the pursuit of sexual gratification the object, or merely esteem? There are those who seek to jump out of airplanes purely in search of aesthetic fulfillment, but to do so, they will have overcome any primal fear through a healthy dose of cognitively derived understanding of the workings of parachutes or through trust derived from well respected third parties.

The evaluation of trust can be highly qualitative and subjective. Under normal driving conditions, my level of trust might allow me to conclude that the car traveling three feet to my left on the freeway, where we’re traveling at 70 miles per hour, will not arbitrarily swerve to the right and run us both off the highway. If I perceive some evidence that the driver of that other car is inebriated, then my trust determination may change. I might now conclude that it is desirable to effect an action to slow my car down and let that car to my left pass and get ahead of me. So, where does trust come from? We are born with an instinctive facility for recognizing and expressing emotions, but not necessarily with a pre-defined set of emotional responses keyed to specific sensory input. Rather, our emotional reactions seem to be the result of programming in concert with our cognitive evaluation facilities; in essence, we learn them and we do so at an extremely early age. So, how does this come about? Well, essentially we establish our emotional responses and our cognitive evaluation capabilities based on our experiences. A realized outcome from an interaction will establish our responses to similar potential interactions in the future; and, our cognitive abilities for metaphorical understanding allow such responses to be extrapolated to new experiences based on their similarities to old experiences.

The programming of our responses begins as infants. In his Handbook of Emotions, Michael Lewis relates research with infants as young as two and one-half weeks that are able to recognize emotional responses from their mothers and to effect recognizable emotional responses in return. In the best situations, we learn through the interactions with our parents or others around us. We are exposed to interaction situations and we are guided in our responses by the role models around us. A mother blows gently on the stomach of her baby and then she smiles and laughs. The infant perceives an odd sound, a tactile sensation, a facial expression of a role model showing pleasure or happiness and a good sound, and the learned response is one of pleasure and happiness. After a few iterations of this activity, the infant may well start to anticipate the outcome based on the interaction’s prelude. So, the trust level of the child is now programmed to perceive the likely outcome of the interaction with positive anticipation. In fact, the infant may well try to indicate to the mother to “Do it again!”

Within a trust infrastructure that forms the basis of a social ecosystem, one should be able to address the question “Where does it start?” Our assertion is that trust begins with, and emanates from, a single, immutable point. Trust may convey from this point through a variety of mechanisms. We suggest that trust ultimately derives from a single point because ascertaining a specific level of trust always resolves to a binary decision; it is either sufficient to allow the stimulation of action, or it isn’t. The point is immutable because it cannot be changed within the existing infrastructure without resorting to consideration of an evaluation of trust regarding what would be a policy issue involved in reorienting the trust infrastructure. This would, in essence, require the invocation of a higher trust authority. Rather, if the basis of trust is changed, then a new trust infrastructure is created.

At the physical level, trust emanates from the basic force that effects a particular interaction. Cognitively, our establishment of a particular level of trust emanates from the degree of our understanding of the natural laws involved. In such cases, our level of trust in the various aspects of an interaction is based on an understanding, as presented through our sensori-motor experience, of the characteristics of the physical ecosystem in which this physical interaction occurs. As we

Book available at Midori Press (regular)
Book available at Midori Press (signed)
Book available at Amazon (regular)