To add a slightly more technical comment than my first, trust has no broadly agreed definition. Any time to try to 'define' we simplify, often unhelpfully. With this said, I work with the more process oriented definition that trust is the willingness to be vulnerable based on positive expectations. Our willingness to be vulnerable is impacted by our entire historicity (as far as I can tell. This really gives us our 'propensity to trust'), as is the process of establishing, acting in relation to, learning from etc. 'positive expectations'. In the broader context within which you refer to this (trust is often studied very narrowly using certain interpersonal / economic frames i.e. game theory etc.), I quite like the way Bill Plotkin frames the biosphere as being 'largely benevolent'. This is REALLY important because the three most important 'trust antecedents' (qualities of trustworthiness) are benevolence, integrity and (normative) competence. So if we internalise, irrespective of all the other complexity / nuance, the idea that the world is largely dangerous, that everything is literally trying to eat each everything else and our role is to just find some way to the top of whatever food chain we seek to climb, then it's incredibly challenging to be willingly vulnerable.
Gosh, I feel I could go down a bunch of paths here. I'll stop for now given my time constraints today, but would love to dialogue on this.
Wah, thank you! I would love to dialogue on this. I find this such an important question and honestly something that is only rather recently becoming clear and emerging for me - I feel like a total newbie in this and would love to learn more.
The idea of 'composting control' is wonderful. I've also been thinking these last days about ecological embodiment. I just had a discussion with the anthropologist Tim Ingold and in the conversation he says that the word embodiment has come to bother him recently, because it feels to him as though we are 'entombed' in our bodies, he questions the 'em' and asks why we don't just say 'bodily' ... ecological embodiment opens that up again.
Thanks for this. As someone who's autistic, I often get caught up in wanting to control and get caught up in routines, so this was really helpful. Also, I went and subscribed to Nathan Kench's Substack. I found it really interesting. Thanks for the recommendation!
Americans in particular distrust reality in a bigly huge way.
In fact it can rightly be called a "culture" of death with the military-industrial-propaganda being its most powerful institution.
Altogether it is a powerful invisible psychic force field the death saturated values of which pattern and control every aspect of US culture. Lewis Mumford called this force-field the Invisible Mega-Machine
Such is demonstrated by the fact that it has more 700 or so military bases all over the world and an active military presence in almost every constant. Collectively these bases form a powerful psycho-physical force field.
This Invisible Mega-Machine is further empowered by the fact that every US State depends on its continued prosperity with the presence of various military bases and various industries that supply the Pentagon death machine with all of its requirements from paper clips to nuclear submarines.
Associated with that is the growth and all pervasive presence of the Surveillance State the growth of which exploded after Sept 11. Everything you do is now monitored 24/7 by this Surveillance State. Every time you turn on your mobile phone "they" know where you are. Perhaps even when your phone is not even turned on.
The initial growth of the Surveillance State was described in great detail in one of the chapters of Naomi Klein's book The Shoch Doctrine.
Damn. I realized a bunch of this on accident on a shrooms trip a few years ago. I realized my entire materialist perspective on reality was wrong and the greed and selfishness so pervasive in our society was because people had psychologically disconnected themselves from nature and each other. Technology simply accelerated the trend. This essay was a great intellectual and philosophical breakdown of that spontaneous insight I had back then. Saving to come back to in the future.
The making, breaking and conceptualisation of trust, trustworthiness and distrust still has an air of ambiguity when it comes to adult judgments and decisions. Question that keeps me up is - how much is society’s crisis in trust a function of society’s increased cognitive dissonance (most notably in their actions), which is exacerbated by the current wealth of information that continually normalises even the most grotesque behaviours and neurological patterns in the name of for e.g., ‘self-love’ and people using this new information to confirm their biases?
Following from Nate’s comment about the antecedents of trust (qualities of trustworthiness) - benevolence, integrity and competence - How much does the outcome of the question above influence these antecedents, especially for trustworthiness levels in interpersonal relationships and social structures, which manifest into the distrust in our lived reality?
