The distinction between thin trust and cool trust is resonating with me because of work issues I've been thinking about lately, but of course they are broadly societal issues (and probably this is the reason why they are work issues). The analogy to economic practice is useful too. In "Debt: The Frist 5,000 Years" the late anthropologist David Graeber shows that during the Middle Ages, Islam had trading markets that were remarkably free of government interference because they were based on the underlying principle of mutual aid. When Adam Smith cribbed Islamic writings on economics (down to a near verbatim quote of the pin factory analogy), he kept the free market part, but replaced "mutual aid" with "competition." I'm sure I'm painting with too broad brush, but I sometimes feel that this is perhaps where trust begins to tilt from thin to cool in the West. (I know, it's much more complicated, but dang...). In any case, the cultivation of empathy and the reaffirmation of mutual aid as social foundations is a culture-wide project that we desperately need to undertake.
"If I had to draw a diagram of where we are today, it would be just one big sphere of controversy" and that is as concise a statement of where we are as any that I've read. I am enjoying your Freedom Academy pieces. Thanks!
"Frankly, it has me thinking my best bet is a mountain cabin and two chickens." And really good wifi, right? 😉 You impress me as someone who'll want to stay apprised of developments. And connected to your internet friends no matter where you are. ☺️
Wow! So much to absorb and understand in this lesson. "... the court system may be the only institution left that can adequately police the line between truth and lies..." Enter Judge Cannon, who tried to gaslight the entire legal system with her special master ruling. Enter the SCOTUS who have gutted women's privacy and voting rights. Can we really count on the courts? ~~ Here we are in our "Asha Bubble", having decided we can trust her to provide us with Truth. So we each individually have to determine where to place our trust and who to rely on for accurate information about our world, trying to find sources within Consensus and Legitimate Controversy, to use Prof. Rosen's diagram. So it's all about Critical Thinking and educating how it's done and training people to actually do it. I'm heartened by how the youth voted in the midterms. I think it shows they can and do think critically and are not so easily taken in. And that they do care about democracy and climate emergency. Whoa! How did I get to the Youth Vote from this article?! So very thought provoking. Thanks Asha.
As a mental health professional, I am tasked with determining if a person is operating within the spheres of consensus and legitimate controversy, or if they are operating in the sphere of deviance to a degree that hampers their ability to function in the world. I alluded to this in my original post for the Freedom Academy as I tried to engage my colleagues about how we think about the "judgment" and "insight' items in the mental status exam. My colleagues felt that this was a measure of psychoticism. I was challenging them to expand their ideas of what makes our assessment of judgment as "normal" or "impaired." Social media has blurred the boundaries around consensus, controversy, and deviance. This has tangible impacts on the everyday lives of the people I treat. The most obvious and dangerous examples of this are COVID vaccine avoidance & COVID denialism. This raises concerns that even the mental health professional community is unprepared to effectively treat people who are spending more time in the realm of deviance that does not meet criteria for typical psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia.
Not previously an “anti-vaxxer”, but as a 50 year old healthy male who has not and will NEVER take any Covid jabs based initially on skepticism of our overall response to COVID-19...my assessment at this point is that I 💯made the right choice. Honestly would like to know...am I (along with the significant portion of people who are declining to get “boosted”) a candidate for mental health treatment? Cause my perception is that a significant portion of the world has gone bananas....
Initially, I found the above analysis quite helpful & was going to respond by liking it without comment. I’ve rethought that in light of:
Several of Maria Ressa’s recent comments about social media, most notably, per The Late Show, “social media has ‘come in and used free speech to stifle free speech’” [my emphasis]
HC Richardson’s closing sentence in her Dec. 3 Substack, [Republicans… silence on Trump’s profound attack on the Constitution, the basis of our democratic government] That is the story, and it is earth shattering. [my emphasis]
Points which beg the question: Why are we talking around these basic facts rather than addressing them?
