We have a saying that if it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is. With so many scams in this day and age it's a pertinent warning, but why have we reached this point where we have conditioned ourselves not to trust? Was it always this way?
Our natural instinct is often actually to believe what we're told, so I don't believe it was always this way. When we lived in tribes and villages we relied on one another for our survival and all knew each other, so it was in our best interests to look after one another. If someone offered to do something amazing for us then there was generally no need for suspicion, unless they were an outsider.
Now we don't know a lot of the people we're dealing with from day to day, but we also often don't have a community to turn to either, so we might default to trusting that others may have our best interests at heart and really, most regular people aren't out to scam us. However, they generally don't have reason to go out of their way for us either, so if they do offer something that seems to good to be true then the suspicion is there as to why they would, especially if it doesn't seem to be benefiting them. This creates something of a mental conflict.
Many people have learnt not to trust from past, bad experiences and once that distrust is engrained, it's hard to break free from it. These days, something else that's engrained is that benefit equals money. So when someone doesn't seem to be benefiting from something monetarily, we often assume there is no benefit to them and that they must be up to something insidious. Yet sometimes when someone offers something that seems to good to be true, it isn't. If you look deeper or ask, there may well be some other way that the offered deal or gift benefits them.
A work colleague of my husband once told him how he got any almost new, £20,000 car for just £200. He saw the advert in the newspaper and felt sure it was a typo or that there was something wrong with the car, but phoned up anyway. The lady selling it told him it was no typo and there was nothing wrong with the car. The reason she was selling it so cheaply was because she had an ulterior motive. She and her husband had split up and she had to sell his things, with the money to be split 50/50. As you may have guessed, it wasn't an amicable split, so she was making sure he go as little benefit as possible from the sale, while following the demands of the courts.
In this case, the woman offering the “too good to be true” deal wasn't exactly doing it out of the goodness of her own heart, but there are people out there who genuinely do nice things because they can and want to.
It makes you wonder, just how many opportunities you might have missed out on because it seemed too good to be true. Perhaps we need to pay a bit more heed to the saying, “he who dares, wins.” After all, aren't we on a site that pays you for the privilege of reading, writing and commenting.
This is my response to the @ecotrain question of the week.
Yes, the ulterior motive is an ever present possibility.
Your example reminds me of a book I once read. Are you familiar with the book High Fidelity by Nick Hornby? (It has been turned into two movies, one set in the UK, another in the US.) There the protagonist stumbles upon a lady selling off her husband's record collection for pennies. At first he feels lucky, but then, when he finds out why she's selling it so cheaply, he starts feeling bad for the husband.
And then there are all those cases many of us don't want to accept, simply because they break the paradigm that makes us feel safe: that sometimes there simply is NO ulterior motive, the person, the situation, the offer simply is as it is: incredibly good, yet true.
I think I've heard of it, but I'm not familiar with it.
It's a funny situation we end up in. It seems we feel the need to trust, but are no longer sure who to trust. I guess we have to rely on others to a point, which is our need for a supportive community. By default we've turned to authority as being the trustworthy ones and everyone else by default must be untrustworthy. Yet those in authority are as human as the rest of us and likely to be as trustworthy as the rest of us. Conmen even use the guise of authority to gain the trust of an increasingly suspicious society.
Well, without trust it would be "me against the world", and nobody likes that. And authority is not what it used to be. Up until fairly recently authority it only meant those who dominate us (for whatever reason), so those being dominated trusted each other out of solidarity. But then with democracy and social reforms we started putting institutions in power, who were supposed to act in our needs. If you openly mistrusted them, well, you might as well mistrust society itself! Today even those institutions are losing our trust, but now there is less community to fall back on. So we must develop something / someone else to trust in, to avoid standing alone against everyone.
Well, without trust it would be "me against the world", and nobody likes that. And authority is not what it used to be. Up until fairly recently authority it only meant those who dominate us (for whatever reason), so those being dominated trusted each other out of solidarity. But then with democracy and social reforms we started putting institutions in power, who were supposed to act in our needs. If you openly mistrusted them, well, you might as well mistrust society itself! Today even those institutions are losing our trust, but now there is less community to fall back on. So we must develop something / someone else to trust in, to avoid standing alone against everyone.
wowwweeee! love that story!!! now wheres my 200 dollar tesla! ;-)
sorry for the delay.. been a bit ill last few dayz M<3
Your post has been featured in our tie up post. https://peakd.com/hive-123046/@ecotrain/thank-you-question-of-the-week-tie-up-post-if-its-sound-too-good-to-be-true-it-probably-isn-t
Lol! Need to ask how generous Mr Musk is feeling!
Hope you're on the mend. Look after yourself.
Hello @minismallholding, this is @nainaztengra Leading the curation trail for @ecotrain.
Yes we tend to become suspicious when something very good comes up for an unbelievable offer and sometimes it is so difficult for us to accept that it can be true that we tend to miss on the good opportunity. But nowadays also many believe that better be safe then sorry. specially in my country India there is a lot of scamming and it just becomes so difficult to understand what's genuine and what's not that I too personally prefer to let go sometimes then get into unnecessary trouble. Thank you for your participation and response.
DELEGATE TO ECOTRAIN
Your delegation will go a long way!
@ecoTrain
It's so hard to know who to trust when know so few people intimately any more.