On Trust

Day 28

“Did she make that promise to you, or to the person you were pretending to be?” - Yang Xiao Long, RWBY Season 6, Ep 12

I said once in On Trust that trust is the foundation of all things, and that betrayal was the worst of all things. The most obvious type of betrayal is the breaking of a promise; To give our word and lie. Yet, the giving of a promise and the act of betrayal has many possible forms, and many ways in which one can argue that you have not broken your promise after all. You can say that you were misunderstood, that a greater promise comes before the fulfillment of that one, or that you were coerced into making the promise. We'll deal with them one at a time. At the beginning though, I want to take stoke of the quote above. The quote if from an animated series named RWBY, and is by one of the main characters. Quickly and basically, the reference is in response to a man who accused another character, Blake, of breaking a promise. I said before that sometimes small things can make a big impact, and that sometimes certain words mean more than others. Well, for me this quote got me to thinking.

Promises, like most social things, have three major aspects to them. There is a way that the person making the promise understands the promise, the way that the person receiving the promise understands the promise, and the way that a third person would understand the promise. The first and second persons are sometimes the same, as when we make a promise to ourselves. The third person can be a single person, many people,, or a general societal view. For example, is an act 'honorable'? If you made a promise to act 'honorably', then who decides what those types of actions are? You can act honorably as you yourself understand it, or you can act honorably as a judge understands it, as when you go to a priest to ask what the right thing to do is, or you can act honorably as society demands – as people 'in general' find actions to be honorable. I use 'honorable' because it doesn't have one clear and always applied application. What about if you act 'lawfully'? Well, we have arguments about that all the time, its called a trial. Did you or did you not act within the bounds of the law? Let the jury – or the judge – decide. If someone thinks that you did not act so, then you can argue that there is a misunderstanding somewhere. Either you don't know the law, or honor, as well as you think you do or the other person does not. Perhaps somebody is lying and thinks that they can get away with it if they talk fast enough or pay out timely bribes. There comes a time when we ask – who judges the action, and what actions are appropriate?

The same things can be done with promises. If you make a promise, then someone accuses you of breaking it, then you can say that you did not. You can say that the other person is confused or vengeful for example. You can say that you only promised to try, not to succeed, and the other person forgot that. You can ask for a judgment, from somebody that you both respect. After all, isn't a promise like a contract, and a contract is something that the law deals with, and so you can sometimes treat a promise like the breaking of a law. You can say that whither the promise was broken or not depends on your point of view, or the definition of a words. You can treat with your promises in a legalistic fashion.

Sometimes we make promises, but our word is already given. Aren't there things that you would not do, or perhaps there are things that you must do. If you promise to protect somebody, are you willing to give your life to achieve that? If you promise to defer to someone's privacy, won't you break that promise if you think something bad is going to happen to them if you don't? Sometimes we think that we can break or bend the law for a good reason, or because the law is evil and we have to do good. We can't always tell what somebodies greater promises are, what the things that they feel they must do are. You have to know a person pretty well to figure that out; Sometimes we have to learn about it for ourselves as well. Do you promise to do what you are told? You do – until you decide that you have to disobey.

A promise can also be coerced. If someone threatens you, and you make a promise, then you did make that promise – but why should you keep it? Yet it seems rather weak to say that a promise which is coerced is not valid – promises are coerced all the time. I do what my parents tell me because otherwise I will get in trouble, I follow the law because otherwise I will go to jail, I arrive at places on time because I don't want the person I'm meeting to leave; I promise all sorts of thing, implicitly and explicitly, in order to bind the world to me. How often do we make a totally unconcerned promise, a promise that we aren't pushed into making, if ever so gently pushed, by some force or another? I think not very often. We tend to make promises for a reason, either to avoid something or to achieve something. So, coercion as an issue for a promise I do not think is the right leg to stand on. If you break a promise then you break a promise, no ifs, ands, or buts. However, there is a yet.

Yet, who was it that made the promise and who was it that heard the promise? If someone threatens me into making a promise, then the person who made the promise was the weak me under threat. The person who heard the promise was the enemy in a position of strength with the ability to hurt me if I don't do what he tells me to do. Are we pretending to be somebody that we are not? I make a promise under threat of retribution, and the implicit assumption is that I am not willing to break that promise and receive the result. I am taking a stance in the world, I am appearing as a sort of gem in the world. If I break that promise then presumably I am willing to receive the retribution, or I think that I will not receive the retribution. In either case, the gem that I appeared to be when I made the promise is not the gem that I appear to be when I break the promise. Either the gem of the promiser is not what it appeared to be, or the gem changed. Either I lied when I made the promise, or I changed my mind. Yet perhaps I didn't lie – perhaps I think that now I can avoid the retribution, and that the threat which I made my promise under has gone away. If it has, if I can avoid the retribution by guile, luck, or action, then hasn't the relative position of the world when the promise was made gone away? The same holds true when I change my mind when I grow brave. The world has changed, and so the world in which I gave my word has changed. If I am the world, then I have thus changed. So, the person who gave the promise under threat is not the person who breaks the promise.

What about the scenario in the quote? If a change in me or my circumstance changes the boundaries of the promise, then a change in the other person does as well. Either the promised was a case of mistaken identity, or they have changed. This is the 'person you were pretending to be'. I can make a promise to a person and in a world, but if things change then we can ask if that promise was broken or not. To whom did I make the promise, and who was it that made the promise? We need a clear understanding, and perhaps definition, of these to decide if a promise was broken or not.

Perhaps nobody is lying, but there is a misunderstanding of position. Promises don't have to be explicit – they can be implicit. Yet, implicit promises are inherently more dangerous than explicit ones, because they depend so much on position. When you make a promise to someone, is that promise in the personal or economic sphere? Is that promise founded upon you having transportation, or being able to achieve a goal? What if you can't – did you break that promise? Some would say yes, but others might say no – or at least, that they shouldn't be blamed for breaking the promise. If you promised to get somewhere on time, but there was a traffic jam, did you break that promise? Yes, because it seems unlikely that the world has changed so substantially that traffic jams were not possible, or that you suddenly forgot how to drive. A traffic jam is an expected problem which is already part of the word, part of the circumstances, and you haven't changed substantially. You broke that promise. If, say, there was an earthquake or you had been shot, then maybe you didn't break that promise. Maybe the world has changed substantially enough that you shouldn't be 'blamed' for breaking that promise. This is what an excuse is.

This is sometimes a shaky path to follow though. I have know people who promise to be on time, but are habitually late, and who always have an excuse. They have an excuse every single time, they want to argue that they shouldn't be 'blamed' for breaking their promise. Others make promises willy-nilly, and never mean any of them. I regard these people with scorn. They aren't lying if you know them and know that they are untrustworthy, but in that case – when would you trust them?