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What is the Face To Face Trust About

The Face to Face Trust is a new and unique national charity, with a personally empowering and essentially preventative focus, founded in 2008. The Trust seeks to promote and enhance personal and social trust, without which no society or individual can function with confidence and efficiency. Hence the Trust seeks to deliver awareness and growth in absolutely basic issues, making a real difference to life quality for citizens, and at low unit cost.

Trustees are especially concerned with changing the nature of many dysfunctional personal relationships within our fragmented society: at home in family life, in business, employment, public services, relevant political arenas, and within local communities. At the centre of most down-stream socio-economic and educational problems are issues of lack of trust between people; and trust is clearly a very precious and delicate human capacity.

Despite many material improvements, our variously stressed times emotionally, economically and practically, reflect deep desperations for personal significance, meaning, trust, and sufficient social predictability, reliable love and belonging. Frustrated by a seeming lack of cohesive, non-partisan concern for these personal and social fundamentals, a diverse range of experience, energy and concerns of individual Foundation Trustees came together in the Spring of 2008 to establish the Trust; and that very word is for us an active noun. Continued…

The Face to Face Trust is an evidence-based, holistically-focused and largely preventative new educational charity. It was UK Charity Commission registered in mid-2008 [Charity Number 1125105]. The word ‘trust’ in its title is viewed as an active noun, amenable to significant enhancement through activity-enriched learning. The basic business of the Face to Face Trust is social trust-building. More formally, it aims to advance the education of the public in the arena of inter-personal confidence, trust and relational reliability. This involves promoting the enhancement of self-knowledge and the improvement of a range of life-skills, including effective couple and other human communication, and generally extending relational awareness and social competence. Based upon the fundamental human necessity for diverse collaboration with others within frameworks and behaviour of sufficient trust, the basic ‘glue’ of any society, from family to nation, this aim lies within the broad vista of professional, workplace and community-related educational development in greatly neglected arenas of personal and relational formation, from conception, infancy and beyond. The Trustees are making the public aware of The Trust’s existence initially through this dedicated website [www.facetofacetrust.org], and by publishing in July 2011 an innovative yet not lengthy basic book, Daring to Trust, being compiled by Richard Whitfield, the Founding Chairman of Trustees.

Trust-building

Over recent years, for a variety of reasons, a widespread conviction has emerged that trust is the most fundamental problem within all human relationships and organisations. The Face to Face Trust seeks to ground practical expression of these concerns through improvements in human capacities for trust-building that give serious expression to the realities of human inter-dependence appropriate to our era and in the light of both ancient scholarship and the much more recent evidenced findings concerning our human nature and character. In general, our ostensibly sophisticated, scientifically-informed world is charcterised by much restless, pressurised individual and collective discontentment rather than a measured equanimity and serenity. Our discontents reflect justified fears about social and biophysical sustainability, and hence our material, psychological and broadly spiritual well-being. Yet trust, let alone reliable trust-building, have many aspects which individuals within their social networks must become more deeply aware of if lives lived are to become more contented and serene rather than stressed and distressed.

The outlines following, which draw upon many sources, attempt to lay out a conceptual web and practical arena of human trust and trusting. Trust, a single, deceptively simple word, has in fact many faces and ‘types’ as outlined in the table below. We now know that our experience of trust goes back as far as our conception and is later socially experienced in varieties of settings, many of which we do not intentionally seek. Yet if we are to become maturely and satisfyingly adjusted to life, we need to become aware of trust’s variety. In hoping to educate the general public towards improved trusting, and thus trust-building, both good communication, and thus conceptual clarity are vital. How we understand trust mentally and also experience trust emotionally are parts of the same piece, and prompt either conflict or peace. Yet keys to extending trust rest within our actions; in particular through ‘word-shaped’ commitments made and commitments honoured, but also in broken commitments that are often triggered unawares, and repairable only by sincere apology and patient, compassionate forgiveness.

Eight types of trust and their characteristics

Instinctual, ‘innocent’, trust	Foundational basic trust*	Blind, naive trust	Conditional trust	Calculated trust	Pretended trust	Inner self-trust	Open and authentic trust

Instinctual, ‘innocent’, trust Foundational basic trust* Blind, naive trust Conditional trust Calculated trust Pretended trust Inner self-trust Open and authentic trust Experienced in the womb, and very early as newborns. Unavoidable; secure ‘holding’ likely to be the first keystone. First challenge of the inward experience of infancy. Has vast potential, and extensive consequences in every life*. Indiscriminate, gullible and undiscerning. Unquestioning, so tends to block out even reliable evidence. Dependent upon a person’s perceptions of consistent behaviour and/or the practical competence of other persons. A self-centred, prudential optimisation of personal advantage. Explicable by gaming theories. Insincere or polite-mannered ‘bonhomie’. Cordial hypocrisy feeding cynicism. Emerging, basic personal integrity of intentions and values, which bequeath secure foundations for authentic trust. The most mature form of trust, cradled by mutuality, so endowing freedom, amid responsibility, to all participants.

