An important issue in this novel is how well people know one another and when and how to trust people. Lauren struggles between her love for Curtis and her concern that he might not understand or accept both her hyperempathy or her Earthseed ideas. She tells Harry Balter about her hyperempathy, and he worries that he can't trust her because he feels like he doesn't really know her.
How do you learn to trust? How much do you have to know about a person in order to trust that person? what sort of lessons about trust do you think this novel holds for us? Do you think that it is easier or harder to trust people in our current social situation? (Be sure to answer the question completly and thoroughly)
I remember at one point the motto to my life was "Trust No One." As the years passed, my mindset, of course, had changed, drastically. I learned that I can trust people but only to a certain extent. You can learn to trust people by time. If you know someone for a while, you can trust them because you can determine what type of person they are. In order to partially trust someone, I think you have to fully know them, for instance: the way they smile when they laugh, how they cringe their nose when they're angry, their work ethic, how they treat people, what they've done to previous friends, and more. Basically, if you know almost every aspect of a person, you can trust them. Harry and I go through the same struggle of trust. How do I know that I can tell you everything and anything on my mind? How will I know, no matter what, you won't go around tell people my private personal business? I barely know you, why pour my life story so you can tell someone else? This novel essentially teaches us not to trust everyone because everyone is not who they may seem to be. And personally, the trust level in our social society is terrible! I mean, there are a few people that can be trusted like my friends but the others will spread confidential experiences with friends, family, and everyone. For example, sexting. Of course, it isn't safe and what not that goes hand in hand with trust. The girl or guy sending the picture to this other guy or girl trusted them not to show anyone yet they did. Trust is still pretty debatable. For example,even with your best friend you've known for years, they could change and tell everything everyone your personal business. Why? You didn't want to sing a stupid song. Another example is marriage. You can be with a man or woman for 36 years, know how they sleep, eat, dance, talk, and walk yet the second something goes wrong, the husband claims infidelity and the wife says he's on steroids. Moreover, even though you may know someone for a long time, you never know what they are exactly capable of.
ReplyDeleteMy mottos were always ‘Know who to trust’ and a well known phrase is that trust has to be earned. This is true, however only you can decide how it is earned. It is important to first know who you can trust and how much. This can be achieved by knowing a person enough to know how they act around other people in different settings and most importantly how they talk about others. It is therefore a wise precaution, if not a necessary one, to have known that person for a while. It makes sense that the longer you have known a person, and hence the closer you are to someone and them to you, the more you can trust them. It might be easy to prematurely trust in someone. Do not trust someone lightly because you are drunk, in a difficult situation or simply need someone to talk to. It is all too easy to say too much to the wrong person. On the other hand, you might not trust in anyone because the price of your trust is unrealistic, in which case you will have nobody to turn to and will probably not have many meaningful relationships to people. Avoid being paranoid but do not lightly give your trust away to anyone either. You might think you know your best friend and tell them your secret and it turns to be the worst. Many marriages ended because that kind of relationship lacks trust. Trust is a bridge, wants it's been torn down it is sometimes impossible to rebuild. Some people are trusting by nature. They begin every relationship under the auspice that they will trust someone as long as that person proves them trustworthy. But when that trust is broken, all is lost. Then there are those who need to build up to a level of trust. These are the individuals who see the bad before the good because they are constantly on the defensive looking for that one iota of guilt so their suspicions can be confirmed. Regardless of what your trust factor is, there is no 'one' way to learn to trust anyone. You either do or you don't. Trust is not something that anyone can mandate or regulate - it comes from within and that is where it generally ends. Lauren and Harry knows how to trust someone, they wouldn’t tell their darkest secret out, and they would trust someone you thought you knew since childhood turning out you didn’t have a clue whatsoever. For me it’s harder to trust people in our current social situation, I don’t about others, sure I'll meet new people, but they don't stick. They tend to become more like temporary activity buddies. We may be bound by a common interest and all will be cool and fun, but as soon as that interest or whatever brought us together is gone, the friendship fizzles out. Everyone I meet these days just seems like a fluid social connection. People who are there as long as there is some immediate need for you in their life, and when that need is gone, they are gone. Additionally, it's really hard for me to trust a person, because my heart is already like a paper that is hard to absorb.