I realise that this might be a ‘chicken or the egg’ problem haha. Nonetheless, maybe a talking point for our next conversation :)
To add a slightly more technical comment than my first, trust has no broadly agreed definition. Any time to try to 'define' we simplify, often unhelpfully. With this said, I work with the more process oriented definition that trust is the willingness to be vulnerable based on positive expectations. Our willingness to be vulnerable is impacted by our entire historicity (as far as I can tell. This really gives us our 'propensity to trust'), as is the process of establishing, acting in relation to, learning from etc. 'positive expectations'. In the broader context within which you refer to this (trust is often studied very narrowly using certain interpersonal / economic frames i.e. game theory etc.), I quite like the way Bill Plotkin frames the biosphere as being 'largely benevolent'. This is REALLY important because the three most important 'trust antecedents' (qualities of trustworthiness) are benevolence, integrity and (normative) competence. So if we internalise, irrespective of all the other complexity / nuance, the idea that the world is largely dangerous, that everything is literally trying to eat each everything else and our role is to just find some way to the top of whatever food chain we seek to climb, then it's incredibly challenging to be willingly vulnerable.
Gosh, I feel I could go down a bunch of paths here. I'll stop for now given my time constraints today, but would love to dialogue on this.
Wah, thank you! I would love to dialogue on this. I find this such an important question and honestly something that is only rather recently becoming clear and emerging for me - I feel like a total newbie in this and would love to learn more.
Let's do it! Excited :)
The idea of 'composting control' is wonderful. I've also been thinking these last days about ecological embodiment. I just had a discussion with the anthropologist Tim Ingold and in the conversation he says that the word embodiment has come to bother him recently, because it feels to him as though we are 'entombed' in our bodies, he questions the 'em' and asks why we don't just say 'bodily' ... ecological embodiment opens that up again.
Love this. I’ll listen to that.
Thanks for this. As someone who's autistic, I often get caught up in wanting to control and get caught up in routines, so this was really helpful. Also, I went and subscribed to Nathan Kench's Substack. I found it really interesting. Thanks for the recommendation!
Hey Cary, thanks for sharing.
Brilliant article as always, Jes. I'm humbled to have played some part in inspiring it. Really looking forward to the event tonight!!! See you soon :)
Americans in particular distrust reality in a bigly huge way.
In fact it can rightly be called a "culture" of death with the military-industrial-propaganda being its most powerful institution.
Altogether it is a powerful invisible psychic force field the death saturated values of which pattern and control every aspect of US culture. Lewis Mumford called this force-field the Invisible Mega-Machine
Such is demonstrated by the fact that it has more 700 or so military bases all over the world and an active military presence in almost every constant. Collectively these bases form a powerful psycho-physical force field.
This Invisible Mega-Machine is further empowered by the fact that every US State depends on its continued prosperity with the presence of various military bases and various industries that supply the Pentagon death machine with all of its requirements from paper clips to nuclear submarines.
Associated with that is the growth and all pervasive presence of the Surveillance State the growth of which exploded after Sept 11. Everything you do is now monitored 24/7 by this Surveillance State. Every time you turn on your mobile phone "they" know where you are. Perhaps even when your phone is not even turned on.
The initial growth of the Surveillance State was described in great detail in one of the chapters of Naomi Klein's book The Shoch Doctrine.
Thanks for the book tip - its been on my list for a while but I haven’t read it yet.
Damn. I realized a bunch of this on accident on a shrooms trip a few years ago. I realized my entire materialist perspective on reality was wrong and the greed and selfishness so pervasive in our society was because people had psychologically disconnected themselves from nature and each other. Technology simply accelerated the trend. This essay was a great intellectual and philosophical breakdown of that spontaneous insight I had back then. Saving to come back to in the future.
Hey Andi, what a great realization. I love how so many people cohere in these ideas.
Thanks for sharing Jessica - fascinating.
The making, breaking and conceptualisation of trust, trustworthiness and distrust still has an air of ambiguity when it comes to adult judgments and decisions. Question that keeps me up is - how much is society’s crisis in trust a function of society’s increased cognitive dissonance (most notably in their actions), which is exacerbated by the current wealth of information that continually normalises even the most grotesque behaviours and neurological patterns in the name of for e.g., ‘self-love’ and people using this new information to confirm their biases?
Following from Nate’s comment about the antecedents of trust (qualities of trustworthiness) - benevolence, integrity and competence - How much does the outcome of the question above influence these antecedents, especially for trustworthiness levels in interpersonal relationships and social structures, which manifest into the distrust in our lived reality?
I realise that this might be a ‘chicken or the egg’ problem haha. Nonetheless, maybe a talking point for our next conversation :)
https://johnstokdijk538.substack.com/p/five-women