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Real rebels risk disapproval
Fake rebels just stay on the safe side and “critique”. The irony and sarcasm of the last few decades just don’t carry any longer — it’s time for sincere irony, or ironic sincerity.
A weekend long-read on the nature of trust, irony, and the renewal of faith in our time. It is from an earlier draft for a chapter in my book, 12 Commandments.
Prologue: On the nature of trust — and how it is created by irony
“I don’t believe in astrology; I’m a Sagittarius and we’re skeptical.” — Arthur C. Clarke
As an author, how do I build trust with the reader? It’s a valid question. Trust is hard to come by these days.
Mutual trust generally consists of four dimensions, I would argue:
- competence (or credibility, that you know the other person is capable of doing what you need them to do),
- goodwill (that you have reason to believe in the benevolent intentions of the other),
- reliability (that what is agreed upon or claimed will be lived up to, most of the time), and
- alignment (that our interests align and don’t contradict one another).
If all of these four are in place, a solid foundation of mutual trust can form, from which beneficial and creative collaborations can flourish. When people build trust in e.g. work relationships, they tend to forget about the last one. The secret is to reveal to others what you really want, and to ask the same of them. People will often gladly tell you. Find the people that want, not necessarily the exact same, but things that can be truly aligned with your goals. Then you know that they will genuinely wish for your success (in a deep and wide sense of the term), and they know that you genuinely wish for theirs.
You could arguably add a fifth dimension, which has to do with emotional report or resonance; that you feel seen…
