Getting in the car with a stranger is a bit like going on a tinder date, because you know, ‘you need to try new things’. We place little nuggets of trust in people we don’t know every day.
From the new housemate you’ve trusted to not eat your leftovers in the fridge, or the stranger in the checkout queue who’s watching your space while you run to get more cheese. Everyday we are tossed a random selection of humans that we have to trust, just to function, we have to believe that people are generally good.
I thought about this, and my odds of survival, sat in the stuffy front compartment of a 40ft cargo lorry in Myanmar. My two companions and I squashed just behind the drivers, on a make shift bed meant for one.
We had been hitchhiking in a tropical downpour, for a few ours now, so we were happy get picked up. One of the men shooed Sharla’s feet off of the space between the two front seats, gesturing that it’s rude.
An awkward tension sucked out whatever air was left. The three of us nervously glanced at each other, and a tightness grew across my chest as the truck left the old Capital. It’s similar to the uneasiness you feel when you take a Uber late at night and the driver starts telling you you’re beautiful.
As darkness began to engulf us the truck halted to an abrupt stop on the side of the country road. I lunged forward, my head narrowly missing the front seat. The truck doors swung open and an air of confusion wafted in.
In broken English, the two truckers instructed us to leave the vehicle. Taking our passport’s off us, they crossed the road to a shabby-looking building. With the lights from the building illuminating our path we hurried after them, the five of us arguing in two different languages.
Grace grabbed my arm ‘We never should have given them our passport’s!’
If you’ve ever experienced instant regret, felt instantly stupid, that common sense had completely eluded you for a few crucial seconds, immediately knowing that those seconds could cost you gravely, then you know exactly how we were feeling. Rule one: never give anyone your passport, unless you’re in an airport.
A dirt path led to a small wooden shack. There were no women there, only men, lots of them actually. My eyes whizzed around the compound, looking for clues. ‘Why are they all wearing knock–off adidas jackets’ my gaze shifted from person to person. ‘A uniform maybe?’ I thought out loud, as my attention finally fixed onto the back of one of the men. ‘Yangon Police Force’ was printed on the back of his two stripped adidas jacket, the ‘Y’ and ‘e’ peeling at the edges.
The Police Station?
A few feet away one of the guys from truck was speaking to a group of men dress in that same uniform. The group of policeman began to form a small crowd around us. Pleading a case that was still unknown to us, we told them the story of our pilgrimage to Bagan, a deserted kingdom scattered with thousands of ancient temples. The high mountains that enclose the area stopped rain from eroding the Pagodas, in tow preserving them for centuries. Confused grumbles circled the group.
Our English was no use here. Sharla grabbed our homemade banner and unrolled it,. I grabbed one corner, it read ‘Pilgrims to Bagan’ in Burmese. The group fell to a hush, and an excitement spread through like wild fire. The Police chief explained the truck drivers had brought us to the station to let the police know they had three foreign girls in the back of their truck. Since the country had only recently opened its doors to tourist, very strict rules were put in place to ensure tourists are safe.
They simply didn’t want to get in trouble.
After the policemen finished taking pictures with us and our banner, they got our mobile number and ensured us that we can travel with the truckers but they will call us every few hours to make sure we are safe, and we must let them know when we arrive at our destination.
When we climbed back in the truck the tension had lifted, there was laugher and music. We stopped a few times in a 16 hour journey. Two other lorries followed behind us, one with Kan’s brother and the other with his cousin. Kan and Denpa introduced us to their family and treated us to dinner and breakfast in the morning.
Sharing some of the power with someone else is the ultimate trust, for trust to even come into the equation there has to be a level of risk presented, and a handover of power. But how do we choose who to give it to? A decision, that in many moments in your life, will need to be made in a split second.
How Do We Trust?