ReplyDeleteTo learn how to trust someone is hard especially since almost everyone in this world has been through a lot of hard situations in which their trust was broken or betrayed. A lot of people are against trusting people and it would be very hard for them to trust or learn how to trust. And now with our social circumstances, hardly anyone can be trusted especially the people dealing with your money. I always put at least 10% of my trust in people to see if they can be trusted. Most of them always succeed but I never put my full trust in anyone. To trust someone is like marriage. If you guys are going to walk down the isle and say, "Ido" then you better commit to it because if you don't, you just broke a promise that you made before God and the court. This novel is telling us that you can trust people but don't put your full trust in them especially if you guys are all fighting for the same things in life. In order to trust someone, they must show loyalty and a good heart. If someone doesn't have one of these, they'll either turn their backs on you and/or take advantage of you. These two qualities show good character and that's the type of person you should trust.
DeleteOne learns to trust others when they are sure that they have proven themselves to be trustworthy. People learn to trust through the acceptance of others; if another person allows you to be yourself around them, then you will gain a sense of trust for them because you become comfortable around them, so you feel no shame in doing silly or crazy things. From a personal standpoint, I learn to trust others by initially judging them; it’s just something about me that makes me suspicious of others prior to getting to know them. I eventually either find myself drawing closer or farther away from certain people. By trusting myself, I learn to trust others. One learns to trust by trusting themselves to trust others.
ReplyDeleteIn order for me to trust a person, I would have to know them on a personal level; I have to be very close to that person so that I’m comfortable sharing and collecting information from and with them. It’s difficult for me to open up to people whom I haven’t shared any deep memories, or that I don’t have a close relation to. The reason I express this is because, I am a very calm and easy going person, and therefore, I try my best to devise a pretty good poker face. I don’t go around inviting everyone into my life. I simply keep my feelings bottled up inside until I feel the need to have a conversation pertaining to my issues, with my closest friends. It seems unlikely to me that I could just meet a person, not having any knowledge about them; especially how they can relate to me an confide whether or not they are the type of person I can confide in, and spill my whole life into their ears. I would have to know a lot about a person before I could talk to them about my personal issues and secrets, even if they are willing to tell me theirs.
The novel shows that one has to be careful with whom they place their trust in. For instance, when Lauren decided to discuss her ideas and proposal about the decline of their community, Joanna went and told everything to her mother, who in turn told her father, who explained to Lauren’s father that the needs to have a talk with Lauren. Joanna basically displays the ultimate betrayal because she was the “best friend”, the one who, like Lauren, we all believe will hold our secrets as dear to their hearts as we do. The book also shows shows that when you put your trust in people, it’s really put of your control how they view you after, in turn; it will allow you to see people in their true nature. When Lauren, after much contemplation, decided to tell Harry and Zahra about her empathy problem, she, at that moment unveiled the true character of a person she would never thought she could confide in. Zahra completely accepted her and made her feel better about revealing her deepest, darkest secret to them. Lauren realized, at that moment, that it’s not how well you know someone, or for how long you’ve known them, you will be surprised to find that you can confide in someone that you initially believed wanted to see you down in life or payed no attention to you.
In my opinion, it’s more difficult to trust people in our current situation. There are simply too many selfish individuals that occupy our country and share our air, people that you might think are for you, but turn out to be against you. Because of the simple fact that our society and the people who lead us are so corrupted, its very hard to lend your trust in people when you know humans are so flawed and posses the potential to hurt you with your own words.
An important issue in this novel is how well people know one another and when and how to trust people. Lauren struggles between her love for Curtis and her concern that he might not understand or accept both her hyperempathy or her Earthseed ideas. She tells Harry Balter about her hyperempathy, and he worries that he can't trust her because he feels like he doesn't really know her.
ReplyDeleteHow do you learn to trust? How much do you have to know about a person in order to trust that person? what sort of lessons about trust do you think this novel holds for us? Do you think that it is easier or harder to trust people in our current social situation? (Be sure to answer the question completely and thoroughly)
When it comes to trust, I'm the first to question everything. I'm a very weird and skeptical person when it comes to these things. Trust should be gained by how much the person knows about you but also if they can accept you as a person. Trust doesn't come cheap and you can know me as long as 10 years, but if you don't do anything that can show me that you're a person worth trusting, it won't matter to me. For an odd reason, I can tell if I should trust a person by the look in their eyes and my gut feeling followed my instincts that my brain tells me. But what you can really learn from trust is the lessons your friends give you. They give you life lessons in which you can incorporate them into your everyday life. Trust can make your rely on a person and/or can be an opening door to trust others. Although in our current social situation, it's harder to trust someone because the world is corrupt which is corrupting people minds. It's very hard because now you can't really rely on someone but yourself. Everything is revolving on your knowledge and how much you know to help you get to a greater step into the world. Trust in value has gone down with many things, for example, "Love". Many people don't realize the essentials of these things. But it seems that people will find out through the hard times and struggles. And even if they do realize it, it'll probably be too late for them.
