Humans are complex beings. Having blessed with a powerful tool that would make them ruler of the world, they somehow indulge themselves in a plethora of complexity; the emotions, feelings, attitude and behaviour. Uncle Ben said, "with great power comes great responsibility". How true...
And responsibility is not something that everyone can bear.
Of late, there are a lot of cases that reflect the darker side of humans. the manipulation of thoughts and agendas to serve only one's needs and desires. Put money and power into the equation and the whole thing is a mushroom cloud of greed, betrayal and whatever comes in between.
How do you trust someone in a relationship and in business?
You court a girl and eventually goes steady with her, only to find out in a couple of months or years, she's been fooling around when you are not around.
You establish a friendly relationship with an individual, only to find out after all these years he's been back stabbing you and continously tarnish your reputation behind your back.
you cut a fool-proof business deal with someone and as time goes he took all you have invested and ran away.
Put two and two together, would you do business with someone who cheats on his wife?
Having had that kind of history, chances are he would, given the chance and/or opportunity, double cross you.
What's stopping from cheating on you?
Would you do business with someone knowing that he had a history in plagiarism.
What's stopping him from plagiarising your trade secrets and sell them to your competitors?
Meesh wrote an excelent post on bloggers stealing other people's blog entries and pass them off as their own.
In business I myself have seen people nick other people's proposals and pass off as their own. Once I attended a presentation by a business associate. A few slides looked all too familiar. It turned out that it was a presentation I worked on some time back, copied word by word including some grammatical error I over looked.
It is a harsh world out there... watch your back and to quote Fox Mulder, "Trust No One"
Had some really bad experiences with "Trust" in the past. I guess these experiences made me a more "World wise" person. I am now in a postition where a lot of people put their trust in me and I alwsys try to remember that gaining and maintaining the trust is much harder than losing it.
Posted by: Adam | Sunday, June 27, 2004 at 11:35
Yah dude trust no one especially our own self. :)
Posted by: vlad | Monday, June 28, 2004 at 18:22
This is something I was IM-ing with Najah about today. The way I see it, our "secular" mode of thinking has neatly separated work from home, the personal from the office. Because of this, that's why we still have philandering ministers in power and forever "itchy" men with roving eyes and roving hands as CEOs of big corporations in Malaysia. We don't blink an eyelash when we hear of our Ministers simpan girlfriend sini, kahwin lain sana.
Because we think that how they are outside of the office will not affect how they make decisions for us.
But it's not true is it? Because if they can be untrue to a person who lives with them, eats with them, raise their kids with them, what's to stop them from lying to us, people they don't even see?
And how can a person keep a different set of ethics for home and for the workplace anyway?
It's time for the Malaysian public to wake up.
Posted by: Zsarina | Tuesday, June 29, 2004 at 17:52
Hmmm.. We just have to take a chance when trusting people, I suppose.
Posted by: khalilur | Wednesday, June 30, 2004 at 15:41