An Essay on Trust and the Esian Myth
> “What should you do when you meet a stranger, whom you must immediately trust out of necessity? This is where philosophy, humanities, and economics collide:
> Rousseau says that man is good.
> Hobbes says that man is dangerous.
> Kierkegaard says that trusting is an act of faith.
> Descartes says that trusting is an irrational act.
> Psychologists say that it all comes from attachment developed in childhood.
> Anthropologists say that it all comes from our traditions.
> Sociologists say that it all comes from our environments.
> Economists say that trust reduces transaction costs.
> And then there’s the world with Airbnb, BlaBlaCar, Amazon, Uber, where we « trust but verify. » Algorithms attempt to solve what philosophy has debated for millennia.
> But what are all these approaches worth when faced with the prisoner’s dilemma?”
This is an excerpt from Chapter XLVI (The Esian Myth) of my upcoming book, Happiness is Free.
The excerpt, under the guise of an inventory of theories of trust, sets a trap: the reader thinks they are reflecting on trust in strangers, while the text gradually shifts the object of trust towards the one making the judgement. The chapter intentionally moves from the invariable stranger - a pure philosophical concept - to the variable stranger - a real social figure - to reach the final thesis of the chapter: the true unknown is the subject himself. The dogmatism of the « it all comes from… » is therefore not a clumsy oversimplification; it is precisely the focus of the demonstration.
The Liturgy of the Dogma
Formally, the text adopts the structure of a catechism. The repetition of « X says that all… » constitutes a figure of the absolute. The universal quantifier « all » is scientifically untenable — no serious psychologist says that everything comes from attachment — but rhetorically necessary. It mimics how prejudice operates: prejudice is always totalising. It never says « sometimes, » it says « all. »
The transition from proper names (Rousseau, Hobbes, Kierkegaard, Descartes) to collectives (psychologists, anthropologists, sociologists) describes the process of dogmatisation: an intuition becomes a school, then an unchallenged cultural evidence.
And the closure with Airbnb, Uber, and the proverb « trust but verify » performs a deliberate dropout in register. Six thousand years of moral philosophy are absorbed into a rating system of 4.9 stars. Far from being anecdotal, this dropout announces the next part of the chapter: the delegation of trust to algorithms is the contemporary form of the Esian myth.
The Invariable Stranger - A Thought Experiment
Initially, I present an ideal limit case: immediate, necessary trust without access to reputation, within a short timeframe of 0 to 48 hours, where all strangers are interchangeable.
In this theoretical configuration, nothing differentiates stranger A from stranger B. The decision criterion cannot, therefore, be located in the object (the stranger); it can only reside in the subject (the one who trusts). This is demonstrated by the eight propositions:
- Rousseau / Hobbes: two anthropological dogmas on human nature. Without evidence on THIS man, I bet on a general postulate.
- Kierkegaard / Descartes: two existential positions. Either trust is a leap that precedes proof, or mistrust is a suspension waiting for proof.
- Attachment Psychology / Anthropology / Sociology: three internalised determinisms. My childhood, my culture, my environment decide for me before I deliberate.
The example of African societies of sacred hospitality perfectly illustrates this stage. In the Tuareg hospitality system, the stranger is welcomed not despite their otherness but because of it. The dogma is: any stranger who crosses the threshold is sacred. It is invariable trust, given a priori.
The Variable Stranger - The Test of Reality
However, in real life, the stranger is never invariable. They arrive stuttering, gendered, racialised, accented, aged, classified: woman, man, Chinese, Indian.
This variability of the stranger collapses the pure philosophical model and reveals the social function of dogma. Because in reality, we never experience the stranger without a face or an accent. We always believe we see something. The phenotypic or social variable is immediately interpreted as information.
This is where dogmatism becomes discrimination:
-
The psychological dogma no longer produces « I distrust strangers, » but « I distrust such a type of stranger, » depending on the affective history that has coded certain faces as safe or dangerous.
-
The anthropological dogma no longer produces « we welcome the stranger, » but « we welcome the right stranger. » History shows it: Tuareg hospitality was not the same towards the rival neighbouring ethnic group. Every tradition ranks its foreigners.
-
Putnam’s sociological dogma (social capital) becomes racialised: in a segregated environment, high-density trust is intra-group, mistrust is inter-group.
The text then reveals its second thesis: the variable is never a datum of the other. It is a projection of my dogma masquerading as perception. I believe I am observing that « women are… » or that « white people are…, » when in fact, I am merely applying my sorting software to fill my unbearable ignorance of the other.
The variable stranger is thus more dangerous than the invariable stranger, as it gives the illusion of knowing.
The Reversal — The True Unknown is Me
This is where the chapter’s reversal occurs: through the prisoner’s dilemma, the text demonstrates that « the true unknown is myself. » The eight theories cited are not eight theories about the other. They are eight self-portraits of the subject who thinks he is talking about the other.
When I say « it all comes from childhood, » I am not talking about the stranger, I am referring to my childhood.
When I say « man is good / evil, » I am not talking about man, I am referring to my existential wager.
When I say « I can see he is a Chinese man, » I am not talking about him, I am referencing the category « Chinese » as it was constructed within me.
The Esian myth is hence the myth of the man who believes he is encountering the other, while in truth he is only encountering himself, without knowing it. Esian would then be the one who is (esse), but who is unaware of being the source of the judgement.
In Happiness is Free, this demonstration is central. If happiness is free, it’s because initial trust should be free, given without calculating variables. However, as long as I am unaware of the unknown within me — that is, the automatic dogma that sorts others for me — I make others pay the price for my ignorance of myself. I make the other pay for not knowing me.
Efuet Atem
Author, Smiling in Trials
Founder, eo.World-like-Home.com