The way I see it, trust should be a mutual give-and-take. It needs to be gained, and it also needs to be given. I personally learn to respect first and trust later. Like many people, I tend to have a hard time trusting others. In my experiences, I have learned that even the people who I regarded as my closest friends or companions often could not be trusted to keep a secret or respect differences. In order to trust someone, I feel I should know more about them than they know about me, unfair as that may be. (I tend to be very closed-off and secretive at times.) In my mentality, if this person doesn't know as much about me as I do about them, and is still willing to trust me with what may be private information about themselves, then I should be able to do the same. I feel that in Parable of the Sower, Butler is trying to tell the reader that in a hectic world, you have to be open yet wary of the people around you. Be willing to accept help from others, but keep a good judge of character because such acts of kindness may have an ulterior motive. Lauren trusts the people in her community to do their share to ensure safety, but is cautious of certain individuals, such as Wardell Parrish.
ReplyDeleteI believe it is becoming essentially more difficult to trust people today. We live in a Facebook society, where privacy is waning and nobody is afraid to speak what's on their mind. But this new bravery about posting one's feelings for the whole world to see comes with a price. Nothing is private anymore. You always have to watch what you say, especially to others, because before you know it, your deepest, darkest secrets could end up as someone's status. And unfortunate as it is, few seem to notice.
There isn't one valid, specific pattern for trusting someone. You just kind of feel a vibe from that person that they're a good person. To trust someone means to understand them. If you understand their morals, and logical reason behind every action they take, then maybe it will be easier to learn to trust them. How do you LEARN to trust someone? Trusting is a process, just like friendship. It all starts with one simple word, or an appreciated action taken by someone to make you say," that person looks kind, and I appreciate their generosity." Therefore, it would be easier to walk to that person and introduce yourself. In trust, you must know whether that person can keep certain things to themselves. US is the important word in trust, meaning if it does not involve someone that was to be trusted, they should not know. Trust is about a level of confidentiality, giving someone else confidence that they can confide in you, and that it will surely only be between the two. On the other hand, to trust someone, you must know the things you can trust them with. Some people can't be trusted with secrets, money, life, or even hearts. My advice is, regardless of whether you are the trustee, or trusting someone else, learn of the different qualities, and the things that person can be trusted with, if you ever have the question of who to trust, and how.
ReplyDeleteYou learn to trust one you understand what others think and how they look at certain situations in life. If someone was to steal from a mutual friend but smiles in their face later on then your trust should not be given to them but if you see that the person has a good heart and good intentions then that is person that some trust can be given to. This novel gives a good lesson that everyone cannot be trusted but only very carefully selected people can be trusted. I think that it is harder to trust people in our current social situation because there is alot of hypocrisy. In many religions, relationships, in professional settings such as work people do one thing in front of you but do another behind your back. Like many priest who people look up to and follow preach that acts of crime are wrong and to love one another but are not doing what they what they are preaching. Even in relationships people tell each other they love one another but then someone is being unfaithful towards the one that they said that they love which is what makes it hard to give people trust because once they have trust they tend to take advantage of it
ReplyDeleteIn the dystopian enviorment that Butler shows the reader in the novel, it's a no brainer that the characters have a hard time trustingone another. Trust can be viewed as a weakness, as you should never let others know too much information about yourself. As others stated, the only way to truly trust someone is if it is given mutually. If both people in the relationship don't think of each other the same way, which would be close friends, then trust can never be obained. I'm not trying to sa that you have to be extremely close best friends, but building a friendship is the first step to obtaining trust from others.
ReplyDeleteButler shows the reader through the novel that trust is needed to survive in the world. However, that doesn't mean that you're supposed to go off and tell everyone every little thing about yourself. You just need to be careful of what you let others know about. In today's scoiety, everyone takes every little thing you say and do and uses it against you to make you seem inferior. Personally, this type of enviorment makes it hard for anyone to trust one another, mainly because trust is one of those things that is sadly abused by others. For some reason, trusting others can be seen as a weakness, as most people are cautious of who they let into their personal lives. If you can't live to trust others however, then it just makes it that much harder to survie in a world where you will most likely have to rely on others.