Trust, but Verify

Mr. Farber's recent column, Derailing Terrorists, offers a very good solution to a very real problem.

Trust is a necessary element for any group.

A company trusts it's employees not to sell or tell company secrets.

A counseling group promises not to talk about individuals outside of their group discussions.

A football team trusts that members won't give their playbook to the competition.

A defendant trusts his lawyer not to tell others that he or she actually committed the crime they are charged with.

A stockbroker can not act, or tell others to act, on insider information.

A policeman trusts that his partner will back him up in a shoot out.

A fireman trusts that his buddies will be there to pull him back if he gets into an impossible situation.

A consumer trusts that a vendor is selling a quality product at a fair price.

A driver or airplane pilot trusts that others on the road or in the air are sober and sane.

All around us, trust is necessary for society to function. Without some modicum of trust, we would still be living in caves or isolated homesteads - killing outsiders or those encroaching on our land.

Trust is the foundation of all human societies and behavior.

Trust is what elevated us from small groups of 10-30, to large specialized groups of millions.

If you want a long dissertation on how societies formed, leave a comment...and I'll write it - this is what I know best.

The ability to trust others is what defines us a civilized people. Even within the most primitive groups - say those living in the highland of Papua New Guinea - trust those within their own group. They don't trust anyone else, but then, they don't know other groups other than their neighbors...and their neighbors are the most likely to kill them, hence the limited trust of all outsiders.

All groups, therefore, are capable of trust. Humans made a great leap forward - and out of the animal realm - when we learned to trust other enough to divide labor. What do I mean by that? Men did hunting, women handled the bulk of child rearing, farmers did farming, traders traded, doctors healed, weavers wove, entertainers entertained, builders built, etc. These people were not tied to cultivating crops or raising livestock unless they were specifically farmers. And farmers weren't out healing the sick or entertaining or building pyramids or cities because they were tending to their fields and flocks. Dividing labor involves a higher level of trust - you trust others to do what you can not do.

Side note: if you look at Neanderthal skeletons, you would see that males and females have the same types of bone breaks, fractures, and muscle structure. The Neanderthals did not have a division of labor - women were equals to men. Modern humans, on the other hand, practiced a division of labor. What happened with these two strategies? Because women joined men in hunts - they probably experienced lower birth rates due to injury and life loss of the mother (primary food source) than modern humans.

This specialization has lead us (collective 'humans') to a higher level of understanding of the world around us. Freed from the tedious chore of supplying food for our bodies, we have been granted the opportunity to utilize our brains in ways our fellow living creatures have not been able to. Think of all the art, poetry, music, religion, and written works created by mankind! Think of science and the path of understanding we have begun to traipse down!

All of this is achieved because we have learned to trust others. Despite all the just and horrible wars, the killings and the bombings...we still trust. We still desire and crave trust. We want to believe and we do believe in the beauty of a trusting and open society. Perhaps it is uniquely American to feel this way, but if that is true, I would be deeply saddened.

And so, we come to the thrust of Mr. Farber's article. Do we trust a group in our midst? I would rather not repeat the 1940's decision to inter Americans of Asian decent, although I can understand the reasoning given the cultural climate and challenges of the times. If we accept Executive Order 9066 as a worst case scenario, I see Mr. Farber's version of an, as he phrases it, "internal White Letter" as a reasonable solution. If the American Muslim community adopts this policy now and self-police themselves, they can avoid the dark side of human nature from rearing its ugly head in America.

What will transpire in the next 20 years will probably determine whether or not this nation - under God, of the people, by the people - will perish from this earth. (credit to A.L.) I like to think of Americans as above the cultural fray, but in truth, we are not.

My favorite president, Ronald Reagan, had a motto, 'Trust, but verify.'

Now is the time for verification before we tumble into the depths of human nature.