The Evolution of Trust
From Primal Instincts to Modern Manipulation
Psychology for ten year olds
Aged about 10, someone explained the Theory of Evolution to me. Although they were describing physical traits in animals, probably using some obvious example like the giraffe, my mind grasped the concept of natural selection, or rather survival of the fittest, and ran off with it. For as long as I can remember, I have been acutely aware of patterns of thought and behaviour in myself and others, but the instant that I had the concept of survival of the fittest in my head, I was unable to stop my imagination from running my observations of those behavioural patterns through it. I had a sort of avalanche of realisations, and from then on, a small part of me has been quietly noticing aspects of everyday human behaviour in the context of the probability of that behaviour increasing the projected reach of ones DNA into the future, on a logical basis, and with consideration for human existence before the industrial revolution.
To put our evolutionary journey into perspective, consider this: the oldest stone tools ever found date back approximately 3.3 million years. Assuming a 20-year generation, that's roughly 165,000 human generations. However, the roots of trust and social behaviours go much deeper in our evolutionary tree. Protective behaviours and parent-offspring bonds are observed in many species, including reptiles and even some fish, suggesting these traits evolved hundreds of millions of years ago. In terms of human generations, we're looking at a timescale that easily exceeds 200,000 generations.
Now, if we want to bring the modern world into this evolutionary tale, let's imagine that you have just walked 100 miles or 160 km, which is roughly 200,000 steps. In that whole journey, very little changes; we get through the stone age, the bronze age and into the iron age, and then BAM! Everything since the beginning of the industrial revolution arrives in the last sixteen steps of that 100-mile walk. Those first 200,000 generations evolved through some extremely harsh conditions. Our modern world is not really testing this part of our evolution any longer, at least in the West, so while the effect won't be reinforced so severely again, unless our civilisation collapses, it may get a little fuzzy around the edges over time.
Having established this vast timeline of evolutionary development, let's now turn our attention to a critical aspect of human psychology that has been shaped by this long journey: Trust. This fundamental trait, which has been crucial to our survival and social cohesion for millions of years, is now facing unprecedented challenges in our rapidly changing modern world.
How did we get here?
Hundreds of millions of years ago, systems of trust evolved in mammals. Young creatures learned to trust their parents or family above other members of the troop, herd, etc. This system exists in humans, and by the time we were making tools and painting on caves, we had the need to communicate prospective knowledge to members of our tribe, to strengthen the tribal chances of survival, and projection of the DNA sequences within the tribal families into the future.
As the techniques used for memory-tricks show, storytelling is the system that evolved, where the theme is the framework from which we hang the salient information that will assist survival and the genetic future.
Over this entire time, the young are observing their support and survival network of parents, relatives, and others demonstrating trust in other individuals within the tribe. This group of seldom more than Dunbar's number of 150 presented an environment of known people, and we would almost never have had to ask ourselves whether we can trust a person. We would just know it, as a consequence of our subconscious childhood observations.
The components of this are visible within us, showing up as things like herd bias and having similar leanings as those who influenced our development.
So, for at least 200,000 human generations, or the equivalent, this continued uninterrupted and with no real evolutionary challenges to the system of Trust as the Gatekeeper to the creation or modification of unconscious, functional heuristic/neural-network 'programs' which affect our feelings and emotions, leading to our thoughts, our speech and our reactions and actions. Then within the last 300 years, in the west, we have had:
General literacy
News corporations
The development of highly effective means of hijacking this system (20th Century Communism and Hitler's Nazism)
TV
The commercialization of subliminal reprogramming, through marketing and advertising
The internet
Social media
Mobile data and wifi 'everywhere'
Our systems of Trust have never been through this evolutionary test, and it seems unlikely, in our modern world, that natural selection will correct or update this part of our evolved behaviour. This rapid change presents both challenges for the general population, and opportunities for those seeking power, control, and wealth. The way our trust mechanisms interact with these new pressures can lead to significant societal imbalances and manipulations.
Where once upon a time, I might have grown up having unconsciously absorbed my father's trust in my grandfather as a source of wisdom, and the tribal elders as sources of outside news and collective decisions, I grew up having unconsciously absorbed his trust in certain TV news channels, newspapers, and even brands.
"I trust the BBC", "I trust the London Times", "I trust the Conservative Party", "I trust The Guardian", "I trust Tony Blair", "I trust Ford", "I trust Land Rover", "I trust Apple”, "I trust the fact checkers", "I trust the Government", "I trust the European Commission" and so on.
How many of these entities have the interests of me, my family, my children, above their own objectives, or as their own objectives? Does the EU care about the specific needs of, or threats to, the local situation of my children, the way that my grandfather or the other tribal members that depended upon my family as much as I depended on theirs did? It seems highly unlikely, and yet without really understanding why this is of critical importance, we have slid into a position where our trust is placed in hands with their own agendas of power, profit, taxation, and control.
When you look back at this, it does appear to be an inevitability waiting to happen, and be exploited by people whose own heuristics have been silently programmed to rationalise that exploitation as care, or just an advantage to be played.
We can see the effects in the way that competing narratives are creating accelerated divisions between people who believe exactly what the establishment media is telling them, and people who treat it with scrutiny, seeking ways to validate critical news.
What happens now?
Protests, unrest, civil war? Plenty of people are talking this way; it may start as rhetoric, but history shows where we tend to take it.
Mediation and a coming back together? The situation is getting deeper and wider every day, so for now that looks increasingly unlikely.
I think we need revelation; we all need to understand the mechanics of our trust/programming function. It is the source of our incredible adaptability, but while this evolved into a very effective and powerful system, it has no safeguard against the manipulations and mind control that I am speaking of. Our personal lack of understanding about this means that we are like a computer connected to the internet, with no firewall, no anti-malware, unwittingly collecting advanced persistent threats and even assisting in the lateral propagation of them within our local network of communities and the wider network we come into contact with via social media. In this state, we become agents of whatever agenda or ideology that has infected our subconscious, heuristic mental system, and if we are sufficiently infected, we will fight, kill and even die for the implanted beliefs, no matter how true or false, no matter if they can even be verified; othering anyone who presents ideas, or information that challenge the orthodoxy, as if it were a personal attack.
Using computing as an analogy:
The system has an open vulnerability with Root-Level Access
The system administrator (the subject) is unaware
Trusted sources of information present malware embedded in their content
Malware installs itself silently and invisibly
Malware falsely identifies Anti-Malware activity or programming as Malicious
The administrator cooperates in the removal and blocking of anti-malware
System is ‘Pwned’ or owned by the idealogical malware
If we simply change step 2 into 'Systems Admin went on a cybersecurity awareness course, and was provided with educational resources', it won't guarantee against future infections, but it will make preventative strategies, threat-hunting, and malware removal a possibility.
Our lack of understanding of our 'system' is what is holding us in bondage through our own powers of delusion, as directed by whatever manipulations we allow ourselves to be exposed to, the good and the bad alike. The first step in protecting ourselves is recognising this vulnerability and becoming aware of how our trust mechanisms are open to exploitation in the modern world.
Everything else is just moving the symptoms around.