• A mountain of evidence shows that this life stage, along with aspects of the birthing experience, is crucial to emotional, mental, bodily and spiritual well-being. These affect our basic sense of security through our trust in reliable attachments, or otherwise, to our early care-takers, not least our mothers and fathers. Sadly, less than half of ‘westernised’ infants are securely attached to their prime carer by the age of 3 years. Without remedial attention, insecure early attachments impact capacities to trust down the generations. This is an urgent issue for societies to face through new educational and social policies if trusting behaviours and attitudes are to improve and mature.

Note: Trust is not fundamentally a medium, though it may be casually referred to as a kind of ‘social glue’. More seriously, trust it is a changing, flexible, dynamic learned activity. Though trust is not a feeling, it certainly involves informed patience with our variable emotions as they make life adjustments to many kinds of loss and change, each of which involve grief that is not in principle different from when a beloved dies. The matured activity of trusting involves both giving and receiving by contemplatively-inclined people sharing trusteeship. Importantly, if we reflect long and without prejudice, trust is the unavoidable precursor of any kind of faith, hope or reliable love, whether secular, atheistic or religious. Contexts or ‘arenas’ of Trust It is certainly relevant to summarise next the varied arenas in which trust, in some shape or form, is played out. • First and foremost, and continuing in all kinds of care-taking through families, partnering (including marriage) and parenting. • Within personal friendships, whatever their origin, and including open attitudes towards strangers and their cultural worlds. • In all types of organisations (businesses, including banks, the many tentacles of public sector ‘services’, political systems, churches and other religious and spiritual associations, charities of all kinds, voluntary community groups and clubs. • Face to face relationships, plus many manifestations of ‘virtual’ relationships amid the new realities of our global society. • Not least within the soul-self, the ‘knowing thyself’ inwardly rather than simply as an externally acting-out social agent. Other important aspects of note Trust and Freedom – Trust cannot control others by power or fear. Rather, openness respects others’ individuality, creativity and response-ability. Trust and Trustworthiness are centrally honed, and worked at character traits; non-coercive ethical virtues that ‘listen’ with exquisite attention. Trusting Trust – Trust is the antidote to suspicion, deviousness, disbelief, resentment and cynicism. Involving reciprocal creation, maintenance and persevering reparations, it embodies vulnerability and risk – indeed a ‘daring to trust’ whatever the circumstantial antecedents. It is no exaggeration to recognise that informed, perceptive trusting is the only way out of the tragic realities of what now amounts to something of a holocaust in contemporary human relations with huge, unsustainable individual, social and economic costs. [This is not to imply that there was ever some golden era of pervasive instinctive trusting, except perhaps in isolated tribal societies, such as those living in the Kalahari Desert, or Aborigines in the Australian outback, whose cultures were, as we now realise, very far from ‘primitive’]. The radical significance of authentic trust It is important to recognise the deep and radical significance of ‘authentic trust’ in relation to other types of trust. Aside from ‘self-trust’ that feeds into ‘authentic’ trust, the other six types of trust outlined in the main summary table do not turn out to be ‘reliable trust’ at all, at least for adolescents and adults. The 3-column table following starkly illuminates this without negating other types of trust. Instinctive, early infantile trust Blind, naive trust Open and authentic trust An unavoidable, yet, after birth, a short phase. Also an unavoidable, but for some a lengthy phase Requires deep self-encounter, extensive patience, and daring. Physiologically reactive and unreflective. Optimistic, yet intrinsically self-deceptive. Complex, reflective and realistic. Pervasively honest with itself, facing squarely the propensity for human betrayal, and the call of reparation’s special, patient skills of apology and forgiveness. Unaware and incapable of projection onto others. Projects too many inner hopes onto others. Inner self-confident even when facing vast risk. Hence capable of extending (not projecting) personal responsibility within truly open reparative attitudes and activities. Authentic trusting calls more for commitment than agreement upon detail. The central task is commitments to open dialogue, to communication and negotiation, whether in diplomacy, business, marriage, partnership or parenting. All types of trust involve counting upon other people, so all are vulnerable to a sense of betrayal. Trusting is always contained and specific within truly alive soul-spirits. The virtue of trusting, and the faith, hope and love that underpin its nature, must somehow be sustained. A deepening awareness of the anatomy and topology of trust, involving new learning, is arguably the only sensible place for us to begin if delicate social ecologies are to be sustained. In short, trusting, involving healing and annealing of primal wounds, must be both caught and taught. Trusting changes both the people who are trusted and those who trust. So trust is an orientation, a cluster of decisions that take account of the ways in which relationships actually change in consequence of patient holding-on commitments. This reflects more than evidenced rationality; rather what persons really care about. Achieving authentic trust is frequently uncomfortable, but it does endow a serenity of resolution. Hence we should not be surprised that few in our kind of society can be described as serenely alive. This should draw our attention to coherent educational actions that would not only enrich lives, but prevent many relational tangles and their often dire consequences. Few people in our multicultural situation dominated by materialism have delved into the labyrinths of truly 'authentic' trust. Such trust, or rather the lack of it in diverse roles with long antecedents tends to blunt fine intentions. We can too easily foul our own nests if we have no means of calmly auditing our own trust history, including its primal wounds within embryonic gestation and birthing that we now know everyone carries. And of course 'distrust' prompts many a pain, and has sent far too many relationships at home and in institutional settings literally down the drain. Sadly, too many even in the 'helping professions', including the religiously inclined, are able to avoid serious engagement with the depths of human nature, not least their own, and hence those of their clients. 'Doing good', ever well-intentioned, is too rarely maximised, while the professionalised phrase of 'providing human services' through teaching, social work, branches of medicine, the law and set-aside clergy, are often trust-problematic. Practical plans The Face to Face Trust has concluded that there is huge confusion around the field of trusting, and, unsurprisingly, much unenlightened and neglected practice which impacts the quality of all our relationships. Its concern certainly predated the 2009 crises within international banking systems and the UK political expenses scandals that have hugely undermined public trust within recent times, though the seeds of distrust are certainly millennia 'old'. As ‘venture capital’ permits, the Trustees have ambitious, yet realistic, grounded plans to fulfill the Trust’s objects through self-financing conferences, seminars, workshops, and organizational consultancies, supported by relevant, wide-ranging, informed and accessible publications. Much material for such activities, now needing specific editorial revision and updating, waits in the wings [see Founding Bequests].

