Dr. Todd Rose

They will step on my thing to get to me.

Why would I want to let them

be able to live their authentic lives.

Because if that were who they really are, that would be awful.

And so what we end up doing is having to control everybody.

And that's true in our interpersonal lives that you wrote about.

It's also true all the way up to our political lives, where we've given up on these fundamental values.

Like, you know what?

You live your life, I'll live mine, as long as we're not hurting each other.

Like, we've lost a willingness to invest in one another because we believe the illusion.

So social trust, which is trust in strangers.

Okay.

Right?

The single best predictor of the health and flourishing of democracies.

At the end of the day, we talk about trust in institutions.

I don't need to trust the government.

I need to have confidence that they'll do what they say.

So accountability, transparency.

The only trust that matters is that we trust each other.

So it predicts almost everything that matters collectively.