A casual scan of history reveals that mankind has always had bad actors. It is impossible to name an era when people with malicious intent weren't causing chaos and sorrow. Tyrants and dictators causing wars, famines, gulags, and holocausts have been the rule rather than the exception. I remember studying in college that the post-modernists believe in the infinite perfectability of humankind. Christians believe that we are born into sin and in need of salvation. The evidence is in, and has been for eons. Christianity is right.
One of the accomplishments of the American system was the recognition that there are BAD people out there and that history showed that when one man rules ultimately bad things happen. Because the founders understood history, they constructed a system that did not rely on any individual. It required compromise at all levels. If there were bad actors they would tend to be revealed by their peers and the free press. There were always bad actors but they tended to falter at some point and often remained hidden. Now, the bad actors are in our faces 24 hours a day. This constant visibility is proving that we all have feet of clay. This pulling back of the curtain has revealed our collective and individual fallibility. The result? Where once we could trust our institutions, today we see that most of our leaders are just in it for themselves and have not only lost our trust but have actually shown that they didn't deserve it in the first place.
When everybody seems to be out to get theirs, no matter how it's done, who will be willing to defend us, protect us from ourselves, and make the many sacrifices necessary for the continuance of modern societies? I think this is one of the most important questions of the day. It's answer is built on a foundation of trust. How we rebuild that is a monumental challenge.
The change needs to start with each of us. We each need to do our best to avoid deceiving ourselves and others. This is very difficult. Richard Feynman said something like: "The first step is to not fool yourself. And you are the easiest one to fool."
Similar to: "Remove the beam from your own eye before attempting to remove the mote from your neighbor's eye."
"[on Twitter] What was once a sign that you could trust somebody’s identity ... gets turned into a status symbol, sold to anybody willing to pay for it"
Are you joking? The twitter checkmark was a joke. People would get it then change their name and photo to parody Supreme Court justices, fool thousands, and not only did it not get stopped: it wasn't even against the rules.
This article acts like the idea that you can't trust what you see on the internet is new.
In George Orwell's "1984", Emanuel Goldstein gets 2 minutes of hate. On today's legacy media, Trump gets almost 24 straight hours of hate. CNN seems to cover only Trump, with some small time slots left for ads.
Trump is the excuse for tearing down the Constitution. I grew up in Montana in the 1950's and 1960's. If someone had told me then that the FBI and CIA would be "suggesting" stories to be suppressed, and gaining cooperation from the American media, I would not have believed it. Further, suppressing stories for the Feds, and not even covering it when the truth comes out, is beyond my imagination. This is all justified to protect "our democracy," a dog whistle for single party domination, Chicago style.
The argument is exactly the same as the one the State of Mississippi made in Norwood v Harrison in 1973. The left's argument is that it's OK for the federal government to encourage private companies to censor, as long as the federal government does not directly censor things itself. Mississippi's argument was it was OK for them to buy books for private schools that were discriminating, as long as the state wasn’t discriminating itself. Mississippi lost. So should the left, as the left's argument is exactly the same as Mississippi's. The only difference is that the left is arguing about the 1st Amendment instead of the 14th Amendment.
"As B.B. King once said: “Nobody loves me but my mother—and she could be jivin’ too.”" Good reference. I was also thinking of Lou Reed's "Busload of Faith"--'You can't depend on a lot of things. You need a busload of faith to get by.'
Reading Martin Gurri's "Revolt of the Public" made me understand how these institutions are losing the trust from the public and trying, desperately, to maintain their control over the masses. The manipulation of language is always one of their tools used to perpetuate this fraud, i.e. mother for birthing person. This radical shift of the information flow hierarchy caused by the invention of the internet has its positives and negatives.
Openness within the social media sphere and online searches was wonderful at the beginning. But, like all good things, corruption and power take over. And that's when government intervention is usually involved--whether it's science, education, business, or the media. We're slowing becoming like China, and nobody realizes it. Citizens were so conditioned by the panic porn of Covid that some of them were ratting on their neighbors if they saw someone who was maskless.
Trust is surely eroding in America, but so too is gratitude and humility. Watching a couple of Yeonmi Park videos recently was a powerful reminder of what is truly important in life--not whiny little performance brats causing this madness, but honesty and a shared commonality working towards the truth. There will always be disagreements, and that's a good thing in a free society.
I sure hope we don't lose such a beautiful thing we have going in America. It would be a travesty to the visions and hard work our Founding Fathers gave us.
And now we find as if we didn't already know, that 50 great leading lights of our intelligence community drafted a letter trying to debunk a story that accurately described the contents of a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden that alluded to corrupt activities by Hunter and the rest of his nuclear family.
Of course, they did it to sway the election in favor of Joe Biden...
And there are still millions of people; including, I would presume, our esteemed hosts, that will swear vehemently that there wasn't any conspiracy to sway the outcome of the 2020 election.
