As someone who grew up in very low trust country, I have to point out in response to several other comments that trust is also not natural. Trust needs to be fo

As someone who grew up in very low trust country, I have to point out in response to several other comments that trust is also not natural. Trust needs to be fostered and guarded, and one sure-fire way in which it erodes in people is if they see norms being violated with impunity. That both makes it more acceptable for people to violate norms (like that riot paper I can't find now, where they found each person would throw a rock if they saw N people around them throwing rocks, so it's a cascade of higher and higher Ns); but also more importantly creates a cynical attitude in those who won't violate the norms that their chief goal is to protect their own well-being from bad/stupid people, the rest be damned (the bad and stupid people might as well suffer, and the others, well I guess they should just also fend for themselves). This applies on all levels from govt corruption, to e.g. neighborhood care. Russian cities are full of shabby-looking flats ("condos") with cars parked on the lawn, the playgrounds that are lightly vandalized, and dirty unmaintained common areas; however, many of the cars are luxury and if you visit someone you'd see they have a nice (if small) pad even by Western standards. And probably a steel door. That is because you see people treating common areas like crap, so at worst you also treat them like crap ("everyone parks on the lawn!"), and at best you retreat into your own little world and make it perfect, outside and everyone else be damned, and traversing from your flat to your car becomes sort of a tolerable necessary evil, who cares what it looks like. I've been thinking about this a lot given the recent deterioration of the West coast cities. I've definitely become much more lower trust than I used to be, and I realized another reason I don't like houses is that you cannot just put a steel door in and be mostly safe from crime - too many entry points :)