The Generalized Decline Of Trust
The erosion of trust seems to have hit politics (for sure), marriage, work, and more.
My friend who is a big baseball mom over in Cincinnati tells me that, anecdotally, 55% of the moms in that scene express a desire to be divorced, telling their friends they can’t trust their husband with “anything.” I wrote this a couple of days ago on the true role of a husband in modernity.
Most comments and emails I got were “I can’t trust my husband with anything” and/or “I wouldn’t trust 95% of men to be fathers.”
I think we all know trust in government and general public institutions is pretty low. You can call that a Trump problem, a COVID problem, a Fauci problem, etc. I cannot tell you what to call it; your individual belief structure will dictate that.
I think we also know that trust at work is pretty low. This existed before COVID, but it’s a COVID-era problem as well. As this article details, managers went from checking little boxes on their people — “Sally is sitting where I expect her to be on a Wednesday” — to having to manage remotely. Since most managers couldn’t manage their damn way out of a paper bag anyway, managing remotely was pretty scary, and we created “productivity paranoia,” which leads to increased surveillance and presenteeism cultures.
The irony here is that presenteeism and surveillance can be fixed culturally through better alignment of priorities and goals and people, but I mean, who the hell has time for that? I’ve got a 10:15 I need to barely prepare for.
There are millions of conversations like this in workplaces every day. Mom Martha goes to pick up her tykes. KPI Kevin is like, “Hey Mom Martha, why have you been off your green on Slack for 2.5 hours?” Martha fumes. “Well Kevin, there’s nothing direct I’m waiting on or any meetings I needed to be in, and I was doing a snack and starting a bit on homework.” Kevin smirks. “Some colleagues are worried about your comittment…”
All that stuff utterly erodes trust. And bosses do it all the time; they don’t treat people like adults, and people recoil, and either turnover or resentment or distrust boils up. While there are currently more jobs than people (#good), we also don’t train people up successfully for those jobs (#bad), and whether or not the “economy” or “market” is hot feels very distant for most people, because that’s a function of the 10–15% investor class, not the working stiff. So sometimes you can’t just up and leave a job, because of #bills. And if KPI Kevin is treating you like that and thinking “productivity” means “green light,” all we’re creating is distrust.
Now, we know KPI Kev cannot define productivity. Most managers are terrible at this.
But because Kevin has the power and the clout, we cannot admit that’s the problem. Instead we pin it back on Martha, who is now a more nervous and anxious mother, unable to give herself fully to her kids — which is ironically the only thing Kevin expects from his wife, in addition to maybe two rolls in the hay per week.
It’s a perverse little system we’ve concocted on many levels. You can see why it breaks trust.
As for marriages? Some marriages are great. I am not the best person to ask about that shit. In my first marriage I had some good times but I was predominantly a fall-down drunk. In my second marriage I’ve had some good times, but I’ve been a drunk too, and in addition to that, my sperm sucks and I can’t provide her with conventional motherhood. It’s a tough sled. Not really victimhood here. Just facts.
But while some marriages are great, the erosion of trust thing in marriages is because men and women have different expectations around core things, and oftentimes those core things are not discussed openly before the relationship gets deeper. People generally discuss “number of kids,” but a lot of other stuff around household responsibilities and time management and ways of expressing value and ways of sharing joy and despair and even money are not discussed. Most men are absolutely broken, even the conventionally successful ones. They wonder what happened to their mile time, their deadlift, their boner, their torrid relationship with Ashley from age 24 (is she on Facebook Messenger?), and various other stuff. They thought a good job and two kids and a big house and nice cars and the right dinner invites would impress their dad, but their dad is getting older and realizing all the stuff he did is bullshit too, and he still can’t fucking hug you. Wow, that got deep. Anyway, yea, men are broken. Women are broken in different ways. Obviously trust can become an issue, even before something major like infidelity.
Government? There’s no transparency about where your tax money goes (“it helps the roads!”) and then every year we hear about some random psychological trial in Belarus that U.S. taxpayers paid for. Biden is old and seems decrepit. Trump is powered by grievance. DeSantis wants everyone to live in the 1953 Philadelphia suburbs. Pelosi is probably a crook. 75% of the people I just named are over 75. And these are the biggest-name political leaders we have. Who in their right mind would trust that?
So yes, there’s an erosion of trust societally. Does it mean the sky is falling? No. Most people (I would think and hope) have a few people in their life that they value and trust. Does everyone? No. Would it be possible for everyone to have that? Probably not. Is it still something we should aspire to? Yes. And we might get less mass shootings in the process, too.
What else you got on trust and where it currently stands?