Blind trust without evidence is imprudent once reason can assess it

Evidence

Consider an adult instance of Baier’s kind of trust. In Richard Wagner’s (1887) opera Lohengrin, Lohengrin is an utterly incredible, godlike figure who demands of Elsa that she trust him without doubt or query. Elsa is a true Wagnerian heroine, prepared to submit to and adore her hero as her lord. She wants not only to trust him but also to marry him, to fade into him, to give herself up to him entirely, so beautiful a person does he seem to be, and a man at that. By refusing to tell her why she should trust him, Lohengrin puts her in the relation of an infant to her all-powerful parent with no choice but to accept or perish. Elsa’s fundamental problem is that she has no good way to explain Lohengrin’s existence and powers. He has come from nowhere, no one has ever heard of him. The nearest theory available to Elsa for understanding him is sorcery. That theory would make Lohengrin evil, not good. Given her understanding of the world, it would be stupid of her to trust him merely on his demand. Yet he demands of her to put doubt from her mind, to trust him. That is not a choice available to her as an adult. She cannot choose to doubt or not to doubt. If the evidence is on the side of doubt, she doubts. … The view of trust that Lohengrin imposes is repulsive. Indeed, he proves himself untrustworthy when, as Wagner’s punishment for her faithlessness, Elsa is demolished and Lohengrin sails away more in splendor than in sorrow—now towed by a dove. Notwithstanding Wagner’s repulsive demand for it in Lohengrin, infant trust would be stupid in an adult. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 355

Categorization

• XREF: The Elsa/Lohengrin case is a perfect literary test case for Hardin’s encapsulated-interest view of trust versus Baier’s infant trust — pairs with the reader’s own analytical integration of Saramago and Luhmann, since both concern trust under conditions of radically incomplete information. — connects to: Claiming surveillance without evidence diminishes real COINTELPRO harm. — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 870
• FICTION: Elsa’s dilemma — unable to explain her lord’s origins, reduced to the infant option of accept-or-perish — is a rich template for a protagonist who must trust an unaccountable benefactor whose nature cannot be verified.