Who has stolen the trust of the Chinese people?#
Without trust, there is no social order, and even less economic motivation. People cannot feel warmth; instead, they experience endless loneliness and pain. This is a description from the blue book on social mentality published by the Institute of Sociology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences a few years ago.
Who has stolen the trust of the Chinese people? To answer this question, I thought of a joke. It says that in today's China, those who sell steamed buns do not eat the buns they make, those who grow vegetables do not eat the vegetables they grow, those who sell medicine do not dare to take the medicine they produce, and those who sell milk powder never consume domestic milk powder... This joke itself answers my question well from one perspective. When fraud and deception become a trend, even a fashionable norm, all that remains for everyone to do is two things.
- One is to only trust oneself
- The other is to never trust others
More and more Chinese people are suffering from a fear of deception. They have been warned countless times since childhood not to talk to strangers, and reality has reinforced this judgment. In the past, natural disasters were fewer and man-made disasters were more; now, there are many natural disasters and even more man-made disasters. Everyone is reluctant to easily grant trust to others.
The deeper reasons for the trust crisis#
The more terrifying distrust lies in the huge divide in group psychology and values: between officials and the public, people do not believe in debunking rumors but tend to believe in spreading rumors; between merchants and the public, there is distrust of domestic products and a blind preference for foreign brands; parents do not trust teachers, patients do not trust doctors, tourists do not trust shopkeepers... The rift in values, worldviews, and cognition between men and women is quite severe, leading many to choose not to marry or have children, preferring to live alone rather than engage in relationships. Men do not trust women, and women do not trust men... it's tragic!
When people encounter situations or individuals, they always place doubt before trust, which is fundamentally abnormal. The trust of the Chinese has never extended beyond the family sphere, and now there are many conflicts even between children and parents...
Economist Arrow once asserted that many economic backwardness in the world can be explained by a lack of mutual trust. The biggest crisis is not an economic crisis, but a crisis of trust between people. As long as currency can circulate normally in society, the economy will surely improve quickly. But even if we know the truth, no one will take the first step to be the big fool.
The foundation and restoration of trust#
- Without trust, there is no social order.
Sociologist Simmel said, "Trust is one of the most important integrative forces in society. Without the universal trust that people enjoy among each other, society itself will disintegrate. Modern life is built to a much greater extent on trust in the honesty of others than is usually understood." Trust is one of the main tools for establishing social order. It can fulfill this function because trust allows a person's behavior to have greater certainty.
For example, if you pursue a girl, if she can make you firmly believe that you can go all the way with her, then this marriage is bound to happen because you have enough certainty. But if the other party is a fool, not only does she not provide you with a sense of security, but she also gives you no hope, is often coy, cannot distinguish good from bad, and has an incorrect worldview. If you do not choose to leave, then you are not normal! Increasing the certainty of behavior is achieved through the role that trust plays in customs and reciprocal cooperation. Trust has long become an important virtue in personality and has entered customs. Customs not only shape personality during the growth period but also, thereafter, constrain people's behavior through social pressure applied to those who breach contracts and trust.
- Once trust is shattered, it is extremely difficult to restore.
Simplifying complexity is a strategy that humans have evolved from survival. In human society, trust specifically undertakes the function of simplifying complexity. Generally speaking, trust can be divided into three categories: personal trust, monetary trust, and expert trust.
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Personal trust is the oldest form of trust among humans. In primitive times, when the social circles of each member were relatively small, trust at that time was basically personal trust. When selecting partners for cooperation, the choice was based on a specific person rather than a role, a score, or a university degree. Knowing someone inside and out means they are trustworthy. This type of trust is called personal trust.
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Monetary trust arises as social circles expand. When we step out of the circle of kinship and acquaintances, we can no longer find trusted individuals to protect us, exchange with us, or cooperate with us. We enter unfamiliar circles, largely bidding farewell to acquaintances, but still need cooperation and exchange because social life is based on social exchange. At this point, people have to seek to establish another social trust mechanism, one of which is money. When you have money, it doesn't matter if you don't know anyone in that place; you can rely on your cash to stay in a hotel, take a boat, a car, or a plane without any issues. The structure of monetary trust is based on conformity, meaning that money (especially paper money) has been proven feasible during circulation and has passed the test of people's daily life experiences, making it widely accepted.
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Expert trust comes into play when there is no one among "acquaintances" who can help you solve a specific problem, requiring you to seek help from "experts." For example, if you are sick, you need to find a good doctor. But who do you go to? You can't specify, you don't know anyone, and you certainly don't know such a doctor. So what do you do? You look for a good hospital and find a well-known doctor, a professor-level doctor, or an attending physician, and pay 14 yuan for a consultation, which makes you feel more secure. This is expert trust.
Personal, monetary, and expert trust systems support all trust in our society. However, now that monetary trust has issues, other forms of trust have also become severely problematic. People trust nothing but money, but extreme trust in money, without any other trust systems, means that if you believe in money and like money, you won't be able to earn money because the nature of money is based on the returns from transactions and connections between other trusted individuals.
To a greater extent, we must still rely on personal trust; trust among acquaintances remains the cornerstone of our society. Since "killing familiarity" has become a common phenomenon in Chinese society, the most basic trust structure we rely on has begun to collapse. "Killing familiarity" signifies not only a lack of trust among strangers but also an increasing loss of trust among acquaintances, indicating that social trust has reached its lowest point.
Trust in a society is the result of thousands of years of civilization, which has led to some societies having higher levels of trust among their members, while others have slightly lower levels. However, every society enjoys a certain degree of trust. This is the product of thousands of years of civilization. But once society shatters it, restoring it becomes extremely difficult, even requiring a generational effort to change!
Perhaps we all know where the problem lies, but in the end, we can only talk about it because we cannot change anything. This is reality.