the collapse of trust (1/3)
the first of three parts...
I started writing this in September of 2023. I got coffee with a friend yesterday morning and realized I had never published it. so here it is, with some rewriting… my working concept of trust in culture: 1) the collapse of trust, 2) how trust gets there in the first place, and 3) restoration of trust—an idea in 3 parts.
this first part is about the fall from trust.
somewhere around a decade ago, I finally began noticing a pattern—the leaking/hemorrhaging of trust from our culture. it was a loss of trust in leaders, in the church, in the government, in institutions (like marriage), in concepts like democracy.
their actions don’t match their words.
my expectations don’t fit with reality.
do these ideas even work? did they ever?
I have wondered at the influence of the internet, and of social media in particular. they present us with the appealing notion of tapping into a flavor-based community (or why not many) where we belong based on our shared views. (my observations are not novel. social media is.)
and I love a good dystopian story as much as the next person, but when so many of our stories are dystopian and so many of our heroes are flawed, what kind of cultural expectations does that create? dystopian?
but much of the lost trust has been legitimate—people had seen too many painful divorces, had been gaslighted by someone in the church, had been pandered to for votes, had been let down by a former hero, had begun to wonder if the exposure of present lies meant the likelihood of a history of past betrayals. what is even real?
and you know how betrayal feels.
losing trust in a community feels like the oil—the oil that kept everything moving smoothly—is gone. now there’s more friction, and it’s hotter. and you start worrying less about the scratches on the paint job and more about catastrophic engine failure.
I started wondering what that oil was… or rather, what holds people together over time?
I’ll explore that more next week.
for now, I’ll leave you with a little poem from the book that flows out of this idea:
I’m leaving this in an unsettled place—perhaps a bit like the unresolved chord?
thanks for being here. I write weekly sharing poetry, songs, musings, thoughts on creative life, and hopefully some encouragement… my first collection of poetry, Snowmelt to Roots, is available in my mom & pop shop, (or on Amazon). and my music is available here.
peace,
Z