Why All the Love?

Seriously! Where does it all come from? And by love i mean trust. Trust. this is not something we normally give away for free. In fact, as a Social Worker/counsellor, trust is the primary facet of every therapeutic relationship and I work hard and carefully to earn it from every person I've every worked with. I ask for it and realize that part of earning it is giving some up to my client first - even if it hasn't been earned yet.

Trust forms part of what we call "social capital". Social capital can be described as a kind of cohesion that forms between people and organizations when people participate with each other in community and begin to trust one another. This happens over time and is either earned directly or through association with other trusted individuals.

Given the world we live in with social media dominating our relationshipscapes, Why All the Love??!

I have had this brewing in the back of my mind for a while now. But it really hit home during a recent trip to the interior. I am an avid twitterer and saw that a connection from there was also traveling to Kelowna the same time I was there. I sent her a message and asked if she would like to meet for coffee or a drink. She agreed. My friend and I went to meet her one evening and during our conversation we talked about how easily we give up trust in people we meet this way. I have had many recent examples where I meet people from twitter or elsewhere for coffee. having never met each other, without fail, one party always leaves their belongings at the table after the hand-shake to go get a coffee. Somehow, having never met you in person, I'm willing to leave my laptop, keys, cell phone etc with you. I have just transferred my trust to you.

In Kelowna, the women we met with told us that her husband had offered to come along and she declined feeling that she trusted us - two strangers. Did she have enough information from our tweets and blogs to know we were trustworthy? She noted that when she walked into the restaurant and saw us, she intuitively knew that it would be ok. How does this happen? What is it that helps us distinguish who to trust like this? Or, as we hear reports of people being stalked through social media such as FourSquare, are we just being far too trusting?

This post, I hope, will form more of a discussion. I really want input on this. what are your thoughts?

Passion and Delusion

What does it mean to be passionate; to really, I mean REALLY believe in something? When someone is passionate about an issue, are they deluded into believing that what they do and think will change things? Is what they fill their thoughts and time with based on an irrational belief that isn't the reality for anyone else?

I suppose we all know people like this. Sometimes, we call them 'zealots', 'ideologues', 'fundamentalists'. We may refer to them as 'idealistic' or suggest that they are 'unrealistic' or 'impractical'. To understand what it means to be passionate about something one has to understand what drives the passion. Everything we do - our behaviors, attitudes, beliefs - is rooted somewhere in our past. Even if our past is twelve minutes ago.

My experience with beliefs and behaviors is that we tend to operate at the level of fear. Wait! don't leave yet, it's not all about negativity! Humans have tens of thousands of years of evolutionary experience crammed into our brains. Much of it had to do with survival - that fight or flight impulse. This is not something we are bound to overcome with only a couple of hundred years of modern-era living. We used to operate in survival mode - much of humanity still does (if you are reading this, you are one of the precious few humans that don't have to be concerned about day to day survival - you, are wealthy and privileged). This mode of existence is ingrained in us. We can't escape it.

But, we can adapt. And adapt is what we do best. So, those of us that are passionate about issues, beliefs politics, science etc are typically trying to make the world a better place. Why? Because we fear a world without the benefits of what we are passionate about. We don't want to see things to stay the same - we want less pain, more convenience or greater equality. Or, for my more conservative friends, we want to ensure our life and society remains more or less predictable. So, out of fear, we get fired up - this is not a bad thing. It is what has driven human kind - we have great civilizations, technologies, insights and, yes, social interventions to show for this instinct.

In the end, it seems that having passion does not mean one has delusional tendencies. But what is important is tempering that passion to coincide with our present reality. Understanding that it is rooted in fear of something and fear is not a healthy way to operate every day - even though so much good has come out of people being passionate.

It's all about awareness of ourselves and balance.