trust

Every year there is an international survey, called the Edelman “Trust Barometer” carried out in 28 countries to measure the level of trust its citizens hold with institutions such as Governments, media, business, and NGO's. Australia, for the second year in a row along with Singapore were the only countries that recorded an overall drop in trust in all categories. Across all 28 countries an average of 42% of people thought their government was the most broken institute but in Australia the figure was 56%.

A law passed in a Joint Resolution by the 84th Congress and approved by President Dwight Eisenhower in 1956, declared "In God We Trust" must appear on American currency.

Apparently this trust does not extend to mere mortals. Every year there is an international survey, called the Edelman “Trust Barometer” carried out in 28 countries to measure the level of trust its citizens hold with institutions such as Governments, media, business, and NGO's. Australia, for the second year in a row along with Singapore were the only countries that recorded an overall drop in trust in all categories. Across all 28 countries an average of 42% of people thought their government was the most broken institute but in Australia the figure was 56%. This was just 4 percentage points ahead of the lowest rated country, Russia where elections are rigged and opponents jailed or worse. Perhaps this last figure has a lot to do with our expectations, we are after all relying on governments to protect us from the ravages of banks, miners, developers and assorted tycoons. Interestingly China has the greatest level in trust, possibly because of the very public crack down on corruption currently underway by the nations leader Xi JinPing.

It would be difficult to find a complete answer as to why our trust in governments have collapsed so dramatically but one aspect is obvious, both major parties have such an obsession with monetary economics that human welfare is often sidelined or even ignored by the demands for GDP growth. Treasurers continually boast about our 25 years of continuous economic growth and seemed surprised when the population is unimpressed even though they are well aware that GDP “measures everything but tells us nothing”.

One example of this comes from Francis Sullivan who is the Catholic Churches representative at the Royal Commission into child abuse. He is neither an apologists or a defender of the church but he recently went public lamenting the lack of willingness of politicians to pursue the recommendations of the royal commission or even the bill on a national redress scheme they belatedly tabled in October last year. Perhaps tellingly Sullivan suggests that child abuse is not considered sufficiently important by politicians who only only respond to what he called “dynamic political narrative.”

Perhaps so, but this claim could also be made by victims of the HIV, asbestos related diseases and those afflicted by chemical contamination of their environment, all of whom languished in obscurity until public pressure forced governments to act. Even then James Hardie was allowed to relocate to Holland and thus avoid much of its financial responsibilities, the contamination from fire fighting chemicals sits firmly in the too hard basket and vehicle emissions in Australia remain far higher than other developed nations. There have been similar stories of governments failure to respond to issues including childhood poverty, the stolen generation, homelessness or even the obesity crises where the government rejected recommendations to put a tax on sugar. The indigenous disadvantage report is tabled every 2 years and joins others in the round basket including action on climate change even though the frightening effects are becoming painfully obvious to everyone but those in Canberra.

If you were an African-American, who would you trust? Would you trust your local trigger-happy police? Would you trust the haters who demand that the Confederate flag, clearly used by them as a symbol of racism, be flown over your state capitol? According at a recent civil rights report published in China, "Cops killing African-Americans is practically a norm in the US". And then also add no jobs, sub-par schools and extensive social ostracization to that toxic mix. Trust results from all this? Highly unlikely.

For Fathers Day, I wanted to take my son to see "Inside Out," a new animated movie by Pixar, but he ended up seeing "The Wolfpack" instead -- a film about a whole different style of fathering altogether.

But I still wanna go see "Inside Out". Its main plot revolves around meeting some of the various emotions that live inside of our brains, such as "Anger" and "Sadness".

But according to a book I'm currently reading by anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson, one of our most important human emotions is trust. I wish that Pixar had introduced us to "Trust" as well. "If a small baby doesn't feel that it can trust, specifically that it can trust having some modicum of control over its own situation, then it might even die," to paraphrase Bateson. Along with the ability to learn to walk and talk and develop teeth, apparently babies also need to learn to develop trust too -- and if they don't, life can become unbearable for them. And we adults also need to learn to meet "Trust" as well.

But how in the world do we actually go about meeting this actual "Trust" person ourselves? We do it by putting ourselves into trusting situations and then taking careful notes on who passes our trust tests -- and who fails.

For instance, would you ever trust a mother who, like that bizarre mom in "Game of Thrones," stood by and watched her own daughter getting burned at the stake -- only protesting when it was obviously Too Late?

