The breakdown of trust in a society is a vicious cycle that seems hard to break.
When a mistrust dynamic sets in, how can it be reversed?
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Sounds overly-simplistic but the solution is to build trust again.
Unfortunately, the incentives that rule our society are pushing us away from this. We need to align incentives properly if we're going to have any hope of building trust again. ex:
1. The internet, as a technology, is amazing but functions as a possible bullhorn for everyone, without filter. It does not reward the best possible or most positive idea, only the one that grabs the most attention.
2. Shock and outrage drive the clicks/views/attention and everyone gets paid on these metrics.
3. Social media companies thrive on and optimize for attention metrics. The longer you use them, at the expense of things like participating in your community and building relationships, the more "successful" they are and the more $$$ they get
4. Society has moved towards more specialized play and communities. We participate in fewer and fewer activities where we just randomly encounter strangers.
5. Our current election system rewards divisiveness because it drives turnout. The candidate that can do the best job doesn't win-the candidate that can get the most votes does.
Possibly unpopular view: Encouraging religious participation would go a long way to help. Whether you believe or do not, religion helps align society away from purely individualistic pursuits and more towards a "corporate good".
> Possibly unpopular view: Encouraging religious participation would go a long way to help. Whether you believe or do not, religion helps align society away from purely individualistic pursuits and more towards a "corporate good".
How does that work out in 3rd world countries where there's high levels of religious membership and high levels of angry young men
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Importance_of_religion_by_coun...
"Is religion important in your daily life"
There seems to be a correlation between countries with corrupt/untrusted governments and high religious importance.
Compare the Corruption Perceptions Index 2019 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index] with importance of religion [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Importance_of_religion_by_coun...]
And you don't get an exact line, but there's certainly a trend there.
Those with high corruption and relatively low religion are ex Soviet/Commumist (Azerbajan, Ukraine, Russia, Vietnam, Bulgaria, Hungary, Belarus, Cuba have <50% religion and >50 corrupt)
There's always outliers, like Singapore (70% religious but only 15 corrupt / 85 notcorrupt), but there's a trend
It's not hard to imagine confounding variables that could be influencing both, instead of a direct causal relationship.
> There seems to be a correlation between countries with corrupt untrusted governments and high religious importance.
Yes, when the system is very corrupt, you need to have some alternative way to build community, cohesion, and stability.
In communist Poland, the Church has been the center of the opposition to the communist system. The system has been very corrupt, but people found solace, community and the support in the Church. When John Paul II was elected the Pope, the Polish people were reinvigorated, and rallied around him, creating Solidarity movement etc. The communist system has recognized the power of Church, and fought it viciously: for example, it murdered Jerzy Popieluszko, a priest famous for his association with Solidarity. This made Polish people rally around the Church even more.
After the fall of communism, the Church no longer needed to provide this form of support, and over time, as the civil society has improved, the Church has used the legitimacy and respect it has built during communism to push its own agenda, which in past years has been rather divisive instead of uniting. Religion is not universal social good: its value depends on both the historical circumstance, and the actual content of practice and attitudes of leadership. It can be extremely beneficial, uniting society in ways impossible otherwise, but it can also be extremely damaging, to a deadly degree.
Not all religions are created equal, but yes, the trend is prominent.
There is some insight here if you dig deeper into the data.
1. https://www.pri.org/stories/2014-07-17/these-are-most-religi...
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index
3. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/03/12/how-do-amer...
Just as capitalism is an amazing "technology" to maximize monetary value creation, organized religion is quite possibly the best technology ever created for achieving things like person-to-person engagement, building trusted communities, and creating a shared value systems. There are others (community groups, bowling leagues, etc) but none have been as durable and successful.
Like other technologies, it can be used for both good and evil and will be very effective doing so.
Just throwing this out there: I'm a believer in Christianity and love to connect w/ people about this kinda stuff. If anyone wants to talk more, email is in profile.
