5 ms·

Multicultural societies, like empires, seem unlikely to ever reach a state of high trust. I'm struggling to find any historical counter-proof. The USSR tried to

Multicultural societies, like empires, seem unlikely to ever reach a state of high trust. I'm struggling to find any historical counter-proof. The USSR tried to meld different cultures together for over half a century and its dissolution was immediately followed by ethnic separatism. The United States is also showing its cracks. New York, the melting pot par excellence, is a collection of many little ethnic enclaves and it's the farthest thing from high trust I could think of.

orzig 4y ago
Acknowledging that it is a big city, and “high trust“ is a vague concept: I strongly disagree with the characterization that New York City is “the furthest thing from high trust I can think of“ I have interacted with thousands of strangers there with near perfect shared understanding of basic city etiquette. That etiquette does not include warmth, and in fact the way that we have all learned it is someone being quite rude to us when we break the etiquette, but that the city functions at all suggests they are doing something right.
- yCombLinks 4y ago
  High trust isn't nearly as vague as you make it out to be, and basic etiquette is only correlated. There's lots of research in this area. Francis Fukayama published the influential book "Trust" in 1995. Some key highlights about what high trust is. 1. "The most important habits that make up cultures have little to do with how one eats one's food or combs one's hair, but with the ethical codes by which societies regular behavior". 2. "Among the cultural habits that consitute virtues ... some... in particular, reciprocal trust - emerge only in a social context". 3. "The social virtues, including honesty, reliability, cooperativeness, and a sense of duty to others ...". This is just the introduction to the ideas of trust in society and how it functions, it isn't a vague concept though.
pjc50 4y ago
The Holy Roman Empire? Lasted many centuries, multi-language, fairly decentralized. The United States has only been legally multicultural and non-apartheit since .. the 1970s? New York is notorious for its historical crime problems, but it also has enough trust to support a global financial centre.
- sangnoir 4y ago
  > The United States has only been legally multicultural and non-apartheit since .. the 1970s? That's only legally; socially, multicultural acceptance was lagging by decades. The majority of Americans disapproved of black/white marriages well into the 1990s[1] 1. https://news.gallup.com/poll/163697/approve-marriage-blacks-whites.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/163697/approve-marriage-blacks-...
lioeters 4y ago
Monocultural societies are not any more likely to reach a state of high trust than multicultural ones. Society is made up of individuals with diverse personalities and opinions, even if they're of the same ethnicity. There will always be inner conflicts and disagreements that threaten its dissolution.
- mellavora 4y ago
  Sweden prior to 1990. Norway prior to 2010. Lived in both, know what I'm talking about. Germany today and in the 1800s. You know why we have delivery services (Amazon etc, prior to that catalog companies like Sears etc)? It started as mail order, which started in Germany. Because the society had enough trust that you could mail money to a stranger and expect them to send you the product. Also, the German post was a marvel of civic engineering. Government run projects at its best.
  - luckylion 4y ago
    I'm in Germany and that time is long gone, I'd say that was pre-1990 or 1995. The trust is no longer there, and the German Post is a joke that is currently falling apart and hasn't worked in 10 days in many regions.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - wahern 4y ago
      But can you send money through the system without expecting it to be stolen? In most postal systems around the world today, just the idea of sending money through the post sounds inherently naive. This is how high trust societies break down: cynicism. By objective standards things are no less than they were at the height of trust, but people's expectations have shifted and so subjectively people feel things are worse and begin withholding their trust. This is why wealth inequality can create such a dilemma, because even if everybody continues to become better off, if you feel relatively worse off, than from a social cohesion standpoint it's just as bad. As overall wealth increases, because of the power law (or whatever curve), you see an acceleration of absolute differences in wealth as the high end of the curve grows steeper. This dynamic makes for a quite difficult sociological problem, which perhaps can be categorized under the rubric, "mo' money, mo' problems".
mellavora 4y ago
The USA in my youth? Maybe I'm idealizing, but there has been several definitive and marked shifts. Also, you can look at history. When we settled the west, the people building the towns knew they were in it together, and built as community (not always and not always well, but there was a sense of it). WWII, "the greatest generation", almost all of society knew that if they united for a great purpose, they could achieve great things. Of course there were heros, but it was always the team/the group which mattered.
- mjmsmith 4y ago
- Red_Tarsius 4y ago
  I agree and I should have used a different verb than "reach". "Maintain" might be more apt. Maybe I know what you mean: I feel that way when I'm driving through my old hometown. My grandparents used to leave the keys in the door – they would never do it now! – and it felt like everyone knew each other. The passage of time was marked by seasonal celebrations like Carnival or Easter. The entire town was involved in one way or the other: some people decorated the streets, others arranged the dancing stage, others prepared sweets and pastries. We used to play a lottery-style board game for Women's Day. In the past the local priest arranged for the construction of apartment blocks: their original purpose was to provide a cheap, temporary housing for young couples. Now it's just a memory. My elementary school closed down a few years ago. The grocery store, the bakery, the dance hall, the stationery are gone. The apartment blocks have become a long-term solution for migrants and low-income residents. There have attempts to revive the community but they didn't catch on.
- sangnoir 4y ago
  > WWII, "the greatest generation", almost all of society knew that if they united for a great purpose Are you including the soldiers who rioted in England due to the way black American soldiers were being treated by the host country? (That is, black soldiers were being treated as equals). Meanwhile back in the states, American citizens of Japanese descent were in internment camps. I guess "all of society" uniting entirely depends on who you define "society"
rambojohnson 4y ago
and then you look at some monocultural societies, and don't see much of "high trust" there either...
watwut 4y ago
Twisting history of USSR to something unrecognizable ... . Turns up that when you start ad bloody murdering dictatorship with a genocide on your own, you don't end up high trust society. Purges, torture, violence prisons and tanks kinda destroy trust, really. Meanwhile supposedly high trust usa had blows of violence on their own. It was better country overall, sure, but plenty of violence due to unreconcillabke groups.
agapon 4y ago
> USSR tried to meld different cultures into Russian "culture" through genocides.
llamataboot 4y ago
Riding subways in big metropolitan cities in any city in the world is one of the most glowing displays of humanity I ever see. Everyone doing their thing, club kids coming home while businessmen are going to work, someone dancing or singing, other people barely awake, 10 languages in one car. Sure we're all just trying to get to our next thing, or home, some happy about it, some sad about it, some just tired. But I don't think you'll find so many ages, religions, languages, classes, reasons or moods shoved into one little moving car as a subway and for the most part people not only use it just fine in trusting ways, but deep down, like being among the crush of just humans being human. At least if it's not 100 degrees and the train is running late again. But even then sometimes, you suffer together, not because of each other.