I suggest that this is due to a pervasive misunderstanding of Democracy. Like automobile driving, Democracy does not — and cannot — function without rules. Democracy Requires Rules, most notably the Golden Rule. Other requirements include: developmental maturity (i.e., not for 2-year olds), a minimum of good health, (e.g., not paranoia), a minimum of education ( no-one has an inherent right to an uninformed opinion), etc.
Thomas Merton once said something to the effect that we immerse ourselves in Distraction — to the degree that we even distract ourselves from distraction by distraction. In closing, I suggest we stop distracting ourselves by talking around things like democracy and deal with them face-to-face.
Finally, I really do value much of what you’ve posted. Thought-provoking. Thank you so much for your effort in this regard.
I hadn't really thought about the topic of your most recent post regarding thin trust. Your post framed exactly where we are as a society and made me want to contribute to positive change in discourse. I'm interested in how to engage with people of opposite and/or opposing extreme views in a productive and mutually beneficial manner.
I’m one of them...happened upon this post and figured why not? If you check out who I’ve subscribed to on substack, you’ll see I’m now waaaaay outside my echo chamber right now😂When I read Asha’s piece, I struggle to see it as more than a rehash of the standard partisan talking points in the ‘culture war’. I am on board with the issue of societal trust though...which is as fragmented as it’s ever been in my 5 decades. So I guess the question I’d like an answer to, (and forgive me if I misread the piece)is “are there certain viewpoints/issues that are so far outside the realm of acceptable discourse that they should be censored and/or banned?” Eg: Covid vaccine injuries for one timely and hot-button issue.
Aaron, I think you bring up the inherent tension in our current civil discourse, which used to be resolved by gatekeepers in the media. This post suggests that courts now take this gatekeeper role. But the problem is this type of system has lost credibility. The power structure of information has flattened, leaving the old gatekeepers yowling about their loss of status and people like Alex Jones telling awful lies to make money. "How do we adjust to the new reality?" is the real question, not "how do we get back to the good old days."
Fragmentation is the result of chopping people into groups to sell them advertising. The entire web model is based on that. The system creates conflict because it keeps people online longer, and gives more opportunity to show them ads.
Hmmm...it’s a matter of degree then? I think there’s a good discussion to be had about censorship and propaganda and using taxpayer funds and the media and 3 letter agencies to do so. And whether/how much that has occurred especially since 2020...and are we ok with this? Because I perceive this substack as rather ‘left’ leaning (sorry it’s easy shorthand) are we ok when the ‘other’ side behaves in the same manner?
"We need to have mechanisms outside the judicial system to resurrect some boundaries between agreed upon facts, legitimate controversies, and ideas that are not worthy of debate."
Unfortunately, I'm not aware of any society, or any institution, in any era, which provided a stable, robust, consistent framework for excluding nonsense and falsehoods from public discourse.
Humans (individually and in groups) seem to have a remarkable capacity to discount and ignore brute facts of reality- even to the point of hastening their own demise. This is especially the case when inconvenient facts intrude upon a person's preferred narratives, their idealized sense of self, their entrenched worldview.
Our only hope, thin and fraying as it seems at the moment, is to appeal to enough people with intact reality testing, operating in good faith, to reinforce the barricades of reason, logic, and empirical truth.
This is why I signed on. Very nice piece that presents info I otherwise would not have seen. There are however not 3 spheres, but rather 2 circles and 1 box. Misinformation abounds.
Seems to me that the problem of breakdown of trust and cool norms predate the rise of social media, though it accelerated the process and the extent.
I work as a trial lawyer and have for decades, dealing mostly with the impacts of corporate misconduct. Top of mind examples like exploding Ford Pintos, Big Tobacco, Love Canal, asbestos, and the like predate by decades our current dysfunction. These were problems caused by venal misconduct.
We relied on the judicial system to create a place of accountability. Sometimes it worked, albeit slowly, and sometimes it failed miserably. But the structures were essential to a healthy democracy, and they predate by decades the stopgap function that may or may not save democracy.
My point is that the original system of trust was not as prevalent as this implies. We’ve always seen abuse, fraud, and misconduct and used the judicial system to limit or remedy the harm.
