Trust Issues

We All Have ‘Trust Issues’

Introducing the first issue of Medium magazine

About six weeks ago, we at Medium gave ourselves a simple goal: identify the Most Important Issues Facing the World Today—capital letters intended—and find the stories to match.

It didn’t take long before one theme in particular emerged. Every idea our staff discussed had at its core the concept of trust — or, more pointedly, the erosion of trust.

The Trump Administration has called into doubt basic scientific facts, eroding trust in the tools that help us understand our world. Polls show that trust in the media is lower than it has been in decades, despite our desperate need for an honest broker. Interpersonal trust in the #metoo era and in the digital age is crumbling. Trust in the highest ranks of government as well as in local law enforcement has always been fraught, and never so much as it is today. The blockchain boom suggests we don’t trust the foundations of our financial system. Congress doesn’t trust Big Tech—and chances are, neither do you.

This crisis of trust is a fundamental fact about the way we live today. As one writer, Eliot Peper, put it to me in an email: “Trust is the active ingredient in human civilization. Trust and its absence has shaped societies across generations. What…