Niels' Present to me

Niels wrote to me the other day, and I am going to keep his note here. He had made a comment earlier on that he wanted to give me a present, that it was obvious to him what it would be, and that he should have given it to me long ago. I hoped, and suspected that it would be trust. Here is the letter he sent:

From: "Niels Buhl" nbuhl@lbs.lon.ac.uk
Organization: London Business School
To: cburke@nexus.yorku.ca (Carolyn L Burke)
Date: Thu, 14 Dec 1995 19:51:00 GMT
Subject: Trust

Dear Carolyn,

TRUST

Trust1:

That I have confidence in my judgement of you (be it good or bad).

Trust2:

That I am confident that you, in actions that concern me, will act as I would like you to. This requires that I trust1 you and that you know me well. Since you might not like to act like I'd like you to, I know that there is a limit to how much I can trust2 you.

Trust3:

That I am confident that our best interests coincide in areas where your actions affect me. Normally trust3 is mutual. I do not need promises from someone that I trust3.

Universal trust3 is when I trust3 someone in every relevant area. Universal and mutual trust3 is _very_ rare for me.

In a given situation there might be a number of actions that are in my best interest but only some of these that are in your best interest as well. I therefore think that it is impossible for me to universally and mutually trust3 more than one person at a time.

I could only love someone if there was universal and mutual trust3.

> Shall we do something for New Year's?

Of course!!! But I still don't what. *smile*

>  I am a strange cross between deep thinking book reader, with much
>  introspective interest in self and others, *and* badly coordinated
>  extrovert who loves to have funand be silly.

I didn't know the last bit. Hummm... the above also quite well describes me - cool! *smile*

Yours,

Niels

+--------------------------+-----------------------------------------+
|  Niels Buhl              |  PhD Programme, finance                 |
|  nbuhl@lbs.lon.ac.uk     |  London Business School,                |
|                          |  Sussex Place Regent's Park,            |
|                          |  London NW1 4SA                         |
+--------------------------+-----------------------------------------+