DailyJim: The US Presidential Debate—our addiction to truth and how trust can help cure it

Hello everyone, welcome to another Daily Gym. This is the episode for June 27th, Thursday, 2024. I want to talk about, how am I going to call it, the US presidential election, our addiction to truth, and how trust can cure it. Wow, much easier to type than say. um so basically watch the debates here while i'm in germany so it started at three in the morning so the sun has already uh risen and i noticed a lot obviously but the thing that kept coming up over and over and over for me uh not talking about the age of biden how he looked older and not talking about Trump and how he's just lying, lying, everyone says he's lying, is that there was a focus on Trump was lying so fast that he couldn't be fact-checked. Oh, we need fact-checkers. Oh, why didn't the moderators fact-check him? Oh, what about the fact-checking? Oh, Trump said this is not true. This is not true. That's not true. This is basically saying what he is saying is not the truth. And I hear this so much in a lot of the media organizations, a lot of television shows, on Twitter, and I would say a lot of people, maybe more left-leaning in general, but it tends to be this, oh, but he's not telling the truth. Truth, I don't think it matters that much because I don't think we have truth unless we pay attention to trust.

So even if I'm trying to find out what is true in the world, I have to trust my own senses. I talked, I think, the other day about this very high-pitched sound that was happening in the house and I was like, oh, I hear a really high-pitched sound. I trusted my senses. I talked with With my parents in the house, they said, oh, there's no loud sound. There's no high-pitched sound. I said, no, no, I'm certain there is. I'm very, very, very confident that there is. They said, it's not. And so they were trusting their senses. I was trusting my senses. And then maybe even at the end of the days, they still didn't trust my opinion on it. Maybe they would trust a third party's opinion on it. So, I mean, trust, how do we even know if something is true or if it is the truth without trusting either our abilities to recognize that it's true or somebody else's abilities? And I believe that this is so important because what I hear Donald Trump say over and over again is don't trust anyone, only trust me.

You can't trust anyone, you can only trust me. And funny enough, I remember there was a guy in a bar back in Michigan, and I asked him if he trusted Donald Trump. He said, no, but I don't trust any politician, so I just see what they do for me. He believes he doesn't trust any politician, but that's not, I would say that's not true, but I don't trust that statement because he will listen to Donald Trump saying don't trust any of these politicians they are lying to you and he goes yeah yeah all the politicians are lying to me so he is trusting the words of Donald Trump he is trusting his experience he's trusting his perspective he is trusting his access or whatever you want to say and if you've ever interacted with somebody who has been in a romantic relationship and thinks the partner is cheating on them, there are no facts you can present. Maybe you've been the person in the relationship. There are no facts to present that will convince the person unless you find a trusted source for them. But if their trusted source tells them to not trust anyone else, even themselves, selves or they say oh do your own research but doing your own research is really going out and trusting a handful of people it says ignore all of these other people because all these people lying to you there's like maybe one two maybe five people that are telling you the truth but everyone else is lying don't trust them it's.

I don't think we recognize the vital importance of trust to finding out the truth. So, for example, if there were fact checkers, but people do not trust the fact checkers, then it may not matter at all.

Because the fact checkers may say hey you know trump made this claim about the economy and he said it was the economy was the greatest that it ever was but you know if you look at the numbers economy if i don't trust that fact checker i think he has maybe a motive or an incentive to lie maybe he's twisting the numbers maybe he's not telling the full truth maybe he's uh you know because he is political motivation level I mean they even said this when they thought that.

The trials against Trump were politically motivated and this and that. But then Hunter Biden got convicted. I believe he was convicted. They say, oh, but that was their intention. Like it was their intention? Okay. So, I mean, the main conversation, the main message that I hear from Donald Trump is do not trust people. They don't care about you. I'm the only one that cares about you. and inherently, therefore, trust me. I don't even know if he says trust me very much because I don't know if people trust him. So I don't know if he even says it so directly. Whereas Biden will come in and say, listen, I believe that we are a good country. I've never heard a president talk about how America is such a failure before. I mean, what Biden was saying, I believe in that, is that Americans are trustworthy people. We care about each other. and so many people around the world love to be in such an environment where people care so much about each other and trust each other to a large extent.

And this is not saying that people in other countries don't. I think it's the belief that he was saying that people care about us. People care about us in the U.S. People care about us from other countries. People care about us. And we can trust their intentions. patience i think so much it's not even just trusting the word it's trusting the intentions and i'm somewhat rambling but it's you know five in the morning here and uh, quite amped up on chocolate chip cookies and and debates but um this.

This idea of trust, not so much focused on the truth, and paying attention to what the candidates say about who we should trust. Because if we are trying to convince someone who doesn't trust anyone that the people that they don't trust are telling the truth, it may not work. So let's i think a much more effective approach is paying attention to who do they trust why don't they trust these people how do they rebuild trust in these people more than anything how do people rebuild trust in ourselves because if we could start to trust ourselves not to do your own research but to actually trust our own intuition our own guts but also trust that other people in our lives care about us and that we care about ourselves. Trust our own good intentions. Trust the good intentions of other people. And by other people, I mean our neighbors, our family members, our romantic partners, our teachers, our doctors, our politicians, our enemies, our friends, our immigrants our ancestors our children all of these people if we just trusted more of their intentions i don't think we would put someone like donald trump in office because he's telling us to do the opposite don't trust people these people don't care about you.

That's the main message I get from his speeches, and that's the main reason I really was excited to vote for Biden last time. Before, it was mostly, I don't want to vote for Trump, but it became, I want to vote for Biden because he believes in people. He believes that people care about him. He believes that people care about me, and that I should trust people's intentions. Sometimes I'm going to get burned. A friend of mine told me the other day, he would rather be an idiot than be a cynic, and I loved it. Trump is telling us all to be cynical just be cynical life sucks Biden is saying life doesn't suck life is hard we struggle we cry we we lose we grieve but we get back up and we move forward because people care about us we're surrounded by a lot of people who care about us that's the message I want to hear that's the message I want to believe I'm tired of people telling me to be be cynical. I'm tired of the person going for the highest office in the United States telling everyone to be cynical and that nobody cares about them. I'm just so tired of it. I believe it is not true. I believe it is not true.

I trust, you see, it's a tricky conversation. I trust my gut. I trust that if I believe people care about me, they are likely to care about me. I believe if people don't care about me, they are likely to not care about me. So for me, it's a choice. Do we want to choose someone that is telling us to not trust anyone because nobody cares about us? Or do we want to choose someone that is telling us that we should trust people because people care about us, people are trying their best? I choose the latter. I don't know about you. So I'm going to end this now because maybe it's It's over 10 minutes and it's also late. And I hope you listen to this and look forward to hearing your responses. All right, bye.