There are differences. As horrifying as Philip Morris or BP’s misconduct might be, they ultimately adhered to the decisions of the judiciary.
So, I imagine that the real difference is what drove you to offer this class and me, an old trial lawyer, to enroll, and that is the problem of disinformation.
Thanks, David. Really interesting points. I'd argue that civic and societal obligations are a little different than corporate obligations -- we want and hope the former to emerge and self-sustain organically, while we can expect that the latter, driven as they are by profit motive, will need some level of regulation and enforcement by law and the courts. (In fact, the Putnam book I reference in the piece details the breakdown of social trust from 1945-2000, arguing that it was significantly more prevalent in the post World War II era.) Maybe where this converges is that with the advent of social media, we -- and our relationships -- ARE the product in a commercial enterprise. And disinformation is a business (as Jones illustrates.) So now our relationships -- which are manipulated by these market forces -- are moving into the the realm of corporate misconduct you've observed as an attorney.
Asha- Thanks. That last thought is intriguing. I thought that our content, which platforms get for free, was the product. (Hell of a business model!)
But if instead it’s our relationships and disinformation is part of a business model, we’re in something different.
I assumed that disinformation was about political and international warfare, somewhat akin to your recent readings. But if it’s more than that, we may need to unpack that if we’re going to come up with better models.
Your thinking on destruction of social (versus corporate) trust seems really important.
All of this is totally thought provoking. Deep appreciation.
We'll get into this later in the class, but the social media platforms are commodifying our attention, not content -- that's what they are selling to advertisers (and that's why the platforms are designed to keep us on them as long as possible). They also have an interest in keeping us siloed in "bubbles" because that makes micro targeting by advertisers easier and more profitable for the companies -- which, of course, makes our divisions easier to exploit. It's pretty messed up, when you think about it. Thank you for this exchange!
Thanks Asha, excellent comments about the new complicated Information Age. Maybe just add the importance that people need to be critical about what they read and the source of the information. Many people are just so lazy, superficial and have no sense of critical thinking, a huge and maybe the main problem here. E.g. Trump and his lies and fake news are not the real problem, the problem is his (many) lazy followers lack of critical thinking.
So it seems to me, that besides erosion of trust in society and the lack of consensus on often basic facts...an additional complication comes with the increasing factionalism of the courts. When the judgement of basic facts must be litigated, the neutrality of the court becomes an essential factor. If the arbiter is also a political player the scenario becomes even more confusing.
A lot to digest here, and I agree that as a society, we have lost the social cohesion needed to be able to engage in civil discourse and thus to operate as a cohesive but diverse (in opinions and values) society.
Trust is an interesting one. There are many examples in recent years of organisations, institutions, and agencies complaining that the public has lost trust in them - mainstream media corporations are a great example of the institution itself undermining public trust. But probably the best example is the US Supreme Court. If an institution with this much power hands down ridiculous judgements such as on abortion, they undermine their own credibility - and they wonder why the public has lost trust in them.
Yes, I know, the judgement was to give these decisions to the states so as "not to undermine the authority and independence of the states". But, they knew full well what the ramifications of their decision would be. For members of the Supreme Court to come out and ask why the public has lost trust in this institution is just so bizarre.
So, Putnam places a significant emphasis on trust as the social lubricator of society. To become a society that relies on the principles of "the contract" to basically enforce what should come reasonably naturally to a cohesive society is a sign of breakdown - it might be enough to see us through a rough patch, but in order to enhance democracy, we need to somehow rebuild that trust.
I love the clarity of this and how it gets to such fundamental issues. Please keep these great analyses coming. Thank you for sharing with all of us what you offer to your students!!
