A short meditation on trust
Consider an opportunity to join a secret society of brilliant, likable, highly-talented individuals. You can trust implicitly that if they say they’ll do something, they’re good for it. If you need support - financial, emotional, physical, or otherwise - they’re good for it. There’s no cost of admission beside the general expectation that if you can help another member, and it is within your means, that you will do so.
Such a shared network would be extremely powerful. Even if everyone were equally as skilled and as talented as you, no more or no less, it would be incredible to tap such a network for assistance from time to time. If you expand the possibilities outward, and this society counts as members some of the world’s wealthiest or most powerful or most famous citizens, it becomes a no-brainer to join. All you have to do is offer similar assistance as long as it’s in your power to do so!
There is, of course, a heavily weighted catch here: you do have to trust that these people will come through when you need them. If you can’t trust each other to come through, then the entire thing is useless.
Now, let’s raise the stakes a little bit. As part of the membership requirements of this secret society, every member is expected to participate in an annual ritual. Two of you are selected at a time, and you don’t know who your partner is. One must secure a rope at the edge of a cliff, then leave the scene. The other must take the other end, attach it to a harness, and jump off. If the rope was properly secured by the first, you’ll comfortably belay down. If the rope was secured poorly, you’ll fall to your death. Everyone knows the rules, and everyone is expected to practice their knot tying accordingly. But if you happened to make a mistake, no one would ever know - except the person falling off the cliff, that is.
Still joining this secret society?
It would be a powerful society indeed if everyone knew they had all banded together with incredible trust to help each other: trust that might extend to completely placing your very life in another’s hands.
credit to Neal Stephenson for the original version of the trust parable described here.