Who Can You Trust? “Only one-third of Americans say most people can be trusted,” according to a 2013 poll. “Half felt that way in 1972.” These days, “a record high of nearly two-thirds say you cant be too careful in dealing with people.” An AP-GfK poll conducted a year ago “found that Americans are suspicious of each other in everyday encounters. Less than one-third expressed a lot of trust in clerks who swipe their credit cards, drivers on the road or people they meet when traveling.” News outlets love this sort of poll. It’s a filler thrill: a sip of adrenaline that can draw readers to notice ads that pay for the news. It says something, but what? In a way this item is part of the problem: chances are, you don’t really trust the advertisers and journalists, but you sift the evidence and decide to read on. Or not. Trust is at least two problems. One is that society needs enough trust to cohere. The other is that people need trust and mistrust—and to sort them out wisely. Too much trust makes you somebody’s slave or entrée. Too much suspicion saps morale, stalemates things, makes lawyers rich, and sabotages investment in the future. Think of all the Americans whose mistrust of politics tells them voting is a waste of time. For society, the deep threat is civil war, as in battle cries about “big government” and sly “militia” threats of revolution. When police shoot unarmed black males, the bullets express white society’s mistrust of all blacks as a separate camp—an army—of parasites and criminals. Economic war is here already, since most incomes have been stagnant for three decades, and the veiled guerrilla war against the poor is chronic. During the opening salvos of “lean and mean” business ideology, the New York Times featured a dispatch titled “Casualties on the Battlefield of Business.” In the new climate of insecurity, powerless employees were suffering. Meanwhile business has routed labor unions and won the weakest labor laws of any advanced country—the US is the only one with no guaranteed paid days off. When bankers crash the economy and get bonuses instead of prosecution, you know who’s winning. continue below.. psychologytoday/blog/swim-in-denial/201409/who-can-you-trust #trust #psychology #usa
Posted on: Sat, 20 Sep 2014 16:08:59 +0000
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