The Beaten Path - April 10 2025

 

The Beaten Path

April 10 2025

The trail forks

a random path intersects.

So we wend our way

looking ahead

for where it's wider and well-tread,

following in the footsteps

of those who came before.

Nothing new,

it’s what we’ve been doing all our lives.

As Isaac Newton so modestly observed

he stood on the shoulders of giants.

Except, of course, the hikers we follow aren’t;

they’re mostly average

just like us.

But sometimes, we’ve encountered a well-worn path

that tempts us on

only to stop

a short way in,

as abruptly as the highway

when the money ran out,

a blind canyon

that ends in a wall;

fooling us

as it has fooled multitudes

and will keep fooling more.

Even more well-worn

because the returning traffic

doubles the wear.

A good metaphor as any

for blind conformity

and being badly led.

But also a fine example

of the value we gain

from trust,

without which society would falter

and life for each of us

would be as nasty, brutish, and short

as Thomas Hobbes

who was either jaundiced, or clear-eyed, or both

so misanthropically observed.

We trust,

put our faith in others,

close the deal

with a handshake and our word.

Which isn’t always kept.

But we implicitly accept

that disappointment is simply part if it,

that the social contract persists.

So we sigh, and retrace our steps,

too amused or upset

to mark the dead-end

for the next curious traveller

who follows the beaten path

as naturally as we did.

Or is it fine for them

to be led astray as well?

To let them learn for themselves

that those we follow

  —  the giants,

their worthy aspirants,

and the many loud imposters  —

can also get it wrong?

We all tend to follow the beaten path. We follow it, trusting that our predecessors knew best. But conformity has its pitfalls. As in the poem, where the literal beaten path unexpectedly leads to a dead end.

Trust is the essential glue in any relationship or social group. There could be no social contract without it. We’ve had 2 recent geopolitical examples of its importance.

The first is the relatively poor response to Covid (2020) in a low trust country like the U.S., where suspicion, misinformation, and conspiracy thinking found fertile ground.

And then there’s the beginning of Trump 2.0 (2025) where, in unilaterally declaring capricious and unreasonable tariffs while effectively renouncing free trade agreements and established relationships, he rendered the U.S. an unreliable partner: the pillar of stability in both international trade and the Western alliance becoming a nation that others felt they could no longer trust.

Trouble is, it’s very hard to regain trust once it’s been lost or betrayed.

People who only count value only in terms of monetary worth are blind to the high price they pay when they squander it. Not everything of value is a commodity you can put a price on.