Trust: The naive, the cynical, and the courageous

I was listening to a segment by Jordan Peterson about trust that I thought was spot on.

Basically, here is what he said.

Most people who trust are naive and being naive is not a virtue, it is a fault. If you’re naive and ran into someone who is malevolent, they might do you incalculable damage, and you may never recover.

If you’re not naive, that means you’ve been burned once or twice, three or four times. You become more mature, don’t trust anymore, you’re cynical.

So you’ve been burned before, how do you get out of it? You trust people because you’re courageous. Because you know that you and the other person are both full of snakes but are making an agreement and are willing to take the risk because of your courage.

Thinking in terms of Blue Pill and Red Pill, you can see that Blue Pill falls under the naive category, while the Red Pill falls under the cynical but cowardly. The Red Pill is better than the Blue Pill when it comes to trust, being cynical is better than being naive. However, the next step after the Red Pill, should be to become a courageous cynical person.

It takes courage to accept an agreement and to take a (calculated) risk, rather than living your life cynical and, in a way, afraid of the opposite sex.