The Trust Test: Are Your Ethics Negotiable?

Over ten years ago, a friend gave me two warnings that seemed oddly specific at the time. "Many of my fellow countrymen are not coming here as I did, to work", he said. "And they will cause society to turn on all of us." Then he added, quieter: "Please don't tell them you are a Jew."

He was a homeless immigrant, and he was illiterate. Yet he was one of the wisest people I knew. He was also the only person I trusted with my dog.

If you know me, you know that's not a small thing. That's the ultimate test. I could reduce him to convenient labels — the circumstances of his life, his status, his origin — but to me, he was simply one of the most beautiful souls I've ever had the privilege of knowing.

His warnings stayed with me, even after he left this world far too early. Not because they were political predictions, but because they came from someone whose ethics I never questioned. Someone who belonged to tribes — and still, his conduct was the message, his silence no less telling. It spoke more clearly than most people ever do.

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The Daily Erosion

As I do at the crack of dawn, this morning over coffee I got my daily fill of rage-inducing news and social media mind-bait. If I weren't aware of how media works — and works the masses — I might have started my day grumbling louder than my empty stomach. Instead, my mind pinged me to the topic of trust. Who and what I trust, and don't.

Scrolling through posts, I saw the usual pattern: people sharing their 'evidence' of why some groups can never be trusted, always pointing to the other side of the political aisle. Convenient certainties. Tribal affiliations doing what they do best — blurring lines that were once clear.

My answers to "who do I trust" have shifted over time. Some relationships I thought were solid turned out to be conditional. Some institutions I believed in revealed themselves to be more interested in narrative management than truth-telling. But the way I evaluate trust hasn't changed. It still comes down to two things: ethics and coherence.

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When the Lines Blur

Here's an example. Last year, a video circulated of an individual at a Canadian university calling another person a "f*cking fagg*t". I'm old enough to remember when that kind of slur would provoke immediate discussion — not about politics, but about basic decency. I found none.

The mainstream media seemed to overlook it. I found no damage control from the person's employer. I found both strange and concerning. Not because I expected performative outrage. But because the silence was telling. It revealed something we've been watching unfold in slow motion: the normalisation of attitudes that were once universally taboo in Western societies. The selective application of principles we claim are foundational.

Core values — respect, decency, integrity — are being overlooked when convenient. And with that, trust erodes.

Too often, tribal affiliations blur the lines we once saw clearly. We used to call people out when those lines were crossed, regardless of which 'side' they were on. Not anymore. Now we perform elaborate mental gymnastics to justify why our tribe's transgressions don't count, while another tribe's identical behaviour is unforgivable.

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The Normalisation of Exceptions

We are witnessing something dangerous: the mainstreaming of exceptions. Racism is apparently acceptable when aimed at certain groups. Discrimination too. Violence has become something defendable, even admirable in some circles. Theft. Fraud. Murder. All now 'debatable' and justifiable when they fit the narrative.

I'm not being hyperbolic. I'm watching it happen in real-time, rationalised by people who would have been horrified by these same acts a decade ago. The only variable that changed? Whether the target or perpetrator belongs to the approved category.

If our 'enlightened' society tolerates this, it loses the very foundation it claims to defend. If we can't trust individuals and institutions to distinguish right from wrong — or if they can distinguish but choose not to when it's inconvenient — what can we trust?

This isn't about left or right. It's about coherence. If your ethics shift based on who's committing the act rather than the nature of the act itself, you don't have ethics. You have team loyalty.

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The Institutional Collapse

This selective ethics problem has metastasised into our institutions. Media outlets that claim to stand for certain values will somehow miss obvious violations when they occur on the ‘right’ side. Universities that preach inclusion will tolerate hate speech if it comes from approved voices. Organisations that claim to fight discrimination will practice it when it advances their goals.

The tragedy isn't that institutions are imperfect — they always have been. The tragedy is that we've normalised the hypocrisy. We've stopped expecting coherence. We've accepted that principles are fungible, that "it depends" has become the default answer to questions that used to have clear answers. And we wonder why trust is collapsing.

My friend — the one I trusted with my dog, the one whose ethics never wavered — he saw this coming. Not the specific manifestations, but the pattern. He understood something fundamental: when a society stops applying its principles consistently, when ethics become negotiable, decency dissipates. Everyone retreats to their tribe, and trust becomes impossible outside tribal boundaries.

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The Test

So here's how I've been evaluating trust lately, both for individuals and institutions with five questions:

Do you trust them enough to leave what you consider most precious with them? For me, that was my dog. For you, it might be your child, your reputation, your life savings, your deepest secret. Whatever it is, would you trust them with it?

Do you trust them enough to leave them in your home or with access to your bank account? This isn't hypothetical. This is about whether their ethics are reliable when no one is watching, when they have opportunity, when they face temptation.

Do you trust them to stand up for you if you were being attacked unfairly? Not when it's easy. When it costs them something. When defending you might anger their tribe, damage their reputation, or conflict with their immediate interests.

Do you trust them to look after you if you were vulnerable or elderly? When you can't defend yourself, when you can't offer them anything in return, when helping you is purely a matter of character rather than calculation.

Do you trust them with our shared future? With power, with decision-making, with influence over systems that affect people they'll never meet. Will they still apply their principles when the people affected are abstract, distant, or from the "wrong" group?

These aren't rhetorical questions. They're diagnostic tools. And they work as well on ourselves as they do on others.

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The Mirror

Here is the uncomfortable part: if we're honest, most of us would fail at least one of these test questions. I know I have. I've caught myself making exceptions, softening my stance, looking away when it was convenient. I've felt the pull of tribal loyalty override ethical clarity.

The difference between wisdom and self-righteousness is recognising this tendency in yourself, not just in others.

Trust isn't about never being wrong. It's about being consistent when it matters. It's about having a framework that doesn't shift based on our tribal affiliation. It's about remembering that ethics aren't negotiable — they're the load-bearing walls of trust.

My friend understood this. He could have followed his tribe — and sometimes he did — but when it came to his ethics, he stood firm. He lived by principle, because it was his most precious possession. Maybe that’s why his soul shone so bright, so untouched by the mental gymnastics most of us tolerate daily.

I think about him when I see the trust crisis playing out around us. When institutions fail their basic tests. When people I once respected reveal that their principles were always conditional. When the daily coffee-and-rage routine makes it clear that we've collectively decided consistency is optional.

He was right to warn me. About the specific predictions — and even more about the pattern. About what happens when a society loses the ability to apply its values coherently. About the cost of negotiable ethics.

The trust test isn't complicated. The hard part is being willing to apply it honestly — to our institutions, to our tribes, to the people we want to believe in. And most of all, to ourselves.

This is where change begins: the moment we refuse to compromise our principles.

Dedicated to my friend, whose wisdom needed no credentials, and whose ethics made no exceptions.