And would you ever trust a government that continually sells out "We the people" to Wall Street and War Street at every chance that it gets? When it comes to trusting our government's current warriors and cavaliers in DC, I would much sooner trust Lebron James and Seth Curry. http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/30876-focus-climate-change-is-a-crisis-we-can-only-solve-togethe

If you were an African-American, who would you trust? Would you trust your local trigger-happy police? Would you trust the haters who demand that the Confederate flag, clearly used by them as a symbol of racism, be flown over your state capitol? http://gawker.com/unarmed-people-of-color-killed-by-police-1999-2014-1666672349 According at a recent civil rights report published in China, "Cops killing African-Americans is practically a norm in the US". And then also add no jobs, sub-par schools and extensive social ostracization to that toxic mix. Trust results from all this? Highly unlikely.

Will Americans ever again be able trust our mainstream media to tell the truth after WikiLeaks just exposed that Saudi Arabia has been slipping them payola for years now in order to get the MSM to leave the House of Saud's name out of the news, including but not limited to its major role in such events as 9-11, the war on Iraq and creating ISIS -- as well as the celebration of its 100th beheading this year? https://wikileaks.org/saudi-cables/press

Would you ever be able to trust Congress and Obama again after they worked so hard to shove that horrendous TTP trade agreement down our throats like some porn movie featurette -- just to make corporate billionaires get even richer than they are right now? http://www.thenation.com/article/206409/damage

How can we possibly trust Monsanto after it has blatantly chosen profits from GMO-bred Frankenstein plants and animals over us -- like we were some orphan step-child they are forced to put up with?

And how can we even think about ever trusting Israel, our government's major ally in the Middle East, when all that the neo-colonialists who run Israel with an iron hand want to do is to stir up trouble in the region so that we taxpayers can come to their rescue? I was in Sweida, in Syria, last year and, trust me, the Syrians trust President Assad a lot more than they trust ISIS's BFF Israel. http://www.globalresearch.ca/syrian-druze-fighting-israeli-backed-al-qaeda/5455651

And what about our very own Supreme Court? Anton Scalia? We are supposed to actually trust this man? Hardly. Not after he gleefully sold out American voters in favor of huge corporations with regard to Citizens United. Seth and Lebron have much better judgment than Scalia does. Heck, even Curry's two-year-old daughter would have better judgment than that.

Trusting that climate change isn't really real, are we? Good luck with that one. With American war hawks all practically wetting their pants at a chance to attack Russia through Ukraine, and with Turkey, the Saudis, Israel and the US neo-colonialists just dying to do to Syria and Yemen what they did to Libya, Egypt, Afghanistan, Palestine and Iraq, then there is only one thing we can truly trust in here -- that "war" is gonna release so much carbon dioxide that it's gonna cause climate change on steroids. And that we're soon gonna meet a whole new kind of "I can't breathe." http://original.antiwar.com/buchanan/2015/06/22/nato-russia-collision-ahead/

And can we even trust the Rule of Law here in America? Or the FBI or the IRS or even the freaking building codes after that balcony in a relatively new building here in Berkeley just fell down?

Modern American government has no transparency these days. No one knows where our money goes. The CIA is a black hole and so is the Pentagon, NSA, NATO, Congress, etc. And who even knows what the White House is up to, let alone the Federal Reserve. Countries that have no transparency are clearly on the road to dictatorship -- and who the freak can trust dictators? Talk about your lack of control!

The moral here? That Americans also need to develop trust in their government if we are ever going to grow up and "meet Trust" in ourselves. And our government needs to start acting a hecka lot more trustworthy too.

PS: And speaking of books, I'd like to recommend one. Along with all the usual murder mysteries that I love such as Last of the Independents and As the Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust, my summer reading also includes a book called Chief Complaint: A Country Doctor's Tales of Life in Galilee.

"Chief Complaint" is a wonderful compilation of what small-town life was like in Palestine both before and after Israeli neo-colonialists killed off thousands of Palestinians, forced a million of them off their land, seized their property and lost their trust. It's a delightful read, a true anthropology of what village life was and is like for Palestinians in Galilee -- with all its warts and merits included. http://justworldbooks.com/chief-complaint/

Photo is of me and Ghost back in 1963, back when I still had a little bit of trust left (as much trust as a Beatnik could have that is -- after Hiroshima, HUAC and the beginnings of Vietnam where my neighbor's son was an "adviser" even back then.)

Originally published on Jane Stillwater's blog