Wednesday, June 23, 2021

The Problem of Trustworthiness

If it is true that trusting gives us access to a trustworthy place, but only temporarily (thus proving that that place exists), does this give us any further sense that we are guaranteed the ability to access that place? Would it be trustworthy for a trustworthy place to allow a person to visit there without there being some way to go there permanently? When we enter trustworthiness, we feel like we are safe. Is that sense of safety a lie? We do find ourselves kicked out of trustworthiness, or kicking ourselves out of it. We have to explain this somehow (there is a "problem of trustworthiness": "how can trustworthiness betray us?"), and a likely explanation is that we are not trustworthy ourselves, and we betray trustworthiness by being in it.

Is it trustworthy for trustworthiness to bring us to exist in such a way that we are vulnerable to a bad environment for ourselves becoming trustworthy? Trustworthiness itself can't tempt us to be untrustworthy, and that temptation is necessary for us to become trustworthy. So there must be tempters, and they can negotiate for a world in which people can negatively influence a person's chances to become trustworthy. Since they are needed to tempt right up to the point that a person loses his/her/etc. last sin or idol (the impediments to trustworthiness), they can negotiate for that kind of influence.

How could trustworthiness bring about a world where some could be lost, at all? Or one in which they need to be tempted? Trustworthiness has its ontological basis in consciousness, and is therefore a person or part of a person. Trustworthiness requires legitimacy, and legitimacy requires tempters. People can be lost because legitimacy is founded in love, and love prefers that some exist rather than none, love is willing to experience tragedy for the sake of the ones lost, and for the sake of the ones who survive.

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