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The Culture of Trust and How Society Collapses without It
American Thinker ^ | Chet Richards

Posted on 01/18/2019 2:23:08 AM PST by RoosterRedux

I picked up the telephone and dialed a small shop in a little town on the other side of the continent. After a friendly conversation, I gave the fellow my credit card number. A few days later, a package arrived with the item I had ordered. Isn't that extraordinary?

At the time, I really didn't think the event was unusual. I had engaged in transactions like that many times before. The web makes it easy to find things. But this really was extraordinary. There are few places in the world where such a transaction is possible. In the Western Hemisphere, this can happen only in the U.S. and Canada.

Actually, I did not realize the significance of that transaction until Jordan Peterson, in one of his lectures, pointed it out. My experience was possible only in a culture of trust. Trust is maybe the most distinguishing feature of liberal Western culture. (I use liberal in the libertarian sense of the paramount importance of individual sovereignty and freedom. I don't mean to imply that political liberals are necessarily liberal in this classical sense.)

Peterson's view of trust enlightened my thinking. It told me what is really wrong with socialism. I now know why all forms of socialism inevitably become the home of terror. Koestler's Darkness at Noon had informed me of communist insanity, as did 1984. Until Peterson, I hadn't realized that trust is impossible under any form of socialism.

As time passed, I became friends with a number of refugees from the Soviet Union and from its satellite empire. They confirmed every negative thing I had heard about communism. Distilling what they told me, there was no trust in the communist world.

(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...


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1 posted on 01/18/2019 2:23:08 AM PST by RoosterRedux
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To: RoosterRedux

Socialism destroys everything it touches. Everything.


2 posted on 01/18/2019 2:53:00 AM PST by fieldmarshaldj ("It's Slappin' Time !")
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To: RoosterRedux

As a short drive through certain neighborhoods will verify.


3 posted on 01/18/2019 2:55:07 AM PST by P.O.E. (Pray for America)
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To: RoosterRedux
<>. . . I hadn't realized that trust is impossible under any form of socialism.<>

<>America can fail the same way. Something quite serious is attacking America's traditional culture of trust. It is the old paranoid Marxist disease. Nowhere in Marx's societal prescription is trust. His substitutes are force and hate.<>

Indeed.

John Locke reasoned reasoned that “trust” was the best term to describe the relationship between the sovereign people and the government of their creation. It is simply in the nature of a personal assurance, a fiduciary trust of governors to keep within their enumerated limits to achieve the ends of any government, which is the good of the governed. The people themselves decide if their governmental trustees violate their trust. To remain interchangeable, those who wield this power, fellow citizens all, must not develop an interest distinct from that of the community.

John Locke on Trust and Government.

4 posted on 01/18/2019 3:05:52 AM PST by Jacquerie (ArticleVBlog.com)
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To: RoosterRedux
Koestler's Darkness at Noon
I read that in the 1960s.  The only other book that had so much impact on my political views was Ayn Rand's Anthem.
As time passed, I became friends with a number of refugees from the Soviet Union and from its satellite empire. They confirmed every negative thing I had heard about communism
I had good friends in Canada who had immigrated from communist Hungary.  They, in turn, had friends who voluntarily went back to communist Hungary.  Being raised with the notion of a guaranteed job with income of some sort, the fear of becoming unemployed, starving, or having major medical expenses drove them back to Hungary.

5 posted on 01/18/2019 3:14:18 AM PST by sparklite2 (Don't mind me. I'm just a contrarian.)
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To: RoosterRedux

“I hadn’t realized that trust is impossible under any form of socialism.”

That’s because socialism is built on lies.

L


6 posted on 01/18/2019 3:15:08 AM PST by Lurker (President Trump isn't our last chance. President Trump is THEIR last chance.)
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To: RoosterRedux

bkmk


7 posted on 01/18/2019 3:28:21 AM PST by sauropod (Yield to sin, and experience chastening and sorrow; yield to God, and experience joy and blessing.)
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To: sparklite2

Wisdom as ancient as Sparta in regard to the requirements of true “freedom”. Once the will to be free has been taken from a people does it EVER return?


