Some of those links say that in more authoritarian cultures, people are considered to be trustworthy if they show respect to their superiors—which reads to me as saying that you’re trusted if you show that you will obey.
Oh, that’s very interesting. Yeah, this seems like it might account for the discrepancy here. But my instinct is that I want to hang on to the “trust” terminology, and just hold that authoritarian cultures have an impoverished definition of trust (compared with the one I gave earlier: “letting another agent do as they wish, without trying to control their behavior, because you believe that they’ll take your interests into account”).
Maybe a more accurate alternative title would be something like “Coercion is an adaptation to scarcity; freedom is an adaptation to abundance”.
My guess is that this would be misleading in other ways—in particular, we don’t typically think of freedom as a property of relationships, but rather a property of individuals.
Mmm, I still prefer trust I think. Spaciousness gives me connotations of… well, distance, and separation. In some sense my relationship with almost everyone in the world is spacious. The thing that’s special about some relationships is that they have both spaciousness and intensity, which to me feels well-described by “trust”.
But my instinct is that I want to hang on to the “trust” terminology, and just hold that authoritarian cultures have an impoverished definition of trust (compared with the one I gave earlier: “letting another agent do as they wish, without trying to control their behavior, because you believe that they’ll take your interests into account”).
In that case all the major countries have ‘an impoverished definition of trust’ as they all operates huge amounts of classified programs where obedience to superiors is required and there’s no way of disobeying without incurring secret punishment.
Oh, that’s very interesting. Yeah, this seems like it might account for the discrepancy here. But my instinct is that I want to hang on to the “trust” terminology, and just hold that authoritarian cultures have an impoverished definition of trust (compared with the one I gave earlier: “letting another agent do as they wish, without trying to control their behavior, because you believe that they’ll take your interests into account”).
My guess is that this would be misleading in other ways—in particular, we don’t typically think of freedom as a property of relationships, but rather a property of individuals.
How about “spaciousness” (as in the relationship giving both individuals the space to move/act as they prefer) instead of freedom/trust?
Mmm, I still prefer trust I think. Spaciousness gives me connotations of… well, distance, and separation. In some sense my relationship with almost everyone in the world is spacious. The thing that’s special about some relationships is that they have both spaciousness and intensity, which to me feels well-described by “trust”.
In that case all the major countries have ‘an impoverished definition of trust’ as they all operates huge amounts of classified programs where obedience to superiors is required and there’s no way of disobeying without incurring secret punishment.