Impassed

It occurs to me that there are times when a conflict boils down to neither person wanting to take the first step, out of fear of being taken advantage of. Consider the following impasse.

I will forgive you, once you have shown genuine repentance for the harm you have done me.

I will repent the harm I have done you, once you have shown genuine forgiveness.

I've come to understand a lack of social trust to lie at the root of any number of problems in the United States. To be certain, I've become somewhat suspicious of the concept, given how easily it explains things, but still "seems a bit too easy" and "lacks explanatory power" are not one in the same, and one shouldn't do things the hard way, just for the sake of expending effort, if the destination is the same.

Still, I think that something a bit more complex is at work here, because of another favorite hobgoblin of mine, insecurity. If the person who cannot afford to be cheated cannot afford to be trusting, social trust might explain a lot of things, but it also has an explanation itself.

For living in what is described as one of the wealthiest nations on Earth, many Americans, regardless of their social and economic status, strike me as desperately insecure. People have enough to realize that they could be much worse off, but not enough to understand themselves as safe from that happening. And, seeing themselves in a zero-sum game, they jealously guard what they have and see the benefits that others receive as coming at their expense.

But if insecurity feeds distrust, distrust also feeds insecurity. I don't think that many people understand themselves to be completely able to weather their vagaries of life entirely on their own, as individuals or as nuclear families. Thus, a feeling that others are competitors, rather than compatriots can heighten that sense of ever present danger. Which leads to a mode of dealing with other people that tends to request the other be the first to show vulnerability. Something that itself can sow distrust.

There are millions of people who understand the way things work in the modern United States to be completely, and self-evidently, broken. This also sows distrust and insecurity, especially when there is a conclusion that things can't become "this bad" on their own, so some malicious party must have engineered it for their own benefit. But I've come to think that maybe the kludgy system that exists here endures specifically because it can function (at least after a fashion) in a society where distrust and insecurity are the norm. It may not make the best of a bad situation, but it isn't terrible, either. And so it sustains itself because it doesn't disturb the status quo; American society and politics don't make citizens more trusting and more secure, and so the don't open the avenues for their replacement with something that might serve everyone better, but at the same time require more from everyone in the bargain.

Therefore, the impasse remains, and is the only winner.