I force on dog-pal Henry two pills regularly: one daily, to quell allergies which make him itch, and one monthly, packaged like Fort Knox and almost as pricey, to protect his little body from diseases borne by ticks. I have no idea what’s in these pills or whether they’re effective, only where to resupply them and the king’s ransom they cost. I trust our vet and, in the case of the allergy pill, an evident result. (Henry no longer gnaws his paws as if they were beef bones.) I don’t know if these potions are fairly priced. I’m as clueless in this transaction as a kindergartner accepting candy from a stranger. Could be the vet, drug manufacturers, and licensing authorities are in malicious cahoots. (Fine word, cahoots – first time I’ve typed it.) I don’t know or care. Why? Because I’m negligent? I deny it. Stupid? I’m not the one to ask. Indifferent to my impatient patient? A thousand times no! I am confident in my decision because I trust. Quietly as a good tot, I accept what I’ve been told.

Of all the predations of the Nameless One and his ghouls, trust may be the most perverse. Trust, like a house of cards, is painstaking to construct and a cinch to destroy. They’ll molest our minds with their malarkey about freedom of choice and nefarious conspiracies, but what they’re really up to is instilling dread about our precarious predicament. If the government is our enemy, if the press is liars, if universities have been founded to confound, to whom can we look for protection! None of us, no matter how smart, can ever understand an iota about the multitudinous systems and products we depend on. Pioneers in their draughty cabins might have known self-sufficiency, but that was long before the genius of science, capitalism and liberalism kicked into gear. Who would return to those chilly, smelly, short-lived circumstances, half-sleeping in fear of tomahawks! No smart phones! No Spotify! I’d have been dead thrice over by my age in that remote past. I rejoice to be alive now, glum as I am about our species’ behavior. But to function – and rest at night – trust is a precondition. I trust – not because I’m innocent, clueless or gulled, but because if I were phobic every moment – about, say, the ingredients of my tap-water or intentions of my grandkids’ teachers – I’d never get anything done.

Doubt is oh so easy to sow! Bears roam the woods that surround our home – not constantly but now and then. In my imagination, when it’s dark, they’re forever prowling, even when I know they’re hibernating. Tell me one of my two dozen daily meds is a carcinogen, and I won’t forget, even while I gulp. I drive 65 miles per hour on our highways, sometimes faster: the other day a familiar chunk of highway vanished into the subsoil. Uh-oh!

The ghouls wish us to distrust so, in our helplessness, we’ll turn to a mystic overlord, a Big Guy, for protection. Panic – and the rancor it provokes – empowers their rapacity. They want us to feel anxious, impotent, haunted, so we’ll accept their hooey on faith and do as bid. While urging us to be self-sufficient, think for ourselves, make our own choices, they intend the opposite. Tyrants like nothing less than thought. Distrust all guidance but theirs! Surrender your freedom, independence, spontaneity, security, to make the Nameless One and his minions great and greater.

I will never forgive the Nameless One for ransacking my tranquility. Prescribe me a pill, please, to protect my heart.