Towering Pines Blog

Trust is a funny thing: it must be given and is almost always taken for granted. Here in the fourth week of camp, the value of trust starts being tested. We’re comfortable at this point, with our cabin groups and our coworkers and our friends. We’ve built a community and done a fair share of exploring and we’ve done our best to keep things in perspective, and all of these things contribute to a trust in one another. But as we know, conflict comes along with all of that exploring and community building. What do we do when we find our trust was misplaced?

I’ve seen a lot of different conceptions of morality in my travels and (perhaps ironically) the system that I find myself meditating on is the game theory strategy of Tit-for-tat. Simply put, a person (or other theoretical agent) following the strategy of Tit-for-tat will be initially trusting, respond to actions in kind, and will be forgiving. This means that trust is given, but when it is violated, consequences follow.

Here at Towering Pines, we are fervent in our belief that bad behavior should be followed by consequences, but not punishment. The difference between the two being that consequences follow from actions, are connected directly to the act, and are proportional to the transgression. Punishment doesn’t always relate to the crime, and it rarely influences the thought process that leads to the crime in the first place. It just makes the person being punished seek less punishment, not change their behavior.

Racers trust the other skippers not to t-bone their boat.

You will also note that a person following Tit-for-tat is forgiving. They don’t hold grudges. They don’t let past mistakes influence current decisions. This is probably the hardest part for normal humans. Once trust has been betrayed, it’s hard to forgive and forget, yet this is the most important part of strategy if we want to maintain order. Without it, community breaks down into constant retaliation.

Another way of thinking about this is with another Grandpa truism: if you treat a man as he is, he will remain as he is; but if you treat him as he could be and should be, he will become what he could be and should be. This is trust. I tend to channel Grandpa when I think of trust. He did a good job of giving people the benefit of the doubt, and he never held a grudge.

This frog trusted me not to eat it.

So, if you feel like you’ve been wronged, consider the Towering Pines approach to trust. You don’t need to let yourself be tread upon, but you also don’t need to fixate on the wrong. Remember that we are people, and people make mistakes. It comes with the territory of exploration and growth. There is a certain risk involved in daring to explore. When things go wrong, make them right and not worse.

I trusted these horses not to kick me in the lens.