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Your feeling is correct, and numerous polls and studies quantify it.[http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/11/30/poll-americans-dont-trust-one-another/

Your feeling is correct, and numerous polls and studies quantify it.[http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/11/30/poll-americans-dont-trust-one-another/3792179/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/11/30/poll-am...] [http://www.npr.org/2014/03/10/288712990/social-distrust-blooms-among-millennials-but-where-are-its-roots http://www.npr.org/2014/03/10/288712990/social-distrust-bloo...] Robert Putnam in Bowling Alone was just one of the people who explored this effect. Putative causes include potentially "de-socializing" technology like TV, increasing income inequality, emergence of suburban living, and fear-heavy media. The vastly increased level of racial and ethnic heterogeneity in America can not be ignored as a potential cause, either. Diversity may hinder social cohesion and a sense of community. [http://www.hks.harvard.edu/news-events/publications/insight/democratic/robert-putnam http://www.hks.harvard.edu/news-events/publications/insight/...] [https://www.msu.edu/~zpneal/publications/neal-diversitysoc.pdf https://www.msu.edu/~zpneal/publications/neal-diversitysoc.p...]

api 12y ago
I personally feel like all the causes you list are secondary. Primary, at least for me, is abuse of trust and power. People seem to earn trust in our culture only so that it can be "spent" later in abusive ways. Our relationship with our political and business leadership is the classic "abuse, then make up, then abuse again" pattern seen in abusive family relationships, but writ large. Every event of large-scale deception -- or even incompetence that gives the appearance of deception -- has a huge negative effect on the overall level of trust in a society. It's sort of like the "bad neighborhood effect." If you experience one mugging, that location is forever a "bad neighborhood" even if 99.9% of its inhabitants are perfectly peaceful law abiding citizens. It takes one act of official misconduct to undo the goodwill of thousands of noble and responsible acts. I think the term is "elite deviancy" -- the condition in a society when that society's elite no longer believe the rules apply to them and no longer have any sense of shared pride or loyalty to the society at large. But these things have a way of being recursive-- it's possible that this elite deviancy is a response to growing alienation. This condition could also arise if our elite think they're on a sinking ship. I wonder sometimes about things like the Limits to Growth and what effect that had on the belief systems of those at the top. The timing matches pretty well-- it seems as if everything went to short-term hell shortly after 1970. "Get as much as you can and get out" is a rational strategy in a civilization one believes is dying. I wonder... did you make a throwaway because of the ethnic/race part of your response? I don't think you're wrong. People do tend to cooperate far more readily with people who look like them and have the same cultural values. It's something I find deeply depressing though... what are we, social insects? Can we only cooperate in homogeneous hives?

api 12y ago

I personally feel like all the causes you list are secondary. Primary, at least for me, is abuse of trust and power. People seem to earn trust in our culture only so that it can be "spent" later in abusive ways. Our relationship with our political and business leadership is the classic "abuse, then make up, then abuse again" pattern seen in abusive family relationships, but writ large. Every event of large-scale deception -- or even incompetence that gives the appearance of deception -- has a huge negative effect on the overall level of trust in a society. It's sort of like the "bad neighborhood effect." If you experience one mugging, that location is forever a "bad neighborhood" even if 99.9% of its inhabitants are perfectly peaceful law abiding citizens. It takes one act of official misconduct to undo the goodwill of thousands of noble and responsible acts. I think the term is "elite deviancy" -- the condition in a society when that society's elite no longer believe the rules apply to them and no longer have any sense of shared pride or loyalty to the society at large. But these things have a way of being recursive-- it's possible that this elite deviancy is a response to growing alienation. This condition could also arise if our elite think they're on a sinking ship. I wonder sometimes about things like the Limits to Growth and what effect that had on the belief systems of those at the top. The timing matches pretty well-- it seems as if everything went to short-term hell shortly after 1970. "Get as much as you can and get out" is a rational strategy in a civilization one believes is dying. I wonder... did you make a throwaway because of the ethnic/race part of your response? I don't think you're wrong. People do tend to cooperate far more readily with people who look like them and have the same cultural values. It's something I find deeply depressing though... what are we, social insects? Can we only cooperate in homogeneous hives?