At the suggestion of science fiction author John Ringo, I am reading his book The Last Centurion. I am not a big fiction reader so this book was a good start for me as I like the “bloggy” first person style that it is written in. The book is set in the second decade of the 21st century in which the world is struck by two catastrophes: a mini-ice age and a plague. The book describes a possible future and all the political and military problems and limitations that exist during a catastrophe. As a psychologist, however, I was struck by how people and society behaved during these crises.

The main character, an American army officer, gives his observations about how important trust is in a society when there is a disaster. “Americans form voluntary random social alliances. Other societies do not. Low trust societies in the U.S. do not.” In other words, in America, groups of random strangers will get together to aid other people for no direct benefit to themselves. In a disaster, it is imperitive for people to help each other to get through it and save the greatest amount of people.

Okay, this is a work of fiction but extrapolate the concept of trust to the real world and it plays out the same. Americans are often generous and go out of their way to help others because we have a bond of trust here, even between strangers. However, that trust is eroding with much of the propaganda and agitation by politicians and their minions who want to punish certain groups such as men, while rewarding others.

If we keep bashing men and ostricizing them, nothing good will happen. Every time we take away due process from men, throw them in jail for debts to women and children (child support), portray them as perverts and rapists in the media, and treat them as expendable, we break the bonds of trust and threaten our own survival and that of others at the same time. It is societal suicide.