I saw this a few days ago and I found it quite worrying.
When I was young I think I trusted politicians, the police, what I read in the newspapers, the probity of vicars and priests and, to quite a large extent, everyone. My views have changed – should they have done?
Who do you trust?
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A tricky one. It’s hard to know if politicians, businessmen, scientists, priests etc are less trustworthy now than they once were – probably not. I guess that there have always been some people who have been prepared to betray the trust put in them but maybe it is more readily exposed nowadays as there is less forelock-tugging deference to those in positions of authority?
I hope that it is not unduly naive to believe that there are still many people in positions of trust today who genuinely merit that trust. I don’t think we should assume everything we hear/read is false (or even everything from particular categories of people such as politicians or members of this or that party) but we are all responsible for keeping our critical faculties switched on so we are less vulnerable to swallowing falsehoods. I would add that this is important with respect to things that are in harmony with our world view as well as things that go against it: we are all potentially vulnerable to confirmation bias.
The English government has always trended towards the spectactularly corrupt and corrupting. Legendarily so in some time periods, like the Georgian and our current neo-Georgian eras for example. However I think that immediately post WW2 there was a reasonable expectation of some sense of trust and desire to serve the public in regards to the body politic, possibly due to the fact they knew they had a citizenry that knew how to organise themselves into an army en masse if they didn’t deliver to them.
By the end of the nineteen seventies, that had completely gone. The successive governments since then have been hellbent on breaking the will of the people, pitting us against each other, and just flat out ignoring us to deliver to their mates. Labour being no better in that regard than the foul Tories, the Iraq war proved that. Blair was determined to deliver a war for his mate Georgie Jr. in America, and ignored one of the biggest protests in history to do so. And that has emboldened the Tories to do what they have done since they seized power, because they know they can; Labour proved government can do what it wants and nobody can or will stop them. Tony Blair’s behaviour following 9/11 set the stage for all that followed, including Brexit.
I trust politicians to lie and betray, and I trust Tories to always lean on the deaths of the poor and vulnerable (with varying degrees of deliberateness and/or wilful ignorance depending on which one) does that count? Do I trust anyone to do the right thing, to represent me, or to not throw people like me under the bus the moment we become inconvenient to their cause? Since my granny died, no I do not.
Every downvote and sarky comment only proves I’m justified in my distrust and cynicism.
I gave you a quick down vote to help boost your point of view for you.
Yes, perhaps the world did seem simpler and more honest when we were younger, but then we observed the drive for neoliberalism (for want of a better decription) and market forces ‘evolution’ and somewhere in that too many lost their capacity for compassion and kindness?
As many have told me over the years “follow the money” and you can soon establish which way people will lean. Sadly too many politicians need to pay back media support, favours, financial support to get them into the Westminster power bubble etc. So I trust politicians to look after themselves for sure! Having said that I’d like to think there are some who still act with integrity ….
Likewise ‘trustworthy’ scientists, but again the pressure exerted by the need to further careers and research companies (or universities) profit can sadly influence any research findings or their interpretation?
A review and reform of the palace of Westminster would be a start (I understand we do not even have a Constitution), but wow that would be a seriously massive task and vested interest resistance …
PAN have an agenda. The pesticide industry has an agenda. Squillions are at stake so nothing is surprising.
Then there’s the File Drawer Problem, the Reproducibility Problem –
https://www.nature.com/news/1-500-scientists-lift-the-lid-on-reproducibility-1.19970 – and the Publish or Perish Problem
Cynics get a bad press but I have always found it saves Time later.
They just keep coming.
https://molecularbrain.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13041-020-0552-2
Mark, you missed out scientists from your list..
tbf I think that was implied by the link to the PAN article.
But the rise and rise of Scientivism should be a concern to everyone. No Lessons Learned* learned from the rise of Lamarck and Lysenko?
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds really should be a standard text in Skools
*How I detest that phrase. Roughly translated: Whitewash; Not our fault; We’ll get our pensions, anyway
Deciding how much to trust each person is a perenial human problem. The alternative though is total cyncism (‘the price of everything and the value of nothing’), and how nasty is that.
William Summerlin was the classic example that uncovered the dirty little secret that fraud occurred in science. You should read the book about it by Peter Medewar (Nobel Prize for transplant immunology). He recalls how he sat in one of Summerlin’s lectures and just knew that what Summerlin was saying couldn’t be true as he’d tried the same thing himself exhaustively and not managed it. But he didn’t have the courage to come out and defy the universal admiration Summerlin was getting. Of course if Summerlin had been honest he might have gained the insights Medewar did! That animals’ immune systems were able to detect and reject ‘non-self’. In science honesty tends to pay, at least in the long run. It’s surely one of it’s great strength.
I don’t trust the police. Devon and Cornwall Police have a policy to effectively not enforce the hunting act while several of their senior officers are active hunt followers.