the Loss of Trust.

Trust is a big thing. Without trust, between you and me, between me and my neighbors, family, friends, and community, between us and the government, between us and them, America is, in essence, a corpse. Perhaps a beautiful corpse, all shine and glitter like Edward Cullen in the Twilight series, but a corpse nonetheless. And yes, I'm comparing the current state of this nation to a crappy, forgettable, badly written vampire and his "epic love story". But that is another rant for another time.

Dictionary.com defines trust as

1. reliance on the integrity, strength, ability, surety, etc., of a person or thing; confidence.

2. confident expectation of something; hope.

3. confidence in the certainty of future payment for property or goods received; credit.

4. a person on whom or thing on which one relies.

5. the condition of one to whom something has been entrusted.

6. the obligation or responsibility imposed on a person in whom confidence or authority is placed.

7. charge, custody, or care.

8. something committed or entrusted to one's care for use or safekeeping, as an office, duty, or the like; responsibility; charge.

Reading all that, and hopefully understanding that all those comprise this idea of trust, I'd like you to go out and find people you trust. And not just who you say you trust, and that you might, on a nice, clear, sunny day in June, but people you trust will be there when you're traveling thru' the very Pits of Hell, and have done so. I think, in general, you would find that there aren't that many people, really. You probably trust your family, your friends, the fire department, and depending on where you live and who you are, your neighbors. You may or may not trust cops (again, depending on where you live and how you were brought up), journalists, and politicians. If you trust politicians ...

But here's the rub: in order to have a good, decent, and orderly society (theoretically something we all want) - we need to trust them all. Yes, even the politicians and the journalists. We used too, back in the founding days of this Republic. Fascinating, isn't it? Especially considering the current relationship between the citizenry and the political aristocracy is anything but cordial and trustworthy.

Do we trust our politicians? Do we trust those people that we elect to represent us and to make sure that things get done in an good and decent manner? I would have to say, no, not really. Do we trust those people who are tasked with keeping the peace, informing us of all things that going on in the world? Do we trust the people who have come to our nation to pursue a new course of life (and who drag their cultural baggage with them and demand that they get all our American benefits without having to adjust to doing things our way)? No, not really.

So how are supposed to combat this lack of trust, which, I am told, is on par with racism, giant corporations, owning a gun, personal property, Adolf Hitler, Sarah Palin, and the Oakland Raiders. Ahem. The answer, my friends (to everything except the Raiders, because let's face it, no-one really understands the Raiders)?

Education!

Yes, dear friends, we must educate. Only by making sure the general populace of America is educated will we destroy racism, etc etc etc. And the substance of this education? We need to recognize that all cultures, all economic positions (except the hard working ones), all people, no matter how weird they are (unless they're Christian-based), are all the same, and deserve the same opportunities provided them.

And who are we to trust this education project to? Th-th-that's right folks - the Gub'mint!

You are now allowed a chuckle or two.

Nut what has the nice government and the nice education establishment decided is the best way to make folks trust each other, and especially get rid of that nasty little thing called racism and elitism and this-ism and that-ism?

Multiculturalism / Enforced Diversity, AKA lets all sit around a big ole campfire together and sing Kumbaya! Yay! Three cheers for pluralism! Diversity is the best thing to happen to the world since sliced bread!

Now, there's a fellow, a nice, academic, somewhat politically-left fellow named Robert Putnam. He authored a little thing called Bowling Alone, which looked at the decline in civic, social, associational, and political life, represented by the number of people bowling in leagues or groups and by the number of people bowling all by their lonesome, or with an unorganized group of friends. He came to the conclusion that the ability to bridge gaps between groups (cultural, ethnic, etc) was declining over time leading to troubles between ethnicities, etc.

Now, later on, he also studied the levels of trust within communities and the amount of ethnic diversity evident in said communities. Now, he found that the level of diversity within a community did relate to the amount of community trust, but the problem is, it is negatively related. In other words, the greater the amount of diversity, the less the amount of trust between ethnic groups, and not only between ethnicities themselves, but there is less trust and confidence in government, less confidence in a person's political influence, less interest in politics and voting and interest in making change, less trust in others to help a community to get through any sort of difficulty, less chance of working together on a community project of some sort, less volunteerism, less happiness, fewer friends, and more time rotting one's brain in front of the television. I don't know about you, but that sounds mildly damning of diversity, right there.

Now, an interesting note about this work, was that he only published the data in 2001. He actually published his full research and conclusions in 2007. Those intervening six years were spent "developing proposals to compensate for the negative effects of diversity". Right. So, basically, one hides the bad things happening in pluralistic society so you can fix it before anyone notices that something is not what it's "supposed" to be. Seem a little off to you? Perhaps it's just me.

So how are we supposed to fix this trust problem? Putnam argues that education is the answer. Well, we've seen where the State Education leads, so the true, real, common sense fix? That, unfortunately, will be the next post out, simply because I'm a blogger, not a thesis writer, and this post is almost a term paper.

PS:
HTML Link to Putnam's Paper in full:
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/118510920/HTMLSTART