The Trust Revolution

A lot of the change happening around us, and some of the change in Iran, comes from a basic shift in who we trust.

I think there are two essential ways to trust people and institutions:

We can trust people and institutions because they are powerful. They have demonstrated that they can "get things done" and that if they can't do something, they know people who can. They can mobilize vast numbers of people and resources to achieve a goal.

We can also trust people and institutions because they are authentic. They seem to know who or what they are and act without many obvious contradictions. They have a track record of telling the truth.

In institution after institution, we have begun expressing the second kind of trust -- the trust in the authentic -- and we have become more and more suspicious of the powerful. Of course, history is filled with eras when the authentic eclipsed the powerful. I just think that we've entered yet another one of those eras.

President Obama's victory over Hillary Clinton is a perfect illustration of this. Barack Obama was one of the least powerful people ever to win the presidency. He had no long-established network of supporters. He had a very thin record of doing favors for people, and so he had virtually no chits to cash in to get things done. He had no real relationships with the powerful politicians in Washington or abroad. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, was one of the most powerful politicians in the world. Her husband was the former President, whose ability to do favors for people was virtually unmatched. She had an enormous network of supporters to marshall in case of trouble. She knew all the world leaders from her travels as a senator and as First Lady. The Obama vs. Clinton matchup was a matchup of authenticity vs. power. On one side we had someone who had never lied to us and seemed utterly comfortable in his own skin and without contradiction. On the other side we had the wily operative who knew how to get things done. We went with authenticity.

The same phenomenon is happening in Iran right now. For a long time, because many Iranians believed in the United States as an evil caricature, the Iranian people trusted power. Obama's friendly approach to the country gave Iranians the freedom to trust authenticity over power. That shift is essential to any revolution -- all revolutionaries place a bet with perceived authenticity over perceived power. Further, by telling the truth about America's past meddling in Iran, Obama heightened the contradictions between America's level of authenticity and the regime's level of authenticity. As Pat Buchanan stated recently,

The dilemma for America is that the theocracy defines itself and grounds its claim to leadership through its unyielding resistance to the Great Satan—the United States—and to Israel. Nevertheless, Obama, with his outstretched hand, his message to Iran on its national day, his admission that the United States had a hand in the 1953 coup in Tehran, his assurances that we recognize Iran’s right to nuclear power, succeeded. He stripped the Ayatollah and Ahmadinejad of their clinching argument—that America is out to destroy Iran and they are indispensable to Iran’s defense.

By lying about the election results, the central authorities in Iran lost trust because they lost authenticity. Now Iranians are rallying against established institutions and the incumbent candidate. They are trusting a more authentic choice (rebellion) over the more powerful choice (acquiescence to the regime).

Media is experiencing the same trust revolution. We no longer trust only those media sources which have the longest histories or the most relationships or the most reporters. We trust media that seems authentic -- fewer ads and commercials mean fewer internal contradictions.

All in all, this is a progressive sign for society. A society that is more fearful is more likely to trust the powerful. A society that is more secure can afford to go to the next level and trust authenticity. Authentic individuals and institutions are less likely to resort to force and are more sustainable due to a lack of internal contradictions. From politics to Iran to the media, the old human compulsion to trust only the powerful is crumbling. That's a very good thing.