When are people going to start going to jail for such treasonous activities? They certainly deserve it!
If they only understood that the reason they are failing is because they have failed at telling the whole truth, engaged in activist behavior, failed at their most basic job.
This is spot on. What a great read and thank you. I work in healthcare and after reading it, my brain is spinning about what I am doing to ensure trust within our practice; what am I doing to build trust with my team; and, collectively what are we doing to provide an environment built on trust with our team members...Most importantly, what are we doing to build trust and create trust with our patients. We have to do more.
"Pick out a code word that you could use to prove you were a human being when dealing with family and loved ones"
Long before the digital age, Harry Houdini is said to have made such an arrangement with his wife. He told her that if he were to die first, and she were to ever to try contacting him via a psychic medium, she was to ask the medium to get the departed Houdini to tell them his code word (known only to Mr. and Mrs. Houdini) - as proof that the medium really had made contact with him "on the other side".
There's something almost too apt about this as a metaphor for our current situation. Are we really hurtling towards a world where our loved ones are reduced to digital ghosts and phantasms with the telecommunications industry interposing as the charaltan medium pretending they're putting us in touch with the real thing?
"Huge marketing opportunities" indeed. There's a vast swatch of Americans open to reasonable, ethical approaches in many fields. Entrepreneurs, wake up!
That 60 percent of people don't trust journalists or 76 percent of people don't trust politicians is actually a sign of progress -- people are beginning to be aware of the BS they have been fed. But what could the remaining 40 percent or 34 percent possibly be thinking? The first step to solving a problem is admitting you have a problem.
Once trust is destroyed, it may take a lifetime to restore or never return. Think about those individuals that have betrayed your trust. Will you ever trust them again? Perhaps, but not at the same level. Institutional trust is even more fragile as this article states.
The worst outcome is once trust is destroyed, it may take a lifetime or never return. Think about the individuals in your life that have betrayed your trust. Will you ever trust them again? Perhaps, but it will never be at the same level.
A casual scan of history reveals that mankind has always had bad actors. It is impossible to name an era when people with malicious intent weren't causing chaos and sorrow. Tyrants and dictators causing wars, famines, gulags, and holocausts have been the rule rather than the exception. I remember studying in college that the post-modernists believe in the infinite perfectability of humankind. Christians believe that we are born into sin and in need of salvation. The evidence is in, and has been for eons. Christianity is right.
One of the accomplishments of the American system was the recognition that there are BAD people out there and that history showed that when one man rules ultimately bad things happen. Because the founders understood history, they constructed a system that did not rely on any individual. It required compromise at all levels. If there were bad actors they would tend to be revealed by their peers and the free press. There were always bad actors but they tended to falter at some point and often remained hidden. Now, the bad actors are in our faces 24 hours a day. This constant visibility is proving that we all have feet of clay. This pulling back of the curtain has revealed our collective and individual fallibility. The result? Where once we could trust our institutions, today we see that most of our leaders are just in it for themselves and have not only lost our trust but have actually shown that they didn't deserve it in the first place.
When everybody seems to be out to get theirs, no matter how it's done, who will be willing to defend us, protect us from ourselves, and make the many sacrifices necessary for the continuance of modern societies? I think this is one of the most important questions of the day. It's answer is built on a foundation of trust. How we rebuild that is a monumental challenge.
For what it's worth...g.
The change needs to start with each of us. We each need to do our best to avoid deceiving ourselves and others. This is very difficult. Richard Feynman said something like: "The first step is to not fool yourself. And you are the easiest one to fool."
Similar to: "Remove the beam from your own eye before attempting to remove the mote from your neighbor's eye."
A small quibble... truth is the foundation of trust. We need to search out the truth and then tell it.
"[on Twitter] What was once a sign that you could trust somebody’s identity ... gets turned into a status symbol, sold to anybody willing to pay for it"
Are you joking? The twitter checkmark was a joke. People would get it then change their name and photo to parody Supreme Court justices, fool thousands, and not only did it not get stopped: it wasn't even against the rules.
This article acts like the idea that you can't trust what you see on the internet is new.
In George Orwell's "1984", Emanuel Goldstein gets 2 minutes of hate. On today's legacy media, Trump gets almost 24 straight hours of hate. CNN seems to cover only Trump, with some small time slots left for ads.
Trump is the excuse for tearing down the Constitution. I grew up in Montana in the 1950's and 1960's. If someone had told me then that the FBI and CIA would be "suggesting" stories to be suppressed, and gaining cooperation from the American media, I would not have believed it. Further, suppressing stories for the Feds, and not even covering it when the truth comes out, is beyond my imagination. This is all justified to protect "our democracy," a dog whistle for single party domination, Chicago style.
