Trust Body

Everyone has a body, in the physical world. This body consists of whatever most essentially connects to consciousness. Wherever my consciousness goes, my hands go and my liver and heart. I may identify so much with some physical object that it is virtually adopted into my physical body. During the day I wear shoes which might qualify as this, extensions of my body.

Everyone also has a body, in the world of relevance. What matters to us, what is relevant, what would hurt to lose, whatever constitutes in itself "raised stakes", is part of the "trust body". One's physical body usually but not always is part of this. We might be unaware of our physical bodies, or in extreme circumstances consider them "excremental" or harmful or useless, to-be-discarded. (Remember the hiker who had to cut his own arm off.) But all kinds of things, ideas, beliefs, relationships, people, objects, places, life realities, and the like can become part of our trust bodies.

Some people, perhaps eventually all people, want to entrust each of the parts of their trust bodies to one or more other people. We put the parts of ourselves into the care of other people, and they either uphold trustworthiness, or fail to, betray us. The drive to trust is fundamental to consciousness (see Fiducialism).

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Added 12 December 2021: I may have used "trust body" elsewhere in a different sense. If I find those uses, I may flag them, to say that there's another term I should use, "trusting body", which is the body or body-like entity which trusts and which is betrayed. The trusting body psychologically includes in itself the trust body and is hurt when the trust body is hurt or mishandled. But it is the trusting body which actually feels the betrayal. When we trust it is in a bodily or bodily-like way. This is registered in our physical brains and bodies, but, following immaterialism, may not be essentially linked to our physical brains and bodies.