benefit of the doubt
idiom
A favorable judgment granted in the absence of full evidence.
jaded
adj.
1. Worn out; wearied
2. Dulled by surfeit; sated:
3. Cynically or pretentiously callous.
I wonder when we became so cynical. So jaded. When did we stop giving people the benefit of the doubt. Have there always been conspiracy theorists? Have people always questioned the motives of others?
I know my blog has been full of questions this week instead of my usual silliness but these are questions that I’ve been pondering, so I thought, maybe you could answer them for me.
Are people really unhappy or does being this cynical make them happy? Is it fun to not give people the benefit of the doubt?
With all that’s been in the “news” this week Lance, Manti Te’o, did she lip sync or didn’t she, Hillary on Benghazi, and a host of other stories it’s easy to see why we would be a nation of skeptics. But what in our day to day relationships. You know, the real ones. Do we trust people at face value or are we guarded? Do you give folks the benefit of the doubt, and assume that they are acting with good intentions?
Have you noticed this change? Or is it just me, coming out of a Pollyanna fog and just now realizing how jaded the world has become?
I try to give people the benefit of the doubt unless they give me reason not to trust them. For me it’s as much a lesson to my girls as anything else. They often ask me if a certain person or character is mean, and my message is always the same: We can’t judge that question without knowing the person or many things that he/she did. The person may appear to be acting mean, but unless we know the whole story, it’s hard to know what led up to the reaction (with obvious exceptions, of course).