As you suggest, I'm getting more and more convinced that Gary's position and mine are not at all mutually exclusive. It's more like the same thing but on different levels in ourselves. This being said, I have to add two remarks that will probably clarify my personal take on this some more.

First off, my exploratory writing on trust started out from the question how my
behaviour, and the structure of the organisation I work in, might influence the
trust involved in our relations with others (clients, organisations etc.), and how to consciously address those effects. Hence my accent on pro-active and conscious actions. Second, from early childhood on I have been very empathic. I, though I did not realise it then, could sense other peoples emotions very well, although I could not understand those emotions because of my age. When talking about my interpretations of what I sensed, people told me not to repeat what others had 'said' to me , or what I 'overheard' and which I didn't understand. Apparently there was something 'wrong' with my senses, or at least in using them. That's when I started putting a lot of thought into rationalizing things.

As an adult I had a hard time bringing these two things together again, learning
to trust my own emotions and senses again, and at the same time keeping the
considerable power of rationality at my disposal as well. Or in Gary's words
I've been trying how to learn this: "The more correct response is, IMHO, that
while our brain colours our perceptions, humans are so blazingly successful on
this planet because we can (not that we do, just that we can) transcend our
physiology (when it's appropriate!) to reach for higher conclusions"

What is also at stake here (and then I'll stop writing for now) is what made me side step Gary at first: the fear of accepting that something so powerfull and
purposefull as rational thinking, could be based on, originated from, or even be
tied back to back with animalistic hunches, intuitions and gut feelings. I am
currently reading Daniel C. Dennet's 'Darwins Dangerous Idea'that makes an
enormously strong case to do away with that fear that this origin should in some
way taint the wonder of conscious thought, and makes it possible to the ratio in
me to still enjoy that wonder while also embracing the above.

Kind regards, Ton