A Better Human Trap

Most of us have willingly gotten into a machine that could end our lives. It's steel and metal and travels at incredible speeds. It's surrounded by others just like it on the road, driven by varying degrees of talent. It is a calculable danger that we take almost every day of our lives. There are countless others just like it. But we trust in people.

So much of our lives is dependent on authority. We live a mass continuum of teachers and students, each playing the role for someone else. This is a major part of our lives that we pay no attention to.

You couldn't live your life without expertise. The room you sleep in, the things you have outfitted your living space with were made by someone with expertise in building things. The city you live in was created by a city planner and architects. Same goes for the roads, the buildings around you, the transit system, your car. These things would not be possible without authorities on the subject. If you attend classes, you willfully subject yourself to an expert, an authority figure with credentials to prove her knowledge.

The food you eat, the clothes you wear, the entire world you live in is due to experts. We have these things down to a science. Not perfection, just high-level understanding.

And for the most part, we never give these things a second thought. We bow down to authority fairly easily. We take what experts say at face value a lot of the time. The trout population in Lake Wimmons has grown over the past decade, you say, Mr. Scientist? Sounds about right.

We do this because we have no way of finding these things out empirically for ourselves. When the government tells us they have evidence that another country is working toward nuclear capabilities, we can't storm off and do our own research. Plus, we have an expert role to play in our lives. Being an expert has nothing to do with PhDs or lofty posts. Maybe you're an expert on relationships, on faith, perhaps you're an incredible listener or friend. These are their own expertises.

You are an authority on something.

I think the lack of questioning authority on a daily basis is encouraging. I think it shows not really a trust in people - since you don't know the specific team of people who put your car together - but a faith in humanity as a whole. It shows that we trust the system in place, we trust the idea of someone knowing things that we don't and agree to let them know those things for us. In a way, it's a collective brain that we're dealing with. I am fine not to know certain things because other people know them for me, and I can usually get the information if I need it. But I usually won't. I don't know how to build a car to make it safe, but I know other people do, and I benefit from it without even ever meeting the person.

It is trust without knowledge.