The distinction between thin trust and cool trust is resonating with me because of work issues I've been thinking about lately, but of course they are broadly societal issues (and probably this is the reason why they are work issues). The analogy to economic practice is useful too. In "Debt: The Frist 5,000 Years" the late anthropologist David Graeber shows that during the Middle Ages, Islam had trading markets that were remarkably free of government interference because they were based on the underlying principle of mutual aid. When Adam Smith cribbed Islamic writings on economics (down to a near verbatim quote of the pin factory analogy), he kept the free market part, but replaced "mutual aid" with "competition." I'm sure I'm painting with too broad brush, but I sometimes feel that this is perhaps where trust begins to tilt from thin to cool in the West. (I know, it's much more complicated, but dang...). In any case, the cultivation of empathy and the reaffirmation of mutual aid as social foundations is a culture-wide project that we desperately need to undertake.
"If I had to draw a diagram of where we are today, it would be just one big sphere of controversy" and that is as concise a statement of where we are as any that I've read. I am enjoying your Freedom Academy pieces. Thanks!
I recommend Rugby, TN for the cabin and that you add a rooster to your roster.
I'm not as concerned. They leave a trail and can be tracked down.
"Frankly, it has me thinking my best bet is a mountain cabin and two chickens." And really good wifi, right? 😉 You impress me as someone who'll want to stay apprised of developments. And connected to your internet friends no matter where you are. ☺️
Agreed. I just think the structure of social media algorithms has a large role to play.
Wow! So much to absorb and understand in this lesson. "... the court system may be the only institution left that can adequately police the line between truth and lies..." Enter Judge Cannon, who tried to gaslight the entire legal system with her special master ruling. Enter the SCOTUS who have gutted women's privacy and voting rights. Can we really count on the courts? ~~ Here we are in our "Asha Bubble", having decided we can trust her to provide us with Truth. So we each individually have to determine where to place our trust and who to rely on for accurate information about our world, trying to find sources within Consensus and Legitimate Controversy, to use Prof. Rosen's diagram. So it's all about Critical Thinking and educating how it's done and training people to actually do it. I'm heartened by how the youth voted in the midterms. I think it shows they can and do think critically and are not so easily taken in. And that they do care about democracy and climate emergency. Whoa! How did I get to the Youth Vote from this article?! So very thought provoking. Thanks Asha.
As a mental health professional, I am tasked with determining if a person is operating within the spheres of consensus and legitimate controversy, or if they are operating in the sphere of deviance to a degree that hampers their ability to function in the world. I alluded to this in my original post for the Freedom Academy as I tried to engage my colleagues about how we think about the "judgment" and "insight' items in the mental status exam. My colleagues felt that this was a measure of psychoticism. I was challenging them to expand their ideas of what makes our assessment of judgment as "normal" or "impaired." Social media has blurred the boundaries around consensus, controversy, and deviance. This has tangible impacts on the everyday lives of the people I treat. The most obvious and dangerous examples of this are COVID vaccine avoidance & COVID denialism. This raises concerns that even the mental health professional community is unprepared to effectively treat people who are spending more time in the realm of deviance that does not meet criteria for typical psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia.
Not previously an “anti-vaxxer”, but as a 50 year old healthy male who has not and will NEVER take any Covid jabs based initially on skepticism of our overall response to COVID-19...my assessment at this point is that I 💯made the right choice. Honestly would like to know...am I (along with the significant portion of people who are declining to get “boosted”) a candidate for mental health treatment? Cause my perception is that a significant portion of the world has gone bananas....
Fascinating.
Initially, I found the above analysis quite helpful & was going to respond by liking it without comment. I’ve rethought that in light of:
Several of Maria Ressa’s recent comments about social media, most notably, per The Late Show, “social media has ‘come in and used free speech to stifle free speech’” [my emphasis]
HC Richardson’s closing sentence in her Dec. 3 Substack, [Republicans… silence on Trump’s profound attack on the Constitution, the basis of our democratic government] That is the story, and it is earth shattering. [my emphasis]
Points which beg the question: Why are we talking around these basic facts rather than addressing them?
I suggest that this is due to a pervasive misunderstanding of Democracy. Like automobile driving, Democracy does not — and cannot — function without rules. Democracy Requires Rules, most notably the Golden Rule. Other requirements include: developmental maturity (i.e., not for 2-year olds), a minimum of good health, (e.g., not paranoia), a minimum of education ( no-one has an inherent right to an uninformed opinion), etc.
