Trust - the USA and the NSA.

Trust is defined, in my well used two volume New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, as “Faith or confidence in the loyalty, strength, veracity of a person or thing; reliance on the truth of a statement without examination.” Trust is thus a very fragile feeling or sense of understanding. To me the important part of the definition is “… without examination.”

If something or someone needs to be constant examined before you “trust” them or it, what does this say about your own state of mind? What does this say about your own trustworthiness?

Speaking generally now, my life experience has shown me that people who are trustworthy trust others. Such people have a sanguine belief in their leadership and moral standing; a sufficient confidence in their own activities and their own abilities that they would not countenance treating others in a way that betrays trust – “their word is their bond”. My life experience has also shown me that such people, by their exemplary example, lift others to behave as they do and to follow their example.

Historically spies have never been considered as exemplary beings. Spies have always been considered untrustworthy, as “two faced” and to be avoided – one never knew what their motives were or where their loyalties lay. When caught spies have always been treated harshly and, certainly in times of conflict, are often executed.

When the spying activities of a country or the malpractice of an organization are exposed internally by an employee with a strong moral compass – ie a “whistle blower” - outrage is the normal reaction. The fact that a government or organization has been exposed as “untrustworthy” is treated as a “betrayal”, as something abhorrent. This turns the whole idea of trust on its head.

Why is the individual – the whistle blower - condemned and not the government or organization that initiated the, now exposed, activity?  This is the same criminal mentality that considers the only crime is to be caught – not the crime itself.

To prove my point just look at the treatment applied to and the penalties inflicted upon the hapless Corporal Bradley Manning and the threats levelled at both Julian Assange and  Edward Snowden. Going further back in time recall the uproar caused by Daniel Ellsberg when he released the “Pentagon Papers”, he was called the “most dangerous man in America”. All these people did was to expose the moral shortcomings of the United States of America; to expose the untrustworthiness of the various Administrations activities to the World.

This should not be allowed to happen – the USA is supposed to hold the moral high ground and cannot not be seen to descend to the level of the base activities of lesser countries.

Is the USA with its now notorious National Securities Agency worthy of the trust it is trying desperately to maintain? I am not sure anymore. Trust comes from within; trust cannot be imposed; trust cannot be willed; trust has to be earned.

Whistleblowing has its roots in Injustice!

As always I rely on my one loyal reader and the support I receive. I know that this reader is concerned about the increasing injustice reported daily. Injustice affects us all and has a toxic and corrosive effect on society generally.

People know when they are doing  wrong – lawyers, accountants, real estate agents milking Trust Accounts, for example. So do businesses. So do banks. So do Governments. So do religious organisations. They are all aware of wrong doing but they keep doing it!

As I have stated many times before the root of injustice is unethical conduct – people, businesses, governments either for personal gain, trying to gain unfair advantage or to avoid scrutiny or to cover-up some dubious conduct. This applies to all levels of human conduct.

Now we have the serious allegations (they are still just allegations) that a commercial subsidiary of the Reserve Bank of Australia  has been offering bribes to encourage sales of the bank notes that it prints. This is the banker bank and is owned by the Australian Government! If the allegations are proved this will be a REALLY serious affair.

Also just recall the recent Olympic Games – taking drugs to gain an unfair advantage. Then there was the Tour de France – more drugs. Also of course there is the unethical conduct of banks and financial institutions – greed, manipulating interest rates, money laundering, betting on credit default swaps and fraudulent practices; the Catholic Church and paedophilia; businesses – poor customer service, greed, price gouging, squeezing suppliers to lower prices and general anti-competitive conduct; individuals involved in crime – be this “white collar” fraud, violence, sexual or physical abuse. Then there are the breaches of human rights by ALL governments (think Guantanamo Bay, Abu Graib and “renditions”; China and the Falun Gong and official corruption; the basket case that is North Korea; Russia with endemic corruption and Putin’s attempt to crush all dissent; Australia and the “stolen generation”, the treatment of asylum seekers and the Defence Force sexual abuse scandal – and so on and so on. The list is unfortunately endless).

This type of conduct, which hurts people either physically or emotionally, is often carried out by people who show a complete lack of empathy – an inability to feel what another person is experiencing. They show no remorse, are callous, have poor behaviour controls, are impulsive and fail to accept responsibility for their own actions. This evidence of anti-social behaviour is typical of people who usually would have high scores on the relevant clinical checklist for psychopathy.

On the face of it, psychopaths are often highly intelligent, charming, outgoing people, who are eager to make a positive impression. But this behaviour is a façade and an imitation of what they know to be socially acceptable: the so-called “mask of sanity”. The clinical checklist for psychopathy refers to "glib and superficial charm, grandiosity, need for stimulation, pathological lying, conning and manipulating ", and such like.

You may think that sounds like some of the businessmen and politicians we know!

