Cancel Culture, Reputation and Trust
I’m not perfect, and I haven’t met anyone who is, which is why I bristle when I hear that tired and untrue nugget:
It takes a lifetime to build trust and only seconds to destroy it.
Bullocks! (Don’t you love words that are both curses and cow parts?)
There is a big difference between trust and reputation. Reputations, unlike trust, can be destroyed in seconds. Think of some of our fallen celebrities. They had a great reputation until they didn’t. Some were building a persona based on lies. And when what they were doing was found out, their positive reputations shattered like china on concrete. In the current atmosphere of verbal vomit, being eaten up by people starving for a life, even outrageous lies have managed to feed some. Reputations that were damaged by untruths can recover. However, it’s like saying someone hit by a truck can recover. The damage may never go away.
Social media is rife with a combination of truths, half-truths and downright lies, and at some point, all of us can get caught up in believing a lie. If we could all pause before we pass on gossip, we could prevent a lot of heartbreak for ourselves and others.
I have a different perspective on historical figures and what I perceive as an aspect of the cancel culture. Why are we erasing achievements because we don’t like aspects of their lives? Why not put things in perspective and show the good AND the bad? Benjamin Franklin was a brilliant inventor. He was also, according to some historians, an abusive husband. He tried to convert the government from proprietary to royal, an owner of slaves, and a hypocritical puritan. Hmmm. Sounds like the former guy. Like many despots, even the former guy did some things right.
I’ve had people question me about not having truth in my trust model. If you’ve read past blog posts, you know that it’s not okay to lie. Like many of you, I’ve had to apologize when I’ve repeated something I found out later wasn’t true. If you believe you’ve never told a lie, then you’re either delusional or you’re lying.
Trust is simple but it’s not easy. If you follow the 5 tenets of trust, you can be someone that others trust.
My hope is that you bring the value of trust into your life.
Be the person others can trust!
