a matter of trust

I heard this woman on the radio talking about a book she'd just written about bullshit. How much more there is about nowadays; the degrees there are. Like, bullshitting with your friends - that's just entertainment, right? Everyone know's it's bullshit, it's just to amuse. But then there's, uh, bullshit with malice, I guess we'd call it. Bullshit aimed at hurting other people, bullshit that's meant to be taken seriously (the line between bullshit and lying is clearly pretty fuzzy - I think maybe it's bullshit when it's harder to prove it's a lie. You know, like saying, "Yes, I've always wondered about Carl. Noone who talks so much about morality can really be that straight, don't you think?" I mean, you can't say they're lying about anything; there's nothing there to take hold of. But the implication sticks. Hard to fight.)

Anyway, the bit that really hit home with me was when she said she thought the level of bullshit from the politicians and, well, I guess everyone in the public arena, had got so high that it was expected - everyone just assumed people like that were bullshitting. And so there wasn't much trust in anything people like that said. She said that was why so few younger people vote or read the papers (I think the assumption is we might be better at recognizing the bullshit - we can but hope) . No trust.

And she talked about the consequences of that for society. I mean, when you think about it, society runs on trust. If we really, REALLY, didn't trust anyone, we wouldn't be able to get out of bed. I mean, how could you get in a car without trust that the other people on the road (most of them anyway) were going to obey the really important road rules, like staying on their side of the road?

And, paranoid as we've all gotten, we do assume that most people aren't going to arbitrarily walk up to us and knife us.

I was supposed to be thinking of something positive to say about humans, wasn't I? I'm not sure this turned out to be it, but ... hey, I know, here's one. Apparently a survey of global conflict has concluded that, despite America's gung-ho warmaking, the "number and intensity of wars and armed conflicts have fallen once again, continuing a steady 15-year decline that has halved the amount of organized violence around the world".

So, that's positive.

I wonder what would happen, though, if you added up all the people that die by violence?