Thomas Merton once said something to the effect that we immerse ourselves in Distraction — to the degree that we even distract ourselves from distraction by distraction. In closing, I suggest we stop distracting ourselves by talking around things like democracy and deal with them face-to-face.
Finally, I really do value much of what you’ve posted. Thought-provoking. Thank you so much for your effort in this regard.
I hadn't really thought about the topic of your most recent post regarding thin trust. Your post framed exactly where we are as a society and made me want to contribute to positive change in discourse. I'm interested in how to engage with people of opposite and/or opposing extreme views in a productive and mutually beneficial manner.
I’m one of them...happened upon this post and figured why not? If you check out who I’ve subscribed to on substack, you’ll see I’m now waaaaay outside my echo chamber right now😂When I read Asha’s piece, I struggle to see it as more than a rehash of the standard partisan talking points in the ‘culture war’. I am on board with the issue of societal trust though...which is as fragmented as it’s ever been in my 5 decades. So I guess the question I’d like an answer to, (and forgive me if I misread the piece)is “are there certain viewpoints/issues that are so far outside the realm of acceptable discourse that they should be censored and/or banned?” Eg: Covid vaccine injuries for one timely and hot-button issue.
Aaron, I think you bring up the inherent tension in our current civil discourse, which used to be resolved by gatekeepers in the media. This post suggests that courts now take this gatekeeper role. But the problem is this type of system has lost credibility. The power structure of information has flattened, leaving the old gatekeepers yowling about their loss of status and people like Alex Jones telling awful lies to make money. "How do we adjust to the new reality?" is the real question, not "how do we get back to the good old days."
Fragmentation is the result of chopping people into groups to sell them advertising. The entire web model is based on that. The system creates conflict because it keeps people online longer, and gives more opportunity to show them ads.
Are gatekeeping and censorship the same thing?
In a way, I think so.
Hmmm...it’s a matter of degree then? I think there’s a good discussion to be had about censorship and propaganda and using taxpayer funds and the media and 3 letter agencies to do so. And whether/how much that has occurred especially since 2020...and are we ok with this? Because I perceive this substack as rather ‘left’ leaning (sorry it’s easy shorthand) are we ok when the ‘other’ side behaves in the same manner?
"We need to have mechanisms outside the judicial system to resurrect some boundaries between agreed upon facts, legitimate controversies, and ideas that are not worthy of debate."
Unfortunately, I'm not aware of any society, or any institution, in any era, which provided a stable, robust, consistent framework for excluding nonsense and falsehoods from public discourse.
Humans (individually and in groups) seem to have a remarkable capacity to discount and ignore brute facts of reality- even to the point of hastening their own demise. This is especially the case when inconvenient facts intrude upon a person's preferred narratives, their idealized sense of self, their entrenched worldview.
Our only hope, thin and fraying as it seems at the moment, is to appeal to enough people with intact reality testing, operating in good faith, to reinforce the barricades of reason, logic, and empirical truth.
And those efforts are not assured of success.
This is why I signed on. Very nice piece that presents info I otherwise would not have seen. There are however not 3 spheres, but rather 2 circles and 1 box. Misinformation abounds.
Seems to me that the problem of breakdown of trust and cool norms predate the rise of social media, though it accelerated the process and the extent.
I work as a trial lawyer and have for decades, dealing mostly with the impacts of corporate misconduct. Top of mind examples like exploding Ford Pintos, Big Tobacco, Love Canal, asbestos, and the like predate by decades our current dysfunction. These were problems caused by venal misconduct.
We relied on the judicial system to create a place of accountability. Sometimes it worked, albeit slowly, and sometimes it failed miserably. But the structures were essential to a healthy democracy, and they predate by decades the stopgap function that may or may not save democracy.
My point is that the original system of trust was not as prevalent as this implies. We’ve always seen abuse, fraud, and misconduct and used the judicial system to limit or remedy the harm.
