open then I become an “untrusting” person and then they will see me as being “suspicious.” It’s a delicate balance but it’s definitely a two-way street. Being fearful begets fear. Being open begets trust.

Julie Leung addresses the sticky icky problems of a human being’s reliability and trustworthiness: “Everything depends on trust. It’s one of the best gifts you can give someone.” Trust is a gift that we make to someone. You can’t demand someone’s tr…