Founding bequests to the Trust At its formative registration there were essentially three bequests: 1. A winding-up, formally-approved cash donation from a different (now defunct), complementary Registered Charity (The Association for Marriage Enrichment, AME) of about £12,500, of which about half currently remains available to Trustees. 2. The 30-years experience of the UK’s AME concerning aspects of 1:1 communication and trust, reflected in weekend workshops that its unpaid officers organised, and which accredited ‘leader-couples’ tutored for other adult couples, and the various matured teaching activities which were thereby accumulated. 3. The copyright of extensive teaching materials associated with two far-sighted, complementary nationally significant curriculum development projects in human relationships education**. At today’s prices, these materials (that were overseen and co-authored by Richard Whitfield who directed the projects in charity settings) would cost around £1.5 million to develop professionally.

• • The Life Foundations Project, 1987-93, and the Foundations for a Good Life Project, 2000-02

Venture capital needs (to secure the appointment of a lean core staff and arrange modest office premises to forward the Trust’s Mission). Although in formal terms the Trust is now over two years old, is, much preparatory work has been done, without yet serious attempts to raise core finance for what are fundamentally preventative goals. Governmental and charitable bodies have almost totally focused upon remedial responses to a vast and never-ending range of social ills. Not least given the current economic conditions, they are very likely to continue to do so. Little or nothing has been invested in primary prevention beyond the arena of public physical health, which we now know is hugely affected by perceptual, mental and emotional factors that relatively few, even within ‘the helping professions’, are more than marginally aware of. Past experience of endeavouring to raise funds for primary prevention of social ills forcibly suggests that private philanthropy is the only viable contemporary route for baseline ‘venture capital’ funds. The Trust quite simply needs to be trusted by one or two relatively wealthy philanthropists prepared to make available at least £0.5million to the Trust. Given adequate base finance for secure business budgeting, the Trustees could appoint a near to full-time (managing) Director who would establish a modest office base with specialist part-time assistants, and then spawn, over say a two-year period, a range of, for the most part, eventually self-funding educational activities. A short-list of suitably experienced professional tutor-author-consultants (most being likely to be fee-paid as Trust ‘Fellows’) also exists in the wings. Meanwhile, action plans have been tempered by deeper realisations that what has been long known by various respected authorities surrounding the topic of trust have much wider import than even the Founding Chairman had realised. For example, the profundity of what happens trust-wise within the first 3 years of life in humankind. His brief recent reflection on the timeliness of the Trust’s concerns follows after several practical questions. Some practical questions (each being suggestive of further educational activities)

