When trust is broken

"Those were the days," he said, "That you could do business with a handshake. We never had a written contract." Listening raptly, the crowd burst into applause, taking in the full meaning of how business manager Ken Reynolds had dealt with Don Messer for decades, booking him into venues, arranging deals . . . and all on a handshake. The full meaning included, of course, that there was a different kind of trust back then in the 1950s and 1960s and perhaps stretching back into the past.
Not that it was perfect. But today, trust is hard to come by.
We can't trust people to do what they say they will do. We set up rules, reminders, warnings and make people sign contracts, waivers and agreements.
If we can agree to what is agreeable to both of us, then we will expect things to turn out reasonably.
That is, with reason.
Sounds like bafflegab, perhaps, but I think the reason trust has fallen by the wayside is that in many cases, we have lost our reason.
Our municipalities have to govern almost everything in our lives, because somehow, it is too hard for people to deal with each other as neighbours.
Here in Vankleek Hill, one land owner on High Street has so much unappealing old equipment that the municipality is stepping in to get the property owner to see reason.
Barking dogs? Call the municipality, not the dog owner. We have poop and scoop bylaws. But wouldn't it just seem to be reasonable to trust everyone to clean up after his or her own dog?
Take insurance. We need lots of it and insurance companies require all of us to account to keep things to a certain standard. There are inspections because we can't be trusted. Our firefighters visit from time to time to see if our smoke detectors have batteries in them. Think about it. Can't we be trusted to take care of this simple, potentially life-saving task?
Health, safety, security and privacy issues surround us.
I know that if I have to create one more user name and password, I'm going to stage a protest. I simply cannot remember any more. And change these often, we are advised. Why? Because we cannot trust that someone will not break into steel-clad security systems.
Our restaurant owners are reduced to taking hand-washing courses, with no one worrying about cooking courses. If they can cook, I sure hope they know how to wash their hands. Who makes up these rules? Indeed, who can we trust?
I have found it interesting that even though we are living in a time of little trust, we are branching out into an online world where we have little control over who we are talking to at times. We have to carefully examine websites to see if they are legitimate and decide whether to make purchases based on ratings or comments from people we have never met. And we do it. And sometimes we are okay.
Most of us - spending upwards of seven hours per day in front of a monitor - trust our computers more than anything.
But in our own day-to-day lives, we grow more distant from the businesses alongside us and from those who live across the street; we grow more wary and distrustful of what should be the best and most familiar parts of our community.  
Sometimes I think it is the very complexity of this world which makes it so easy for large governments and bureacracies to conceal and obfuscate, which leads to mistrust. There's that word again.
We lock our cars and our doors and our windows and lock our kids out from inappropriate web browsing and television channels -- because we don't trust them, either.
Who can you trust? I bet you hear people say that all the time. But if you focus on what is reasonable and just, people usually do step up.
No one starves at a pot luck supper. When someone is ill, people bring home-cooked food over and it is eaten with no worries. When there is an accident, people stop to help. Paramedics, firefighters and the police show up to do what needs to be done. We are taken care of.
I trust that my staff will show up every day for work. And they trust there will be work to do and that when it's payday, they will be paid.
I trust that my money will be in the bank when I want to get some and that the supermarket will be open as advertised and even - always full of food!
In truth, there are many things we can and do count on and perhaps these are the important things.
We are perhaps just in the low part of the trust pendulum these days, and when we realize the trust cost of this lack of trust, we will change our ways.
I have trust in that.