A 2017 study from Brown university, suggests that we trust strangers who’s features resemble people that we’ve trusted in the past. Over a course of 45 games, they studied how a group of 29 participates would choose to invest $10 with three men. Out of the three men, one man never gave the money back, one shared sometimes, and the third man always shared the $10. The participants were then asked to select people for their team from 54 photos of potential team mates. Some of the images had been superimposed with the facial features of the original 3 men. The study found that the unknowing participants always chose images of people that resembled the original man that always shared the $10.
A similarity in facial features can be comprised of a shared genetic make-up, this implies that our trust or distrust of people can be based on ethnic and racial markers. I am of an ethnic background with brown skin and curly hair, many of my features similar to those of my beloved family and friends. When travelling in Burma I was often mistaken for local, and in tow felt a safeness and ease that I hadn’t felt in other countries. Feldmanhall’s research may shed light on why I only hitchhiked in Burma, even if on a subconscious level. I trusted the truckers with my life, not only having faith that they weren’t serial killers but also that they would get me to my destination safely. They looked like me.
Needless to say, trust or mistrust based on racial bias, or solely what people look like, feature-wise, is a thin line to walk, and breeds not only discrimination but privilege. But Feldmanhall argues it’s in our innate human nature to trust people that look like us and people we love.
How real is Intuition?
So, when people say ‘I just had a feeling’, what exactly does that mean?
The sometimes intangible concept of ‘Instinct’ and ‘Intuition’ or gut feelings, may not be so mystifying. UCL Clinical Professor of Psychiatrist Dr. Judith Orloff Md, explains there’s a proven science to intuition. In other words, knowing what is going to happen without having analytical information; hereby accessing the gateway between your conscious and subconscious.
Scientists have discovered that the right side of the brain, its Hippocampus, controls intuition, as well as the neurons in your digestive system.
But this is where it gets interesting for us ladies, women’s intuition may not just be something you refer to when you catch a man in a lie. The white matter that connects the left and right side of the brain is larger in women, allowing us to not only access the Hippocampus on the right side of the brain much quicker then men, but tap into but the more logical left side and the neurons in the gut at lightning speed.
The Fear bubble
In the story I made it into the car, but got spooked once they started driving. For true trust to be achieved we have to let go of fear, now I know I may sound like a self-help book, but hear me out. Humans are naturally trusting, of science, religion, technology, people, pretty much everything. If we weren’t, we wouldn’t let our children play outside, or buy stuff on eBay, we would draw all our money out of our banks and lock ourselves inside the house. But this trust can sometimes be to our own detriment, and lead to tragedy.
So, we practice fear. We live in a bubble of fear, the worst things about our society reported on daily and force fed to us. By no means am I suggesting Western media is unique in this way, as it’s not. While I was travelling, I rarely had access to western news or the internet, so was never on social media, and couldn’t understand any of the foreign media. I had broken free from the fear bubble and was living life on what I could see for myself, I learnt lessons from mistakes I made in my own story not somebody else’s.
I learnt to trust people, never blind trust but trust all the same, because people are generally good. The first thing I learnt while hitchhiking was that people are generally good.
But when I revealed that I was going solo travelling I got the same, ‘you going to be murdered and raped’ spiel from around 90% of the people I knew. So around 4.5 people had zero faith in me, and I’m still bitter till this day. But in all seriousness even when I came back home and told my fabulous stories of adventure and chronic diarrhea, I was still met with tragic stories they had heard on the news. I felt like grabbing their shoulders, bitch slapping them, true Peggy Mitchel style and shouting ‘I’ve literally done that thing you’re scared about, and I survived!’.
Psychologist Micheal Gladwell, insists that for us to truly trust we have to ‘default to truth’, letting go of fear and pessimism and defaulting back to our true human nature. We need to break free of everything we know. For us to have meaningful experiences with others, trust needs to be at the foundation.
The truth is that it’s hard to know who will screw you over and who won’t. I guess that’s just the game of life, but you need to be in the play for you to ever even know, for you to cash in on a good hand