   * 'Cradle to grave', or, better, ‘womb to tomb’ matters of trust and trust-building. What are the educational and social implications for the nurturing of fundamentals of authentic trust-building? For example, can we give serious status to the centrality of (non-dual) holistic spiritual development within schools’ and families’ regular and habitual practices in healing distrust and affirming trust?
   * Trusting is a necessity, but what kinds of trust are both ideal yet also prudential (rather than foolhardy), given that about 8 'trust-types’ exist?
   * Who do I presently trust, with what, to what extent, and how?
   * Can I really trust myself, let alone my boss, business partners, spouse, children (both when young and 'grown-up'), politicians, clubs, schools or church/faith community? What is involved in ‘knowing thyself’?
   * Is domestic partnering, with or without children, somewhat akin to having him, or her, ‘on sale or return’? Also, what are the strengths and weaknesses of pre-nuptial contracts insofar as trust is involved?
   * If love is a ‘second-hand’, learned emotion, what are the connections between love and trust and between loving & trusting the self and others?

Reflection: Trust-building - A great idea whose time has hopefully come

   The recorded history of humanity’s problematic journeying is one of a stuttering engagement with the perennial challenging question of: How shall we individually and collectively live together? This implicit and fundamental question concerning our manifest inter-dependence has played itself out in many varied forms over millennia in geographical and cultural corners of our globe, amid a generally perplexing and agonising mix of violent tragedy and tenderness, and arrogant wilfulness, selfishness and insightful wisdom. 
   So far as we know, we get one life in this form to grapple with the many nuances of our being here, a presence none of us personally chose! Echoing the 19th Century French philosopher-poet-leader Victor Hugo, who led an extraordinary life during a crucial turning point in world history, I note that ‘there is nothing so powerful in this world as an idea whose time has come’. Only rarely is such an ‘idea’ a new one, except perhaps in the fields of science and technological application, though the contexts of the pursuit of great ideas are, in detail, unique. Given our seriously global world, now fed intensively by the Internet, sufficient trust within and between societies is ever more imperative for the sustainability of both social land biophysical ecosystems.
   In the nascent Face to Face Trust we have carefully pondered how collectively we might begin to catalyse some difference within much human confusion, and find ourselves being educational guardians of a grand idea whose time, we hope, has indeed come. It is worth reminding ourselves that our ideas were incubating well before the international banking crisis and the UK’s political expenses scandals that caused huge and ongoing public concern about fundamentals of human trust-worthiness within our social fabric and the delicate inter-linked social and biophysical ecologies.
   Retrospectively at least, we can be sure that our tiny collective acorn of faith and hope, indeed our ‘mission’, can perhaps be best expressed within one inclusive word: trust-building. By this we mean that explicit investments that forward the growth of and development of human capacities to experience sufficiently reliable grounds for trust in others and in themselves is both possible, and now essential for the survival of our species amid its planetary realities. 
   This challenge of aware, informed, ‘educated’ trust-building has now emerged in a global context as a universal responsibility, an idea whose time has come. Indeed this is long overdue within conceptions and practice of both education and society. In our bones we know that we either learn to hang together, or we hang separately. Social order is not possible without adequate, mutually nurturing and a variety of rewarding meetings ‘face to face’ during life’s course.
  So far The Trust scarcely has five barley loaves or two small fishes to catalyse significant changes in our cultural outlook and priorities. Yet the context in which we are living is more than suggestive that our concerns and experience are culturally timely. So we sustain faith and hope that we can be used by the fundamental idea that seems seriously to have captured the public mood. Great ideas are not private property, but are historic imperatives that can use us as their representatives. Discerningly or not, beyond adolescence we choose our commitments, our ‘be-longings’. 
  We do not have to be great to be used by a great idea, but, like many fine folk in history, we can be enlarged by being willing to be used by a great idea. We recognise now that humankind’s present and future welfare critically depends upon persons enriching their inter-dependent lives through a deepening understanding of both inward and outer human nature, of trust, and how it and its obverse are and can be propagated. At the centre of such tasks are reliable relationships–building though awareness of what it means to be truly human and humane, a goal that has tragically slipped through the net of almost all educational provisions despite education’s ostensible and implicit concern for human development. 
  Seriously holistic trust-building is a great idea. Moreover it embodies much rich and varied experience with which to substantiate its content, and methodologies to oil its flow.  Educational action for trust-building’s time has come. Given faith, hope and compassionate concern, alongside modest good sense grown from our collective experience and that of those who decide to associate with us, the Trust can make a most important and essentially preventative contribution to freedom, democracy, culture and society.								         

Richard Whitfield, January 2011