You know...

Originally Published November 23, 1985. From gocomics.com

So this is obviously the place to tell you how much of a picky eater I am. In fact, yes I have had this exact conversation with my parents. However, what I would like to do instead is talk about trust. I just got done watching the movie Captain America: the Winter Soldier which involves lots of betrayal mwahahaha! What is great about it is that the results of betrayal are almost instantaneous with the falling through in a weeks time of the plans in the works for decades by the secret evil organization. I am reading Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson which also deals quite a bit with the nature of trust and betrayal the perceptions thereof.

Trust is a tricky thing because we don't actually relate with people very often. We relate with our ideas of people including idea of ourselves. We build mental images of people and then trust, or don't trust that image. Western political philosophy is based on this. The early days of political philosophy was a war between two different ideas of what people "really" are: savage or noble. Are we dealing with Man Created in God's Image or Fallen Man. It is a debate that is still raging, and both sides can find ample evidence to support their side, and instances where each side would be wrong in their predictions based on such assumptions. The notion that someone is trustworthy or not depends entirely on the assumption that our mental image of them is complete and correct and furthermore there is nothing else to them. Of course, we know that people have "hidden" parts to them, so we fill in those hidden parts with the ideas of ourselves. "If I were them I would..." we think but this is just projection and our image of them is even more true.

I got into a discussion with a co-worker about this a few weeks ago. She had been watching The Walking Dead  and we had gotten to talking about that and post-apocalyptic stories in general and while she was all for taking the libertarian stance and getting a shot gun and heading for the hills, I tried to point out to her that this was a sure way to get killed, and not to survive, and that the most important thing was to make friends and work together with as many people as humanly possible. Selfishness and the post-apocalypse don't mix. Selfishness finishes the job that the apocalypse started. It makes for riveting stories but is a non-survival strategy.

Every dystopia starts as a utopia because a utopia cannot be. Utopias are built on distrust and society cannot run on distrust. If you ever find yourself talking to a villain who is spilling out a monolog about "building a better world" with the giant robot army, or the flying aircraft carriers, or the mind control slugs, just laugh and tell them "I dare you." Because it won't work. Not because people are brave, smart, strong, or willful and won't stand for it, but because people, every person extends beyond anyone's idea of him or her, and this cannot be accounted for in the halls of power.

Calvin does not trust his Dad. He thinks he understands his dad, and what he is "trying to do." But he never stops to consider that his dad does not know how the food taste to Calvin. That his fathers opinion of the food has nothing to do with the reality of the food. It could be the best thing he ever tasted but his ideas about his parents have shaped the ideas about his food and he rejects it. How often do we do the same?

Let's forget about trust. Let's just taste.