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Is Trust Breaking Down in the United States?
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11516 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
Date : |
10 / 1986 |
2,348 Words |
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Stephen Miller
Stephen Miller is director of American programming for Radio
Free Europe/ Radio Liberty. He is the author of several books
and numerous articles on political, literary, and cultural
questions. |
Americans have been continually reminded in recent years that one should be wary of strangers, even - or perhaps especially - very polite strangers. They may turn out to be muggers, child molesters, or even paranoid schizophrenics unaccountably released from mental institutions.
Moreover, Americans have become fearful that some of the products they buy may have been tampered with. In July of this year several different products - including packaged desserts, sodas, and toothpaste - were removed from shelves of stores because they may have been laced with poisonous substances.
When I was a child the scary aspects of Halloween were all make-believe. Now, it seems, Halloween is a time when many people are scared for good reason: The apple given by a friendly old lady may have a razor blade embedded in it.
Is the United States becoming a society riven with distrust?
If that were the case, it would be bad news, since a society animated mainly by distrust would not function very well. It would not necessarily collapse but it would stagnate, since distrust is debilitating.
Of course, any sensible person cultivates a certain amount of distrust. No sense looking for trouble, we say to ourselves when we refuse to pick up a hitchhiker or even to help someone with car trouble (better to notify the police). But we do, after all, trust a neighbor t look after out pets when we are on vacation, or drive our kids to school if we are sick. Indeed, all day long we trust strangers to perform services we are paying for - doctors, bus drivers, waiters, even hair stylists.
Where trust disappears
What is a society like in which there is virtually no trust? Macbeth provides a glimpse. After Duncan is murdered, no one knows whom to trust. It is a society, as Ross says, where we "do not know ourselves; when we hold rumor / From what we fear, yet know not what we fear / But float upon a wild and violent sea / Each way and none." The disorientation that arises from such deep distrust is at first to Macbeth's advantage, since it becomes very risky for anyone to try to form a group to depose him. But in the long run distrust works against Macbeth, for he can't trust anyone himself; he becomes isolated. And trust, as if it were some elemental force that cannot be totally
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