Articles by
Dr. Anthony F. Cicone
It's All Based on Trust
by Dr. Anthony F. Cicone, CFS 10/1/2003
You may have heard the one about the two good friends
who had gone on a backpacking trip in the mountains.
After several days, they had followed the trail deep
into the woods. As they came around a bend in the trail,
they could see a grizzly bear coming toward them in the
near distance. Without hesitating, the one “friend”
lowered his backpack and retracted a pair of running
shoes. As he began to unlace his hiking boots, his
anxious hiking companion eyed the grizzly lumbering
towards them. “What’s with the running shoes old buddy,
you’ll never outrun that bear.”
“I don’t have to outrun the bear ‘old buddy,’ ” was his
companion’s hasty reply, “I just have to outrun you.”
Just two days ago, I was having a discussion with
another consultant about our percentage splits for
future transactions. He was networked to a large number
of consultants and was concerned about the possibility
of any of these consultants going around him and
directly to the funding source. I could understand his
unease. The only response I could offer in regard to his
concern was to point to the obvious fact that in the
end, it’s all based on trust. I raised the question as
to how any of us, for instance, can really know for
certain that the factor is actually paying us
commissions on all of the invoices that are factored. We
agreed that indeed, it is all based on trust and moved
forward from there.
The funny thing about trust is that it has to do with a
sense of right and wrong, and our concept of what
constitutes right and what constitutes wrong is
inexorably linked with whether or not we perceive of
truth as being relative or absolute.
If truth is relative rather than absolute, then when we,
for instance, consider buying stock in a company (after
the recent Wall Street debacle), what assurance do we
think we have that the company’s books have not been
cooked? How do we even really know what constitutes
“cooked”? Perhaps the books haven’t actually been
roasted. Maybe they have only been singed, or perhaps
they have simply been left to simmer a bit too long.
Likewise, if truth is relative rather than absolute,
what certainty is there that the law will protect us
should we suffer loss as a result of having invested in
a company that misrepresented itself through books that
had been left too long in the oven?
Believe it or not, there used to be a time when judges
were inclined to make decisions based on the Bible, the
Constitution, natural law, or precedent. Instead, judges
impose as rule of law whatever seems sociologically
expedient, politically correct, or whatever reflects the
prevailing sentiment of the ruling elite. In the early
part of the 20th century, Justice Charles Evans Hughes
declared, “The Constitution is what the judges say it
is.” Justice Hughes was pointing to a trend in which a
government based on people’s opinions would supersede a
government based on law. The sociological or arbitrary
law, which permeates society today, is a kind of
lawlessness that has brought us a long way from where
the Founding Fathers of this country intended.
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How did we stray so far from the course? Shortly after
the turn of the century, a false view of reality began
to take hold in America. Although its name did not
become known until about 20 years ago, humanism spread
into all aspects of life and became the dominant
philosophical view about the time of World War II.
Millions of people today openly embrace it, and many
other millions follow along aimlessly and unthinkingly
under its influence.
Dr. Francis A. Schaeffer, a Christian philosopher,
described humanism’s influence this way:
“. . . the humanist world view includes many thousands
of adherents and today controls the consensus in
society, much of the media, much of what is taught in
our schools, and much of the arbitrary law being
produced by the various departments of government.
“The term humanism used in this wider, more prevalent
way means Man beginning from himself, with no knowledge
except what he himself can discover and no standards
outside of himself. In this view Man is the measure of
all things, as the Enlightenment expressed it.
“. . . Since [‘the humanists’] concept of Man is
mistaken, their concept of society and of law is
mistaken, and they have no sufficient base for either
society or law.
“They have reduced Man to even less than his natural
finiteness by seeing him only as a complex arrangement
of molecules, made complex by blind chance. Instead of
seeing him as something great who is significant even in
his sinning, they see Man in his essence only as an
intrinsically competitive animal, that has no other
basic operating principle than natural selection brought
about by the strongest, the fittest, ending on top. And
they see Man as acting in this way both individually and
collectively as society.”
So for a great number of people, God has been removed
from the center of things and man has taken His place,
creating for himself a fearful new world. For a
practical example of how the above philosophical insight
plays out in reality, think back 63 years to a makeshift
laboratory in a handball court under the grandstand at
the University of Chicago. Three physicists — Enrico
Fermi, Leo Szilard, and Eugene Wigner — split the atom
and thereby confirmed the theoretical formula of Albert
Einstein: energy equals mass times the squared speed of
light. The fission, which they had engineered, caused a
multiplication of energy in the order of six million to
one. Logically, one would think, or at least hope, that
with such an inexpensive and abundant source of energy,
the world would be forever blessed. A new industrial
revolution would be birthed, and age-old territorial
disputes would subside. Wars would cease, and the poor
would be warmed, sheltered, and fed. No nation need be
in want.
But history recorded quite a different outcome. The
diligent labors of those three deeply religious men
evolved into an age of terror, not an age of abundance.
There was Hiroshima and then Nagasaki. Physicists
quickly developed nuclear fusion and a release of energy
of 50 million to one. Using hydrogen, a fuel as abundant
as the waters of the seas, this process held promise as
the energy source of the millennium. There need be no
fossil fuel shortage, no air pollution, no fabulously
wealthy and internationally influential OPEC oil cartel,
and no desperately poor people made willing by their
impoverishment to accept false teaching. But the utopia
simply did not come.
So a pivotal question is whether people will continue to
ignore God and His principles, which govern the way the
world works.
One very simple and straightforward example has to do
with giving. Give and it will be given to you! This
principle simply will not fail, and we must begin to
execute it as individuals, families, companies, and
nations. Just imagine for a minute, if you will, how the
world would be quite different if we gave to others by
actually treating others the way we would like to be
treated. Now imagine for a minute how your world would
actually change if you implemented this same principle
in your personal life, your family life, and your
business life. I believe that, at the very least, we
would start to see that there would be no logical reason
for distrust… and from a business standpoint and every
other standpoint, it’s all based on trust.
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