Research shows that high-functioning psychopaths are often very successful people. On the surface they appear to be confident and calm and seem to have their act together. The Human Capital and Management Library says: "High-functioning psychopaths...tend to rule the world. They rise to the highest levels of power in politics and business."

Research also indicates that about ten per cent of CEOs could be diagnosed as psychopaths compared to about one per cent of the general population who show this same tendency. What allows these people to manipulate and control others is their ability to do so on a very rational, logical level with no feelings of emotion or empathy for the other person.

The importance of whistle-blowers stems from the fact that most of the unethical, unjust and downright criminal behaviour in government and in commerce that has been exposed, has been exposed by people with a conscience – whistle-blowers! Without whistle-blowers how would we know, truthfully, how any government, of any country was actually governing? Without whistle-blowers how would we know truthfully, as tax payers, how our money was being spent in any jurisdiction? Without whistle-blowers how would we know, truthfully, how our law enforcement officers were performing? Without this knowledge provided by whistle-blowers how could there be any trust in the performance of any branch of any government or any company or corporation? Every one of them has something to hide. Every one of them has a skeleton hidden somewhere (as do we all as individuals).

Whistle-blowers perform the very important function of shining a light into the dark corners where these activities are normally hidden and exposing the perpetrators of injustice for what they are.

Remember the advice Polonius gave to his son Laertes:

This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man. Hamlet Act 1, scene 3, 78–82.

Long live whistle-blowers!

Why whistleblowers are so important

To my way of thinking whistleblowers need to be encouraged. If someone is guilty of corrupt, illicit, negligent, abusive or exploitative activities they need to be brought to account for their actions. If a person is not brought to account then they will forever be looking over their shoulder wondering when they will be found out and when the axe will fall. They will carry a burden of guilt which will weigh heavily upon them, leading to increasing stress and isolation from their fellow beings. No one who exploits others in any way feels comfortable and at ease in the company of those they have hurt or negatively affected – this is a natural consequence of guilt. As the French mathematician and humanist, Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) wrote in his ‘Pensees’, “There is no greater unhappiness than when a person starts to fear the truth lest it denounce him.”

This is the reason why whistleblowers often fear for their lives. They have ‘exposed’ someone’s deepest secrets that they never expected would see the light of day – secrets that are dark and were hidden. Such exposure presents the perpetrator with an image of themselves which differs from their own, internal, picture of whom or what they think they are – everyone likes to think of themselves as a ‘good person’. When someone is caught out and exposed by a whistleblower they are forced to see themselves, as it were, in their ‘true colours’ and they are shocked and enter a state of denial and their inevitable initial response is “I have done nothing wrong”.

They will fight tooth and nail to preserve their image of themselves and to avoid appearing diminished in their own eyes or in the eyes of others. They try to pass the blame to others or to accuse the whistleblower of being untrustworthy and of lying. They fight to maintain a level of trust because everyone, particularly in business or government, must be seen as trustworthy. All worthwhile relationships are built on trust. If a person knows (deep down and because of their actions) that they are not trust worthy, they will not trust others either. Not to trust anyone is to have no meaningful relationships, which in turn isolates them from others. It must never be forgotten, however, that Man, as in Mankind, is a highly social being and is unable to live successfully or for long without some social contact, which is why the most severe punishment that can be imposed on anyone is solitary confinement (think of the self-imposed isolation by the North Korean government and the effect this has had on the unfortunate people of that impoverished country or the Chinese government’s persecution of dissidents and members of the Falun Gong).

To expose a person’s (or a government’s or businesses’) corrupt, illegal or exploitative activities is necessary, not only for society but also for those individuals engaged in such activities. It is as if something secret and unseen has now seen the light of day, which has a cathartic effect by lifting a burden and ‘cleansing’ a person (or organisation) of their guilt. The alternative is fear, and fear begets anger and hatred, and those who are fearful and consumed by hate lose their powers of reason and in such a state seldom exercise sound judgement. A person’s ability to determine ‘right’ from ‘wrong’ is suspended and everything and anything is considered acceptable, which defers the moment of exposure. Again think of North Korea; also BP and their problems in the Gulf; the Chinese government and dispossessed landowners; the Catholic Church and their paedophile priests; the Australian regulatory authorities and highly toxic pesticides banned elsewhere but still used in Australia and so the list goes on. Consider also the many other less than charitable activities exposed by that very useful website at http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Wikileaks.

What cannot be forgotten in today’s unedifying stampede for money and positions of influence is that men (as in mankind) have done these things and that we are all of mankind, furthermore we all share in the multi-various proclivities of mankind. Even if, from a purely legal stand point, any one individual may not be an accessory to any particular questionable activity or behaviour, because of our human nature and the consciousness that binds us all to each other, we are all guilty – we are all of mankind. We are all diminished by such unwarranted behaviour. This is why whistleblowers are so important.

“All that's necessary for the forces of evil to win in the world is for enough good men to do nothing.”
Edmund Burke (British Statesman and Philosopher, 1729-1797)