orzig 4y ago

Acknowledging that it is a big city, and “high trust“ is a vague concept: I strongly disagree with the characterization that New York City is “the furthest thing from high trust I can think of“ I have interacted with thousands of strangers there with near perfect shared understanding of basic city etiquette. That etiquette does not include warmth, and in fact the way that we have all learned it is someone being quite rude to us when we break the etiquette, but that the city functions at all suggests they are doing something right.

yCombLinks 4y ago
High trust isn't nearly as vague as you make it out to be, and basic etiquette is only correlated. There's lots of research in this area. Francis Fukayama published the influential book "Trust" in 1995. Some key highlights about what high trust is. 1. "The most important habits that make up cultures have little to do with how one eats one's food or combs one's hair, but with the ethical codes by which societies regular behavior". 2. "Among the cultural habits that consitute virtues ... some... in particular, reciprocal trust - emerge only in a social context". 3. "The social virtues, including honesty, reliability, cooperativeness, and a sense of duty to others ...". This is just the introduction to the ideas of trust in society and how it functions, it isn't a vague concept though.

pjc50 4y ago

The Holy Roman Empire? Lasted many centuries, multi-language, fairly decentralized. The United States has only been legally multicultural and non-apartheit since .. the 1970s? New York is notorious for its historical crime problems, but it also has enough trust to support a global financial centre.

sangnoir 4y ago
> The United States has only been legally multicultural and non-apartheit since .. the 1970s? That's only legally; socially, multicultural acceptance was lagging by decades. The majority of Americans disapproved of black/white marriages well into the 1990s[1] 1. https://news.gallup.com/poll/163697/approve-marriage-blacks-whites.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/163697/approve-marriage-blacks-...

lioeters 4y ago

Monocultural societies are not any more likely to reach a state of high trust than multicultural ones. Society is made up of individuals with diverse personalities and opinions, even if they're of the same ethnicity. There will always be inner conflicts and disagreements that threaten its dissolution.

