When Pretending Just Won’t Do
Lifted from the comments, on a theme we’ve touched on many times – namely high-trust societies and those who struggle with the concept:
This is not what “high trust” *means*. High trust is not something that you can personally manifest. It doesn’t care about your emotional reaction to events. You cannot instantiate a high trust society by being nicer and nicer and nicer in the face of fraud and theft and graft. https://t.co/OGSh2IDugO
— wanye (@xwanyex) January 27, 2026
A thread ensues. With relevant illustrations.
Readers may wish to ponder the implication that a high-trust society can somehow be maintained unilaterally, simply by not caring about the number of people who violate that trust, and who do so repeatedly, whether in ways that are audacious or just wearyingly routine but nonetheless degrading.
As if pretending not to mind the evaporation of civilised, reciprocal standards – and pretending not to be alienated by primitive behaviour – somehow means that said behaviour isn’t there and didn’t happen. And that it won’t happen tomorrow, or the day after. And with ever greater boldness.
As if a high-trust society means letting antisocial fuckers act with impunity.
Such are the wonders of the progressive mind. In which, noticing routine and shameless thievery, the screwing over of others, is apparently much worse than indulging in it.
There is, I think, an assumption, most obvious among progressives, that in a civilised society you should just stand around impotently and demoralised, carefully averting your eyes, so that the bedlamites and ferals can do whatever they like, over and over again. As if the civilised aspect of the society will never require maintenance and enforcement of a kind one might call vigorous. As if it all just happens automatically, for free.
The idea that you shouldn’t want a society in which people just stand around pretending not to notice a young man with Down syndrome being mugged, for instance, is, for some, quite troublesome, ideologically. And perhaps psychologically. There being a great deal staked upon the pretending.
But it seems to me that this learned impotence – this cowed affectation – is much more corrosive and demoralising than a world in which the degenerate and predatory – say, those who choose to mug the disabled in broad daylight – know that they run a risk of being given a good kicking.
A good kicking that they deserve. And upon which, the gods would smile.
“High Trust society is when you keep leaving your wallet unattended and buying a new one no matter how many times it gets stolen. Just keep trusting no matter what and then you have high trust”
Not entirely unrelated, on habitual fare-dodging as terribly radical, altruistic, even.
Another progressive innovation.
From your post:
He doesn’t care if it’s other people being robbed.
There did seem to be quite a lot of displacement taking place. And all weirdly uniform. As I said in the post,
To say nothing of the growing and unsustainable budget deficits in several supposedly progressive cities, due in large part to rampant, unchallenged fare-dodging.
Perhaps most notably, Seattle’s public transport network, on which an estimated 70% of passengers are now freeloading with impunity. While the woman put in charge of the network boasts of how “people are feeling more welcome on our system and less afraid to use it because there’s less of a fear of fare enforcement.”
This being progress, you see.
High Trust society:
[ Compiles Friday’s Ephemera, wonders where everyone is. ]
Learning how to refuel helicopters.
David, just an FYI: I’ve been seeing more frequent “Error establishing a database connection” messages.
The hosting service is merging with another company, so there may be some mild bumpiness.
[ Steadies crockery. ]
You still have un-smashed crockery?
Weekly deliveries.
Requires half the contents of the tip jar.
I wonder how much that’s a function of perverse incentives. Municipal transit systems never make money. They’re always heavily subsidized. But every municipality I’ve ever lived in has made a big deal about “ridership” – how many people are using public transit. It’s obviously a key metric.
This makes me think Goodhart’s Law is in action here and she’s gaming the metric.
Yes, well, ‘bumpiness’ generally accompanies ‘merging’.
‘People are feeling more welcome in my shop because they can just steal stuff now.’
Here are some people feeling more welcome.
Well, quite. And I suppose the question then is whether you’d be happy to spend much time in a shop that attracted, and indeed welcomed, the kind of people inclined to rob it.
Today’s word, since you ask, is clientele.
“Chicagoans deserve better.”
That Chicagoans keep electing those responsible for the present state of affairs gives the lie to that statement.
Use every man after his desert, and who should ‘scape whipping?
“high trust”: a high trust society is the RESULT of being aware that you and your things are safe in that society. It is not an arbitrary attitude of “being trusting” but rather that your fellow citizens are trustworthy. As usual, the Left twists words so much that they are meaningless.
Security of person and property may not be the mark of a ‘high trust’ society – legend has it both were notably safe in the Wallachia of Vlad Tepes.
On a very local level, one measure might be that if a parcel I’m expecting gets misdelivered to the house across the road, as happens from time to time, I can be fairly confident that it will find its way back to me quite promptly. The agreeable old dear across the road won’t have sold the contents to pay for another high, or have just kept the damn thing to spite me.