The argument is exactly the same as the one the State of Mississippi made in Norwood v Harrison in 1973. The left's argument is that it's OK for the federal government to encourage private companies to censor, as long as the federal government does not directly censor things itself. Mississippi's argument was it was OK for them to buy books for private schools that were discriminating, as long as the state wasn’t discriminating itself. Mississippi lost. So should the left, as the left's argument is exactly the same as Mississippi's. The only difference is that the left is arguing about the 1st Amendment instead of the 14th Amendment.
"As B.B. King once said: “Nobody loves me but my mother—and she could be jivin’ too.”" Good reference. I was also thinking of Lou Reed's "Busload of Faith"--'You can't depend on a lot of things. You need a busload of faith to get by.'
Reading Martin Gurri's "Revolt of the Public" made me understand how these institutions are losing the trust from the public and trying, desperately, to maintain their control over the masses. The manipulation of language is always one of their tools used to perpetuate this fraud, i.e. mother for birthing person. This radical shift of the information flow hierarchy caused by the invention of the internet has its positives and negatives.
Openness within the social media sphere and online searches was wonderful at the beginning. But, like all good things, corruption and power take over. And that's when government intervention is usually involved--whether it's science, education, business, or the media. We're slowing becoming like China, and nobody realizes it. Citizens were so conditioned by the panic porn of Covid that some of them were ratting on their neighbors if they saw someone who was maskless.
Trust is surely eroding in America, but so too is gratitude and humility. Watching a couple of Yeonmi Park videos recently was a powerful reminder of what is truly important in life--not whiny little performance brats causing this madness, but honesty and a shared commonality working towards the truth. There will always be disagreements, and that's a good thing in a free society.
I sure hope we don't lose such a beautiful thing we have going in America. It would be a travesty to the visions and hard work our Founding Fathers gave us.
Slowly becoming like China?
Does the name Elvis Chan ring any bells?
And now we find as if we didn't already know, that 50 great leading lights of our intelligence community drafted a letter trying to debunk a story that accurately described the contents of a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden that alluded to corrupt activities by Hunter and the rest of his nuclear family.
Of course, they did it to sway the election in favor of Joe Biden...
And there are still millions of people; including, I would presume, our esteemed hosts, that will swear vehemently that there wasn't any conspiracy to sway the outcome of the 2020 election.
When are people going to start going to jail for such treasonous activities? They certainly deserve it!
If only our media could figure this out.
If they only understood that the reason they are failing is because they have failed at telling the whole truth, engaged in activist behavior, failed at their most basic job.
It is getting to the point where I would be happy if the only got somewhere near the truth.
Everything is manipulated for a purpose.
In this day and age, truth is whatever suits the purpose of the person saying or presenting something.
This is spot on. What a great read and thank you. I work in healthcare and after reading it, my brain is spinning about what I am doing to ensure trust within our practice; what am I doing to build trust with my team; and, collectively what are we doing to provide an environment built on trust with our team members...Most importantly, what are we doing to build trust and create trust with our patients. We have to do more.
"Pick out a code word that you could use to prove you were a human being when dealing with family and loved ones"
Long before the digital age, Harry Houdini is said to have made such an arrangement with his wife. He told her that if he were to die first, and she were to ever to try contacting him via a psychic medium, she was to ask the medium to get the departed Houdini to tell them his code word (known only to Mr. and Mrs. Houdini) - as proof that the medium really had made contact with him "on the other side".
There's something almost too apt about this as a metaphor for our current situation. Are we really hurtling towards a world where our loved ones are reduced to digital ghosts and phantasms with the telecommunications industry interposing as the charaltan medium pretending they're putting us in touch with the real thing?
"Huge marketing opportunities" indeed. There's a vast swatch of Americans open to reasonable, ethical approaches in many fields. Entrepreneurs, wake up!
The bad actors are getting harder to spot in some ways.
The spam malware emails are relentless and are getting very good.
Makes me wistful for the old days, I have two Nigerian scam letters from the 90s, real letters written, stamped and mailed from Nigeria.
They are framed on the wall of my office
That 60 percent of people don't trust journalists or 76 percent of people don't trust politicians is actually a sign of progress -- people are beginning to be aware of the BS they have been fed. But what could the remaining 40 percent or 34 percent possibly be thinking? The first step to solving a problem is admitting you have a problem.
Exactly
Here in canada over 30% somehow still think Trudeau is an ethical, transparent, caring, intelligent politician.
Despite years of endless evidence to the contrary.
How do I debate such people.
Once trust is destroyed, it may take a lifetime to restore or never return. Think about those individuals that have betrayed your trust. Will you ever trust them again? Perhaps, but not at the same level. Institutional trust is even more fragile as this article states.
The worst outcome is once trust is destroyed, it may take a lifetime or never return. Think about the individuals in your life that have betrayed your trust. Will you ever trust them again? Perhaps, but it will never be at the same level.
The last government agency I trusted was the FBI and now that is no longer true. It is sad.