If we cannot truly generalize beyond ourselves, then how do we come to trust others? By trusting someone, are we not rendering a caricature of that person in order to generalize how trustworthy they are? Do we not put this on a scale of our own making? I am sure that there is some internal guidance here, based upon intuition, rationality, and subjective understanding of the self.
The way in which the self and the intuitive process of the soul are differentiated is blurred by generalizations. If we become too general, at a certain point, there is no longer a self to be considered at all. But what is worse, intuition could be at a loss if it is so ubiquitous in exactly the same manner that it does not inform us based on what our soul needs but that of a vague, general self. Due to this, the most immediate difference between the self and the intuitive process is the soul. The self has the soul; the intuitive process is the soul. There are, naturally, various levels of spirituality that can be attributed to the various sources involving the intuitive process, but for my purposes, those too need not be generalized. Everything at hand is subjective, in the end.
So, in order to trust something or someone, we are analyzing much more than moral character outside of ourselves. More pressingly, we are grappling with our own morality. For someone who lives a life of organized crime in some capacity, they would be far more inclined to trust someone else who engages in such behavior than a law-abiding citizen. Moreover, I am more likely to trust myself than someone else is—or I should be. It is interesting to discuss the dissonance that many people experience when they do not, in fact, trust themselves in the slightest, but that exceeds the scope of this article.
If I trust myself, I can examine the atomistic tendencies of my moral standards. And if I do this, only then can I comprehensively understand how to trust something outside of myself. The subjective nature of morality, which is based on an intuition, must be rationalized both empirically and cognitively. For instance, if I can see in front of me that someone has no issue with stealing, I may then wonder, by rationalizing the situation cognitively, whether or not a base intuition in favor of this person is warranted. Given the self that is governing this process, the answer may or may not be yes. Hence, subjective trust prevails.
I am under the distinct impression that morality is more or less the same as trusting something outside of ourselves; in this case, what is outside of ourselves is a conceptual representation of something that is very much within ourselves. I feel that this is what makes the discussion overly intricate—there is little way to distinguish between the concept of morality and the subjectivity of internalized values. Consider how strenuous it would seem to undo the morals we have accepted as our own for a lifetime. Doing so would be tantamount to convincing yourself that your favorite children’s book was never even written—that it was all within your mind. In the same way, treating morality as something transcribed outside of the self is ultimately a dangerous feat, yet it is clearly based on our subjectivity. Although perhaps it is not entirely subjective, since what we ascertain as moral truth seems to be something external that is internalized based on an intuition, which merely implies subjectivity. Therefore, morality, and likely several other abstractions that appear intuitive, are much more complex in terms of how they have been empirically and cognitively rationalized.
I have made a huge generalization, but to go through each set of values of every person and every value within those sets, sifting through what has been logically internalized and what is intellectual folly, is absurd.
As the self navigates the intuitive process, perhaps it is gradually discovered. Until then, who we are is a mere assumption.
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