There are differences. As horrifying as Philip Morris or BP’s misconduct might be, they ultimately adhered to the decisions of the judiciary.
So, I imagine that the real difference is what drove you to offer this class and me, an old trial lawyer, to enroll, and that is the problem of disinformation.
Thanks, David. Really interesting points. I'd argue that civic and societal obligations are a little different than corporate obligations -- we want and hope the former to emerge and self-sustain organically, while we can expect that the latter, driven as they are by profit motive, will need some level of regulation and enforcement by law and the courts. (In fact, the Putnam book I reference in the piece details the breakdown of social trust from 1945-2000, arguing that it was significantly more prevalent in the post World War II era.) Maybe where this converges is that with the advent of social media, we -- and our relationships -- ARE the product in a commercial enterprise. And disinformation is a business (as Jones illustrates.) So now our relationships -- which are manipulated by these market forces -- are moving into the the realm of corporate misconduct you've observed as an attorney.
Asha- Thanks. That last thought is intriguing. I thought that our content, which platforms get for free, was the product. (Hell of a business model!)
But if instead it’s our relationships and disinformation is part of a business model, we’re in something different.
I assumed that disinformation was about political and international warfare, somewhat akin to your recent readings. But if it’s more than that, we may need to unpack that if we’re going to come up with better models.
Your thinking on destruction of social (versus corporate) trust seems really important.
All of this is totally thought provoking. Deep appreciation.
We'll get into this later in the class, but the social media platforms are commodifying our attention, not content -- that's what they are selling to advertisers (and that's why the platforms are designed to keep us on them as long as possible). They also have an interest in keeping us siloed in "bubbles" because that makes micro targeting by advertisers easier and more profitable for the companies -- which, of course, makes our divisions easier to exploit. It's pretty messed up, when you think about it. Thank you for this exchange!
Commodifying our attention - well put. Looking forward to hearing more about this.
"It's pretty messed up..."
Such an understatement!
Thanks Asha, excellent comments about the new complicated Information Age. Maybe just add the importance that people need to be critical about what they read and the source of the information. Many people are just so lazy, superficial and have no sense of critical thinking, a huge and maybe the main problem here. E.g. Trump and his lies and fake news are not the real problem, the problem is his (many) lazy followers lack of critical thinking.
So it seems to me, that besides erosion of trust in society and the lack of consensus on often basic facts...an additional complication comes with the increasing factionalism of the courts. When the judgement of basic facts must be litigated, the neutrality of the court becomes an essential factor. If the arbiter is also a political player the scenario becomes even more confusing.
A lot to digest here, and I agree that as a society, we have lost the social cohesion needed to be able to engage in civil discourse and thus to operate as a cohesive but diverse (in opinions and values) society.
Trust is an interesting one. There are many examples in recent years of organisations, institutions, and agencies complaining that the public has lost trust in them - mainstream media corporations are a great example of the institution itself undermining public trust. But probably the best example is the US Supreme Court. If an institution with this much power hands down ridiculous judgements such as on abortion, they undermine their own credibility - and they wonder why the public has lost trust in them.
Yes, I know, the judgement was to give these decisions to the states so as "not to undermine the authority and independence of the states". But, they knew full well what the ramifications of their decision would be. For members of the Supreme Court to come out and ask why the public has lost trust in this institution is just so bizarre.
So, Putnam places a significant emphasis on trust as the social lubricator of society. To become a society that relies on the principles of "the contract" to basically enforce what should come reasonably naturally to a cohesive society is a sign of breakdown - it might be enough to see us through a rough patch, but in order to enhance democracy, we need to somehow rebuild that trust.
"The judicial system is one of the few (only?) institutions left where truth actually matters, and can be enforced." I vote for only.
I love the clarity of this and how it gets to such fundamental issues. Please keep these great analyses coming. Thank you for sharing with all of us what you offer to your students!!
Rosen’s diagram and what is implied/drawn from it, sends chills up my spine.
Very helpful step-back for me, thanks!