Trust and Accountability
ICYMI, a link to an old post
I’m experiencing a lull in my writing. Meanwhile, I realize that some of my early posts have not been seen by the majority of you. So here is a link to a post from two years ago that might be worth looking at, and an excerpt from the post.
I dislike the phrase “high-trust society.” It suggests that you observe more cooperation in one society than another because the people in one society are just inherently more cooperative. It smacks of what anthropologists call “naive sociology,” when a group believes that other groups are inherently composed of bad people. It is sort of like the fundamental attribution error applied to an entire out-group.
I believe instead that you observe more cooperation where cooperation is likely to be rewarded and cheating is likely to be punished. Human cooperation is one of the most important aspects of society. It is very complex, and it becomes more complex the larger the form of social organization.
My initial reaction is to disagree mildly because 'high trust' (if I understand the usage correctly) implies more than just cooperation. A low-trust society has plenty of cooperation, as you note obliquely, it's just that the trust and cooperation flow from pre-existing relationships, most often familial or tribal. Members of a high trust society not only have high levels of cooperation but are more likely to cooperate even when they have no pre-existing relationship with the other person or group,
I'm not saying you are wrong, we should surely for careful, but your concern about "inherent" sounds like something that would come from a leftist. It reminds me a bit of complaints about Mischel's marshmallow test. Many complained he was saying people who failed were inherently inferior but as I understand it, he never made a conclusion about the cause, just the likely outcome down the road.
In this case, inherent can have multiple meanings. It can point to the individuals but it can also be about the culture, which seems like what you are saying. In this I find the swiss-italian region fascinating. The primary language in southern Switzerland is Italian yet on both sides of the border they behave more like people in German speaking Switzerland on the other side of the Alps than central and southern Italians in both work ethic (Romans are said to be lazy) and willingness to obey the rules, including paying taxes. Probably other ways too.