Paranoia

Getting involved in the commercial world can be a bit of an eye-opener. One of the real issues concerns transparency and trust. Once trust breaks down, there's really not much point in going on. Before embarking on any venture, it's not unreasonable to ask "is it a trap?", "is it a ruse which serves others' interests rather better than my own?". The signs of things going wrong are the same as the signs of any relationship going wrong - attenuation of communication, double-binds, and an overwhelming failure of imagination. We get an early warning in our guts. Always worth listening to.

So for any new venture, the only way to proceed is with a combination of enthusiasm and caution. I'll need eyes in the back of my head, and the ones at the front of my head increasingly don't work properly either! So caution will have to be the driver - and that is likely to upset people. But paranoia can be a good defence mechanism...