very widely believed
the second is an aim we should have more trust
and the third is a task we should rebuild trust
i think that the claim the aim and the task are all misconceived so what i 'm going to try to tell you today is a different story
about a claim an aim and a task which i think give one quite a lot better purchase on the matter first the claim why do people think trust has declined
and if i really think about it on the basis of my own evidence i don 't know the answer i 'm inclined to think it may have declined in some activities or some institutions and it might have grown in others i don 't have an overview
but of course i can look at the opinion polls and the opinion polls are supposedly the source of a belief that trust has declined
when you actually look at opinion polls across time there 's not much evidence for that that 's to say the people who were mistrusted twenty years ago principally journalists and politicians are still mistrusted
but is that good evidence what opinion polls record is of course opinions what else can they record so they 're looking at the generic attitudes that people report when you ask them certain questions do you trust politicians do you trust teachers
and that would be a perfectlysensible response
you might say when you understood
in short in our real lives we seek to place trust in a differentiated way we don 't make an assumption that the level of trust that we will have in every instance of a certain type of official or office holder or type of person is going to be uniform
i might for example say that i certainly trust a certain elementary school teacher i know to teach the reception class to read but in no way to drive the school minibus
i might after all know that she wasn 't a good driver i might trust my most loquacious friend to keep a conversation going but not but perhaps not to keep a secret
i think the polls are very bad guides to the level of trust that actually exists because they try to obliterate the good judgment that goes into placing trust
secondly what about the aim the aim is to have more trust well frankly i think that 's a stupid aim
and i think of them and i think well yes too much trust more trust is not an intelligent aim in this life intelligently placed and intelligently refused trust is the proper aim
are they honest are they reliable and if we find that a person is competent in the relevant matters and reliable and honest we 'll have a pretty good reason to trust them because they 'll be trustworthy
but if on the other hand they 're unreliable we might not i have friends who are competent and honest but i would not trust them to post a letter because they 're forgetful
across the last few decades we 've tried to construct systems of accountability for all sorts of institutions and professionals and officials and so on
and all over our public life our institutional life we find that problem that the system of accountability that is meant to secure trustworthiness and
and evidence of trustworthiness is actually doing the opposite it is distracting people who have to do difficult tasks like midwives from doing them by requiring them to tick the boxes as we say you can all give your own examples there
so so much for the aim the aim i think is more trustworthiness and that is going to be different if we are trying to be trustworthy and communicate our trustworthiness to other people and if we are trying to judge whether other people or office holders or politicians are trustworthy
and simple reaction attitudes
don 't do adequately here
now thirdly the task
calling the task rebuilding trust i think also gets things backwards it suggests that you and i should rebuild trust
well we can do that for ourselves we can rebuild a bit of trustworthiness we can do it two people together trying to improve trust but trust in the end
so you have to i think be trustworthy and that of course is because you can 't fool all of the people all of the time
usually but you also have to provide usable evidence that you are trustworthy
how to do it well every day all over the place it 's being done by ordinary people by officials by institutions quite effectively let me give you a simple commercial example
the shop where i buy my socks says i may take them back and they don 't ask any questions they take them back and give me the money or give me the pair of socks of the color i wanted that 's super i trust them because they have made themselves vulnerable to me
very difficult to discern it is relationships in which people are trustworthy and can judge when and how the other person is trustworthy so
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