8 posted on 01/18/2019 3:39:16 AM PST by wastoute (Government cannot redistribute wealth. Government can only redistribute poverty.)
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To: RoosterRedux

Solzhenitsyn - Live Not By Lies


9 posted on 01/18/2019 3:49:04 AM PST by Altura Ct.
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To: P.O.E.

As a short drive through certain neighborhoods will verify.

Democrats losing elections but in a surprise upset, end up prevailing days after polls are closed should tell one a thing or two, also.


10 posted on 01/18/2019 3:54:18 AM PST by excalibur21
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To: wastoute

Ask Elizabeth Smart, who denied who she was even when the police rescued her.

We used to think, and the neoconservatives acted on it, that Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs applied to all humanity, with self-actualization being at the top of the pyramid.

Islam showed that obedience to Allah rules over everything for Muslims. Freedom to them is taking the guard rails down from the mountain road to salvation.


11 posted on 01/18/2019 3:56:38 AM PST by sparklite2 (Don't mind me. I'm just a contrarian.)
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To: RoosterRedux

Excellent article. Having lived 4 years of my life in an environment where, “I will not lie, cheat, steal, or otherwise betray a trust, or tolerate those who do,” I know that a society based on trust can work. The key part, I have since decided, is: “or tolerate those who do.”


12 posted on 01/18/2019 4:05:30 AM PST by Liberty Ship ("Lord, make me fast and accurate.")
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To: Liberty Ship

USNA?


13 posted on 01/18/2019 4:10:50 AM PST by Oldexpat (Jobs Not Mobs)
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To: RoosterRedux

That’s why I always liked newspaper boxes. Put in the quarter, open the door, and just take one, please.

And of course all the homes that put out produce or eggs or firewood with a cash box for deposits.


14 posted on 01/18/2019 4:19:11 AM PST by americas.best.days... ( Donald John Trump has pulled the sword from the stone.)
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To: sparklite2

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs has always been a crock.

So is Kolhbergs.

Both have the Self in the center of the highest pinnacle of humanity.

We all know that is not true and history shows it. The soldier who jumps on a grenade to save his squad, the missionary who gives up normal living to save the lost, the parent who gives up dreams to raise her young and well.


15 posted on 01/18/2019 4:24:32 AM PST by Chickensoup (Leftists totalitarian fascists appear to be planning to eradicate conservatives)
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To: RoosterRedux

Referring to the totalitarian socialist states:

“But there were, and are, great fear and deceit. It was milder there after Stalin and Mao died, to be sure, but communism had so corrupted the culture that one expected lies, not truth.”

That’s the insidious nature of the whole “transgender” movement - it is an attempt to force everyone to accept a lie (that somebody with XY chromosomes is a female). And once you can force the population to accept a lie on something as clear and fundamental as that, it’s only a few short steps to “2 + 2 = 5”. Thus the culture of lies begins to overwhelm the culture of trust.


16 posted on 01/18/2019 4:36:26 AM PST by Stosh
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To: Chickensoup

Maslow shared your concern.

In order to account for people like Mother Teresa, who were clearly self-actualized but also held an apparent desire to “identify with something greater than the individual self,” Maslow set a higher motivational level above self-actualization. He named this motivational level “self-transcendence.”

https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/maslows_theory_revisited

Does that restore the value of the hierarchy for you?


17 posted on 01/18/2019 4:50:42 AM PST by sparklite2 (Don't mind me. I'm just a contrarian.)
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To: RoosterRedux

Compared to savage and ex-soviet union countries, there is much more trust in the USA. But it’s not enough. You can mostly trust people who are doing business because they have a reputation to uphold, but among strangers, there is very little trust. It’s the legacy of the nanny state.


18 posted on 01/18/2019 5:16:07 AM PST by I want the USA back (Lying Media: willing and eager allies of the hate-America left.)
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To: RoosterRedux

Bookmark


19 posted on 01/18/2019 5:24:56 AM PST by Tench_Coxe
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To: sparklite2
we used to think . . . Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs applied to all humanity, with self-actualization being at the top of the pyramid.

Good we left that behind.

20 posted on 01/18/2019 5:48:27 AM PST by aspasia
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