The first thing that comes to mind is, if you don't have a high level of trust in the society, the trust fostered by being the same religion is all the more valuable. If you think you can go out into a high-trust society and do just fine, then leaving that religious community your parents raised you in seems low-cost.
Also, if high trust drives economic growth, and wealthier societies become less religious, you would get that same pattern. I think to determine which is driving which, you would need to look at the relation between religion now and trust levels in the past, and vice versa.
I'm not sure religious participation is the answer. Organized religion is responsible for plenty of misinformation. In the recent pandemic, there have been multiple superspreader events at unauthorized religious gatherings.
Maybe sports leagues or mandatory national (or state) service?
I think you're spot on about a lot of these points. On your last "unpopular view" about religion, religious groups can be like any other group of people in that each group falls somewhere on a spectrum between warm and welcoming vs. aggressively tribal. I think the sentiment is right, though – maybe "civic engagement" is what we're after here.
Whatever the answer, I'm convinced it will take nearly constant vigilance to prevent it from eventually being corrupted to serve the very evil it was meant to eradicate. This seems to be one of the few constants throughout human history.
A method to address mistrust is to initiate "virtue circles": do people unrequested favors, without expectation of any return. Just do it; it actually feels good. And it is infectious. Others start doing it too, and double so when you subtly exhibit the joy of helping others without any expectations. Once more than 3 people in any social circle start this type of positive interaction, a positive culture shift occurs in the social group. It is quite amazing how fast this transition happens, as if people are waiting for an excuse to be better with others.
Very much this. I would amplify it a bit and say talk to real humans in real life (not through a screen). Be a good neighbor, smile and greet people, help strangers. It sounds trite, but I think its the best path. A persons physical community is more important that twitter (or HN for that matter). Culture is made from the choices and shared knowledge of individuals. Being open to others is a prerequisite to influencing change. Accepting imperfections and poor decissions in others is a prerequisite to improving things. I don't see a magical switch that can be flipped to suddenly change a culture, nor do I see secret cabals controling us from the shadows, so no help from the illuminati or whatever.. It's the choices we make and the views we hold about our fellow citizens, and those are better in real-life than on-screen.
And make sure there is space for people to do this, and reward it where possible.
Companies are moving more and more towards metrics, which means the nice guy that helps everyone out but isn't as great with his metrics gets screwed, vs. the asshole who optimizes only for the metrics while screwing everyone over gets ahead. Once the nice guy has seen this happen over and over, even the nicest person breaks, gives in, and starts playing by the rules of the system, which by design incentivize working towards the measurable goals.
"It's all about the incentives" - Steven D. Levitt
IMO trust is associated with a certain social interaction. Once it's broken, one common way (the most? not sure) of re-establishing trust is to establish new social interactions, probably more personal and less complex. The example I'm thinking of is the emergence of organised crime in Sicily out of informal relationships between citizens who can't count on the state for protection or justice. Or the emergence of feudal contracts between a leader and his subordinates, where the old Roman system of tax collection and provincial administration had broken down (in some cases long after Rome had left the area - polities like Soissons ran the Roman administrative model into the ground until the high-personal-trust structure of early feudalism came along and overtook them).
We're kind of barreling toward this reality in pockets of the western world. Where I live in the US (wealthy blue state, not rural Alabama, don't get your hopes up) you pretty much can't do fair business at a fair price without a personal reference or prior business relationship. And in some of the smaller wealthier towns you can see this kind of behavior start to creep into local government. Of course this is a far cry from not being able to rely on the police but it's definitely movement in that direction.
? Where I live in the US (wealthy blue state, not rural Alabama, don't get your hopes up) you pretty much can't do fair business at a fair price without a personal reference or prior business relationship.
Are you able to share an anecdote on this?
Putting in extra effort to actively demonstrate trustworthiness.
That means when leaders are speaking, they need to monitor how their words are perceived, and resolve misunderstandings quickly.
Also, overcommunicate and share evidence, and be honest and direct.