On World War I and Trust in Humans

(draft) The many interesting ways we lost that faith.

My post about the origins of our trust debacle generated many fascinating comments on LinkedIn, some of which commented on Scarcity = Abundance - Trust, as I posted recently.

But the biggie appears to have been this moment in the video at m:ss:

where I pointed to World War I as the moment we lost faith in humans.

What I say in that passage is this:

After trampling and replacing lots of this hard-earned wisdom, we proceeded to lose faith in humans, partly through the senseless, wasteful brutality of World War I, partly through the consumerization of every aspect of our lives, which dumbed us down.

In the process, we broke trust.

This deserves some discussion, no?

Herewith, a series of observations from an amateur historian and student of change.

I was generalizing, but also searching for a moment

In my Brain, there's this thought: Somewhere After the Alphabet and Before WWII, We Lost Faith in Humans.

From F. Scott Fitzgerald's debut novel, This Side of Paradise, published in 1920:

Here was a new generation, grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken.

Ways World War I Screwed Up the World More of my logic:

Just before WWI:

• The telegraph and photography both transformed journalism forever. Speed and impact of news.
• Scramble for Africa ended with WWI, really messed up Africa after slavery's terrible effects. See especially King Leopold II of Belgium's awful Congo Free State.
• Major shift from agriculture to industry
• Major nation-states formed up
• Roads and railroads. Peak horse.

During and right after WWI:

• Revolutions were in the air, especially Communism. Took Russia out of the War. Scared everyone else.
• The Sykes–Picot Agreement (1916) screwed up the Middle East
• Infamous Versailles Treaty (and Britain's weird role)
• Eddie Bernays, the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, and his uncle Sigmund. Propaganda becomes PR.
• Ho Chi Minh wrote Woodrow Wilson to ask his assistance in creating a democratic Vietnam
• Machine guns, high explosives, poison gas...
• The meat grinder
• The end of gentlemen soldiers
• Shell shock
• Tanks and military aircraft
• The Spanish Flu started at WWI's end, and killed more people. It also shredded the social fabric. From Laura Spinney's book Pale Rider: "Your best chance of survival was to be utterly selfish... jealously guard your hoard of food and water, and ignore all pleas for help." The Spanish Flu was so awful that nobody wanted to talk about it afterward.

But, but: Nobody took issue with my conclusion (yet)

I started with the assertion that we lost faith in humans, then said we built the world's major systems and institutions from a basis of mistrust of the average human.

Seems big, no?

Want to chime in here?

There are so many contributing factors!

Omigosh, it's hard to tally the many moments that contributed to our loss of faith in humans.

I'm interested in your versions. Really.

There are so many other rotten spells of history!

• Witch hunts in the Middle Ages
• Colonialism
• Inquisitions and Crusades (so many!)

Convergence of forces

• Emergence of modern mass media
• Speed and reach of communication
• Fear of mobs
• Senselessness of conflicts
• Institutional design
• Population growth outrunning our ability to control people

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