Another measure might be that for many years a house around the corner has had an ‘honesty box’ on a small, home-made stand on the pavement outside. Passers-by can help themselves to surplus produce from the owner’s vegetable garden, or small plants, or unwanted toys, or whatever. People leave the suggested, very nominal charge or whatever they deem appropriate.
In a box. That doesn’t get robbed.
Every time I pass it, I’m faintly pleased that it exists. It does seem rather symbolic. And it serves as a reminder that I’ve lived in neighbourhoods where such a thing would almost instantly be vandalised and thrown into the road, and where delight would be taken in its destruction – and in the misery of its owner.
Kitty Genovese Syndrome
About 5 miles up the road from us is a small community (combined k-12 school has about 700 students) Outside the firehouse is a set of shelves that people in this rural area regularly leave things like that so that anyone in need can help themselves. During the holidays, especially, a lot of canned goods make an appearance.
You’re not supposed to say that bit out loud.
Heh. And yet here we are.
I mean, there isn’t much that’s more British than a bus queue, or what a British bus queue was, and so the scenes from Greater London are a little jarring.
And that’s before we get to the scenes from drenched-in-vibrancy Portugal.
Today’s other word is downgrade.
Another “low trust society” data point.
In my neighborhood, a couple of neighbors have put home-grown produce out and people put $. There are dog bowls with water left out. Very trusting neighborhood. I have also lived places where you double check the locks. Guess which one is more relaxing?
Is it because people just don’t vote in municipal elections or the vote is being manipulated.
Or the party machine allows only machine-approved apparatchiks onto the ballot.
Except that even that story is full of BS even according to the BSers at the American Psychological Association, many of whom I am sure are guilty of repeating the BS themselves.
Yes, I’m sure Chicago elections are perfectly fair.
You can’t fix a sick culture.
Well, the unrealism and self-flattery do seem entrenched. It is, as they say, “like, a San Francisco thing.” And I’m not sure how one might fix a culture in which habitual mooching is endlessly excused and openly applauded. Not least by those who regard themselves, quite loudly, as immensely sophisticated. And in which the enforcement of basic rules, the basis of social trust, is shied away from as beastly and mean. As terribly unhip.
From the post:
People whose sense of status and entitlement – of virtue, of moral superiority – seemingly has little to do with how they actually behave.
You also have to marvel at the suggested responses to the dire budget deficit – growing by more than an order of magnitude – and the imminent system failure. You see, when almost a quarter of your supposed customers are actually freeloading and robbing you, every day, while congratulating themselves, then the obvious solution isn’t to, you know, enforce the payment of fares and prosecute those doing the thieving. No, no. That would be mean, or racist or something.
Instead, the solution is… a bake sale.
Oh, and in thing-that-never-happens news.
Because we haven’t had one of those in a while.
In other news, I have discovered that chopping chillies when you have a tiny, previously inconsequential cut on one finger is a deeply suboptimal situation.
Ow. Ow.
Bugger. Bugger. Bugger.
Given how well he’s helped the victims of the Pacific Palisades and Altadena fires . . . nah, we’re good.
Heh. And yet here we are.
These are the morally corrupt people who presume to rule us.
[ redundant ]
A team to instruct Tennesseans in “preferred pronouns” and “racial equity”, presumably.
David:
Trump turned off the taps and lot of fictitious “agencies” and white-collar “professionals” disappeared.
The same thing happens when you reduce the payout and cleanse the welfare rolls.
The other alternative is letting it fail, refusing to bail it out. Not sure if that would be called “fixing”… but it changes and focuses minds very quickly.
https://x.com/newstart_2024/status/2016224379353379025
Enjoy….if that’s the right word, the replies of one Lisa Lewis.
[ Stirs enormous cauldron of chili, cautiously tastes spoon. ]
[ Roars with triumph. ]
Culture: one observes in trailer trash culture (of any race) that attitudes towards work, the cops, orderliness, politeness, theft, are ingrained and part of the language. Cops are called “pigs” and the word spit out. Children help their mothers shoplift. Fighting is encouraged in children. No books in the house. Parents do not read to the kids or even talk to them much. Hitting the kids is normal. Parents passed out from some substance is normal. Everyone knows how to get bailed out of jail. Turning this around is difficult.
Hippies: calling cops “pigs”, shoplifting, trashy homes, drugs.
Hippies were trailer trash.
Not entirely unrelated, on being careful who you welcome.
A thread of some length.
One thing I think contributing to the ICE crisis is a tip toward extreme binary thinking. All whites are racist, for example. Or opposing men in women’s spaces is trans-phobia.
In the case of immigration, an effort to send home almost entirely criminals means that ALL immigrants are at risk. That many illegals are tan means that any effort to deport is racist. Thus we have white women using cars to stop ICE from arresting a child rapist or murderer.
True.
Another contributing factor: Non-citizens count towards the census and the apportioning of Congressional districts: the more immigrants in “blue” districts, the greater the political power of the left.