When no one is watching
Luck can reward either those who work for show, and those who work anyway even when no camera is pointed in their direction.
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Luck can reward either those who work for show, and those who work anyway even when no camera is pointed in their direction.
When did we stop trusting people to do the right thing? When did “honorable” stop applying when referring to Cabinet members, senators and congressmen?
Not only do we now excel at reacting to issues and the minutest provocations, we are also turning out to be highly suspicious, disbelieving people who don’t immediately think others always have the best intentions.
We scoff at political statements. We grimace at the faces we see on the Senate impeachment court, doubting both question and answer in cross-examinations.
We have passwords for everything. There are surveillance cameras on public roads, CCTVs in offices and homes. Biometrics. Verifications. Policies. Some things are necessary for order and protection, yes, but somewhere along the way, trust has become the scarcest commodity of modern life.
Just the other day, the table conversation was about the new modus operandi using QR codes, where unsuspecting citizens might think themselves lucky to be receiving that perk or freebie promised by clicking on a code, only to find their e-wallets wiped out. We eat suspicion for breakfast.
Homeless people on the streets and in neighborhoods do not get the same kind of help that stray dogs and cats get, simply because one never knows if they might have criminal tendencies. We like to think there are institutions tasked to address the problem, yet at the back of our minds, we do not believe they are doing their job properly, if at all.
Our views seem to have been shaped so that fellow humans are automatically deemed not to be trusted. We let ourselves be guided by fear, disappointment and suspicion. And that is the kind of world the youth might inherit.
Trust takes time and patience to build, yet it is surprisingly easy to lose. Leaders who rise and fall know this well. Luck can reward either those who work for show, and those who work anyway even when no camera is pointed in their direction.
Another truth? When trust erodes, rules proliferate. So, we must ask ourselves: have we become such a rules-based society that we have forgotten how to build trust?
Listening to the discussion between Rep. Chel Diokno and the two Cayetano senators on Monday, it came to mind that discussing laws and the scandals and cases of the past to support an argument does take immense levels of research and knowledge. Many of our laws are built upon other laws that one will have to wade through piles of documents to get to a single point.
It is the same for this reality we are in, where every instance of corruption has chipped away at the public confidence. Over the decades, our leaders have tried to prevent this from happening by creating more layers to the rules, so that even those who invoke them years later confuse themselves too.
Perhaps the real measure of a healthy institution is not how many rules it has, but how much trust it has earned. The strongest organizations are not those that monitor every action. They are the ones where people understand their purpose, share their values, and which choose to do the right thing when no one is watching.
