Perhaps this is the keystone question of our time. It is trust that binds us as couples, friends, teammates, collaborative organizations, communities, and civilizations. It Is trust that enables reciprocity, morality, and a shared identity.
The media, main stream and social, is an amplifier in an echo chamber resonating with public sentiment. It is not the root cause.
Fear is growing in all directions with volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. It resonates with tribalism and defensive instincts. Uncertainty – Each person understands a diminishing portion of all knowledge and information available. We don’t have cognitive capacities to manage the information overload so cognitive fatigue sets in, further diminishing capacity. It’s a vicious circle spiraling into randomness.
Without trust we face civil entropy and collapse. It can happen precipitously, cascading into a stone age survival mentality. We need to reorder civilization in ways that facilitate and support our innate social nature, starting at the interpersonal level and with a viral meme nudging a common human identity that unfolds like a fractal across communities and civilization as a whole.
We may be nearing a tipping point in our capacity to manage civil complexity as we are experiencing negative network effects – compounding exponential growth of information noise. The universal Strong Man leader promises to make right, to bring order and restore certainty. His would-be hero’s journey will end in failure without addressing the root causes. He wrongly identifies the concrete and straw man as the evil or stupid ones to be handily defeated. The root cause today is abstract and invisible, yet in fear we instinctively go concrete looking for toxins and predators.
We must recognize the universal Scaling Law that limits all systems in size and complexity and reorder ourselves in alignment with our innate human social nature.
Randal Adcock 