Who Killed the High-Trust Space?
There may be a renewal of trust despite Americans being more suspicious of their neighbors than ever before.
In many ways, Generation Z is coming of age in a Brave New World. We’re the first true digital natives, and we enjoy a quality of life that most humans throughout history never imagined. Yet, our generation is constantly reminded of “how it used to be.” We’ve all rolled our eyes at grandparents and old bosses prefacing their advice with “In my day” — but I have to admit, their stories of riding bikes until the street lights came on and never-locked front doors sound pretty good.
Think about it: When was the last time you walked into the grocery store without locking your car first, or left your kid unattended at the local playground? With crime rates ever climbing in urban areas, and news channels keeping us up to date on the latest horror stories near and far, it’s little wonder our generation is more cautious than our grandparents’. The world just looks scarier than it did back then, and the possibility that our own neighbors are secretly serial killers seems all the more likely.
The idyllic bygone America where you could send your kid to the hardware store without fearing they’d get kidnapped was a high-trust society, and it’s one of the many fruits of classical liberal ideology. Though human history has been dictated by coercion and violence, divisions and warfare, the Founding Fathers, through near-unanimous adherence to both individual liberty and civic duty, were able to cultivate this little paradise. Our nation was born out of these twin pillars, and as a result, American culture developed in high-trust communities for nearly two centuries.
Somehow over the past fifty years we have lost the ideological unity that once bound our society together. The result? Americans are more suspicious of their neighbors than ever before.
When did we lose the high-trust society?
Ultimately, the death of America’s high-trust society can be traced back to the social upheaval of the 1960s when Marxist ideology began to permeate American culture through various social justice movements. Just a few short years after the Baby Boomers’ halcyon childhoods, groups that justifiably felt left out of the American Dream began pushing back against what many considered to be systemic norms of oppression.
Pushback from those whom Marx would have called “The Have-Nots” has had some positive effects on American culture: Jim Crow and discriminatory hiring practices were dismantled as a result of the Civil Rights Movement, and social inequalities between sexes were broadly acknowledged thanks to second-and-third-wave feminism.
However, the revelation that some people and groups were excluded from the American Dream based on their race or gender encouraged many to adopt the false principle that every individual can be categorized as either “oppressor” or “oppressed” based on their intrinsic qualities. This aligns with Marx’s concept of social discrimination and inequality not as a bug to be fixed, but as the defining feature of a political system. Americans embracing this worldview began to see every social injustice as a symptom of a larger problem that could only be fixed through political and societal overhaul.
This philosophy — that essentially parses out a society into special interest groups — breaks down the fibers of trust that would otherwise bind a community together. We have seen this in the degradation of social institutions: the family has come under fire as a system of patriarchal oppression; public religion is now largely viewed as a dogmatic and intolerant institution; meritocracy, whether it be in academia or the workforce, is viewed as a rigged system that masks just another set of biases for one social demographic over another.
Affirmative action and the unceasing talk of reparations typifies the dark turn social justice has taken. What began as a movement aimed at breaking down barriers between groups and establishing equal opportunities for people of all demographics, is now a movement fixated on class and race distinctions that penalizes perceived winners to redistribute their successes among less “advantaged” groups.
In other words, rather than offering everyone an equal shot at climbing the social hierarchy — we have rejected the hierarchy altogether. In so doing we have also abandoned the values that such a hierarchy once reflected: individual merit, responsibility, and achievement. In their place we champion people who can be identified, not by what they have contributed to society, but by the supposed injustices society has committed against them.
It makes sense that a high-trust society would not survive in such a punitive landscape. If you believe that your problems are inescapable and willfully imposed on you by another group, how could you treat them civilly? You wouldn’t think twice about disrupting, stealing from, or hurting them. If you’re told that you didn’t earn and therefore don’t deserve what you own, why should you buddy up with those hungrily eyeing your prosperity? In such a dog-eat-dog environment, you’re wiser to batten down the hatches and treat everyone different from you with suspicion.
When a society is constantly engaged in this warfare between classes, races, or even genders, people become fearful and resentful. Afraid of becoming the next victims of “cancel culture,” many of us just keep our heads down and try to avoid the ire of the mob.
How can we get it back?
There is still hope for regaining the high-trust society — after all, it hasn’t even been a century since our grandparents shared porch swings with their neighbors and left their windows open at night in the summertime. But high-trust societies don’t happen by accident. They require homogeneity, not of anything so superficial as race or class, but of purpose. Everyone needs to be oriented toward the same goal — a good life — conceptualized in the same way, and stemming from the same first principles. In short, we need to decide what is good and how best to do it.
On a smaller scale, high-trust spaces still exist. If you’ve ever camped in one of our excellent National Parks, you’ve probably witnessed it. Children play unattended in the campground, and hikers leave their belongings in unsecured tents while they’re out for the day. Everyone you pass on the trail greets you with a smile, and the most serious disturbance you’ll encounter is a long line near a photo op.
Why are the outdoors like this? Because everyone is there for the same reason — to appreciate beautiful scenery, spend time with loved ones, and get some exercise. Everyone there has agreed that these are good goals, largely for similar reasons. As such, they have a baseline level of trust interwoven in their interactions.
An old friend of mine trains MMA, and fights in amateur matches from time to time. These matches are also high-trust events. Tickets are handled by local teenagers, and loosely enforced. Concessions come in Igloo coolers, and cash is collected by hand. Families and supporters set up in lawn chairs, and children roughhouse in the back.
Attendees and fighters at these events come from all races, cultures, and walks of life. They grew up in different neighborhoods, and have different day jobs. But, they are united by their shared idea of good — in this case, friendly competition and sportsmanship.
Other than church, our remaining high-trust spaces revolve around trivial things. Sports and camping trips are easy to agree on, and undoubtedly many of the times when you’ve felt most alive have been in a similar space. But imagine if we agreed on the important stuff.
Imagine a world where we oriented ourselves away from manufactured divisions and toward the principles that will make life better for everyone — freedom, faith, and family. Imagine looking at someone better off than ourselves and thinking “how can I be like that?” without jealousy. Imagine looking at someone worse off than ourselves and thinking “how can I help them?” without suspicion.
If we all sought to expand our high-trust spaces to include just a few more unlikely people, this kind of society might become more than an ideal.
Start with your high-trust spaces — church, gym, PTO, neighborhood groups. Keep them focused. If it’s a board game night, play board games. If it’s a school meeting, talk about school. Guard against the creep of divisive ideology. You don’t have to engage with every grievance; just hold the line with quiet confidence and move on.
Invite others in. Bring like-minded friends into your community. Be intentional about who you surround yourself with and what values those spaces reflect. The best way to grow a high-trust society is to model one — and make it attractive.
Over time, those on the ideological fringes, disillusioned by bitterness and identity politics, may start to look in from the outside. When they do, welcome them, but do so with boundaries. Shared values are the price of admission.
If we want a society where kids can safely play until the streetlights come on, we have to build it — deliberately, together.
Ethan Watson is a Young Voices contributor and incoming O’Connor Fellow at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University. He holds a degree in Political Science from the University of Kansas, and undergraduate and master’s degrees in Accounting. His commentary has appeared in RealClearPolitics, The Daily Caller, and InsideSources. He has appeared on the David Webb Show, and is a regular guest on Point of View Radio. Follow him on X: @erwatson13.