How to Weather the Worsening Trust Crisis
For decades in Western culture (especially since the 1960s), we’ve seen a slow deterioration of trust and a brewing epistemological crisis. We’ve increasingly not known how to know, whose authority to trust, and where we can look for truth.
In recent years, the internet’s toxic buffet of fake news, conspiracy theories, echo chambers, and confirmation bias deepened the crisis. But 2020 took it to another level entirely.
The recently released 2021 Edelman Trust Barometer shows that 2020 saw precipitous trust declines. The fascinating report describes “an epidemic of misinformation and widespread mistrust of societal institutions and leaders around the world” that has been accelerated by COVID-19:
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由于新冠肺炎疫情打击，继近年出现的「美国衰落论」和「美国过度衰落论」的辩论后，美国近月又开始出现「痉挛论」（convulsionism）论述。本文尝试梳理美国社会正在经历的「道德痉挛」危机的历史轨迹和深层面向，进而探讨其文化根由，并研判未来发展。
10月初，美国《大西洋》（The Atlantic）杂志出版题为《美国正患有道德痉挛》（America Is Having a
Moral
Convulsion）的文章，剖析当前美国政治和制度信心危机的发展周期、不同面向和历史根由。作为结合历史社会学、心理学和政治学的跨科际理论，「道德痉挛论」指一个社会正经历着普遍性文化失序局面，导致社会撕裂、衝突，甚至内战。身处其中的民众因而对政府和各种现存制度极度不信任，使得国家和社会各领域陷于不断失控抽搐的状态。而且，由于国家和社会痉挛自我复原需