mellavora 4y ago
Sweden prior to 1990. Norway prior to 2010. Lived in both, know what I'm talking about. Germany today and in the 1800s. You know why we have delivery services (Amazon etc, prior to that catalog companies like Sears etc)? It started as mail order, which started in Germany. Because the society had enough trust that you could mail money to a stranger and expect them to send you the product. Also, the German post was a marvel of civic engineering. Government run projects at its best.
- luckylion 4y ago
  I'm in Germany and that time is long gone, I'd say that was pre-1990 or 1995. The trust is no longer there, and the German Post is a joke that is currently falling apart and hasn't worked in 10 days in many regions.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - wahern 4y ago
    But can you send money through the system without expecting it to be stolen? In most postal systems around the world today, just the idea of sending money through the post sounds inherently naive. This is how high trust societies break down: cynicism. By objective standards things are no less than they were at the height of trust, but people's expectations have shifted and so subjectively people feel things are worse and begin withholding their trust. This is why wealth inequality can create such a dilemma, because even if everybody continues to become better off, if you feel relatively worse off, than from a social cohesion standpoint it's just as bad. As overall wealth increases, because of the power law (or whatever curve), you see an acceleration of absolute differences in wealth as the high end of the curve grows steeper. This dynamic makes for a quite difficult sociological problem, which perhaps can be categorized under the rubric, "mo' money, mo' problems".

mellavora 4y ago

The USA in my youth? Maybe I'm idealizing, but there has been several definitive and marked shifts. Also, you can look at history. When we settled the west, the people building the towns knew they were in it together, and built as community (not always and not always well, but there was a sense of it). WWII, "the greatest generation", almost all of society knew that if they united for a great purpose, they could achieve great things. Of course there were heros, but it was always the team/the group which mattered.

mjmsmith 4y ago
Red_Tarsius 4y ago
I agree and I should have used a different verb than "reach". "Maintain" might be more apt. Maybe I know what you mean: I feel that way when I'm driving through my old hometown. My grandparents used to leave the keys in the door – they would never do it now! – and it felt like everyone knew each other. The passage of time was marked by seasonal celebrations like Carnival or Easter. The entire town was involved in one way or the other: some people decorated the streets, others arranged the dancing stage, others prepared sweets and pastries. We used to play a lottery-style board game for Women's Day. In the past the local priest arranged for the construction of apartment blocks: their original purpose was to provide a cheap, temporary housing for young couples. Now it's just a memory. My elementary school closed down a few years ago. The grocery store, the bakery, the dance hall, the stationery are gone. The apartment blocks have become a long-term solution for migrants and low-income residents. There have attempts to revive the community but they didn't catch on.
sangnoir 4y ago
> WWII, "the greatest generation", almost all of society knew that if they united for a great purpose Are you including the soldiers who rioted in England due to the way black American soldiers were being treated by the host country? (That is, black soldiers were being treated as equals). Meanwhile back in the states, American citizens of Japanese descent were in internment camps. I guess "all of society" uniting entirely depends on who you define "society"

rambojohnson 4y ago

and then you look at some monocultural societies, and don't see much of "high trust" there either...

watwut 4y ago

Twisting history of USSR to something unrecognizable ... . Turns up that when you start ad bloody murdering dictatorship with a genocide on your own, you don't end up high trust society. Purges, torture, violence prisons and tanks kinda destroy trust, really. Meanwhile supposedly high trust usa had blows of violence on their own. It was better country overall, sure, but plenty of violence due to unreconcillabke groups.

agapon 4y ago

> USSR tried to meld different cultures into Russian "culture" through genocides.

llamataboot 4y ago

Riding subways in big metropolitan cities in any city in the world is one of the most glowing displays of humanity I ever see. Everyone doing their thing, club kids coming home while businessmen are going to work, someone dancing or singing, other people barely awake, 10 languages in one car. Sure we're all just trying to get to our next thing, or home, some happy about it, some sad about it, some just tired. But I don't think you'll find so many ages, religions, languages, classes, reasons or moods shoved into one little moving car as a subway and for the most part people not only use it just fine in trusting ways, but deep down, like being among the crush of just humans being human. At least if it's not 100 degrees and the train is running late again. But even then sometimes, you suffer together, not because of each other.